While Juma hasn’t been in the boba business for long, we’ve been fortunate enough to spread our boba joy from our first ever brick-and-mortar boba shop, Steep, to multiple in-stadium carts at Oracle Park and Levi’s Stadium, and even the occasional pop-up at Chase Center. Now, thanks to aid from our community and a ready team of Juma youth, we’re excited to announce the opening of our second store location in San Francisco’s Mission District! Steep Valencia, located at 3491 19th Street, is now open for business and Juma youth are excited to prepare delicious drinks for our friends and neighbors. Visitors to Steep Valencia can choose from a variety of refreshing flavors like ice-cold strawberry jasmine tea or creamy Thai milk tea to sip as they stroll through this beautiful and lively neighborhood.
Steep Valencia’s interior was brought up-to-date over the past several months with help from Lisa Wai, Principle at Shelterwork Architecture & Design. With Lisa’s in-kind support, we were able to craft a beautiful space for our youth to work. In addition to our walk-up window, Steep Valencia is also a second home base where we can prepare catering orders. We’ve loved bringing boba joy to companies like eBay and Deloitte, and look forward to providing more sweet treats with a mission to businesses across the Bay Area. As companies encourage their staff to return to in-person offices, boba is proving a great incentive to show up.
In the process of crafting a comfortable, safe, and organized space for our youth to work, the team decided to spruce up the shop with a wall of bright, colorful boba-themed stickers. On opening day, with an excess of stickers, Juma youth began giving away a sticker with each boba order. It quickly became clear that boba stickers are almost as popular as boba beverages. Today, Steep Valencia is still giving away a boba sticker with each drink, and the Juma youth behind the counter are having fun pairing drinks with stickers to match all of the bright, fun colors.
As with our other Steep locations, the ultimate goal of Steep Valencia is to offer Juma youth even greater opportunities to develop skills like leadership and communication outside of the stadium environment and to create a learning laboratory for youth who are interested in entrepreneurship. With new challenges like opening and closing the shop, a different inventory system, and a smaller team to solve problems as they arise, our Steep stores offer Juma youth with exceptional skills and abilities a way to take on more responsibility and earn the confidence that comes with overcoming new challenges.
Steep Valencia is located at 3491 19th St. and open every day from 12-7pm.
Steep Brannan is located at 270 Brannan St. and open Thursday-Sunday from 12-6pm.
To learn more about Juma and Steep, visit juma.org/steep.
For catering info and inquiries, please visit juma.org/CaterSteep or email catersteep@juma.org.
