Kawaii Boba House

College students love nothing more than a sweet milk drink. We’re known for our caramel macchiatos, fruit smoothies, and seasonally appropriate peppermint hot chocolates. In Conway, the city of colleges, this industry has been led for years by Kawaii Boba House.

This chain first opened in February 2020, with one location in Little Rock, and one right on the edge of walking distance from Hendrix, at 1310 Prince Street. The two locations were run by Paul and Chelsea Grass respectively (Paul is also known as Zhen Cao). The two (who also happened to be married) both served delicious Boba Tea drinks and Bao Buns out of their respective locations. Despite the immediate pandemic, the establishment was a hit in Conway. Grass told The Echo that “At Kawaii Boba House, we call it happiness in a cup, your daily dose of serotonin!” All Kawaii Boba House locations were decorated lavishly, with anime-inspired fan-art from local artists, merch, and manga. It was a wonderful place to hang out, although most customers, due to Covid restrictions, couldn’t tell, from their socially-distanced vehicles.

With the sudden popularity of the two initial stores, the chain began expanding, opening two new locations in Conway over the next couple of years, and one in Hot Springs. This spread the management thin, meaning Paul was spending less and less time with any individual store, leaving essential functions to employees who were undertrained, underpaid, and overwhelmed. Paul was eager to capitalize on his newfound success, after his last two business endeavors.

His first such endeavor of 2018, Natural Land, was a planned EDM festival to be held in Alexander, Arkansas. This festival, less than a week from its scheduled beginning, cancelled 7 major billed acts, including the planned closer, NGHTMRE. A couple of days later, the festival was cancelled in its entirety. The post on the now-offline website for the festival delivering this news states at one point that “There was an honest lack of understanding of what it actually takes to turn a dream this big into reality, despite all of the planning and double-checking.” His other business at this point, which he co-owned with Chelsea, was called Mini-Chic Boutique, also in Conway, and also shut down in 2018, around a year after it opened.

Shortly after its launch, a majority of the staff at one Conway store quit within a span of two weeks. There were many reasons for this, fault lines visible at any of the locations they had in Conway. They suddenly scaled shifts down from four people to two people, which was decidedly more difficult. Their scheduling app, controlled by the faraway, unavailable management, totally ignored one employee and Hendrix student’s other obligations, bumping them from 20 to 30 hours a week without permission. The Boba House offered a raise to employees that were still there, during this tumult, giving the impression that it would be substantial. The raise ultimately turned out to be only ten additional cents per hour. An employee who quit alongside this group said that “They started micromanaging and scrutinizing everything we did. When our store manager stepped down, the owner [Paul] tried to bully one of my coworkers into taking the position. It got to a point where we were constantly criticized or just told we weren’t working hard enough.”

This July, with absolutely zero warning, all Kawaii Boba House locations were shut down over the course of about a week. This was at the same time that the divorce between Paul and Chelsea became final. Most employees, managers, customers, and local artists with pieces on display were totally frozen out. Paul has been unresponsive to media and former employees, and dozens are still without pay for their last two weeks of work. In the immediate aftermath, a gofundme (which is still active) was set up to provide monetary relief to former employees. The post on the Instagram account @kbhemployees which announced this stated that “Paul Grass has left 20+ people jobless with no warning or care. We deserve better than this.”