What happens when a viral tea brand moves beyond the café model? For Amy Truong and Lani Gobaleza, it meant embracing a deeper purpose — blending sustainability, mindfulness and tradition. PARU Tea has evolved from a trendy matcha destination into a space dedicated to single origin, custom loose-leaf tea and tea experiences.
But their journey is more than just a business pivot, it's a love story rooted in shared passion and bold choices. In this episode, we dive into how this couple is redefining tea culture in San Diego, proving that slowing down can be just as revolutionary as going viral.
" It really goes into the principle of Japanese tea ceremony. 'Ichigo ichie' is one chance, one meeting. You always want to be your present self because you never know what tomorrow might bring. Everything at this moment counts," Amy said.
Mentioned in this episode:
- PARU Tea | La Jolla tea shop specializing in loose-leaf tea and matcha sourced from small farms around the world
- An's Dry Cleaning | North Park gelato shop featuring Sandals, a gelato made with PARU's Blue Chamomile tea
- Bica | Normal Heights coffee shop serving drinks made with PARU tea
- Hatsuzakura | University Heights Japanese café offering PARU loose-leaf teas and milk teas steeped with PARU blends
Guests:
- Amy Troung, PARU Tea founder
- Lani Gobaleza, PARU Tea co-founder/marketing & partnerships
From KPBS Public Media, The Finest is a podcast about the people, art and movements redefining culture in San Diego. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or click the play button at the top of this page and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pocket Casts, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Episode 1: PARU Transcript
Julia Dixon Evans: What actually happens when your business goes viral? When you get caught up in the currents of an online sensation? What do you hang on to? How do you keep your sense of self and purpose?
This is the story of PARU, a tea shop that made waves when they opened their La Jolla location in 2021. For years, they'd been selling single-origin and custom blended loose-leaf tea to San Diegans, but it was their matcha lattes that took off on TikTok.
TikToker 1: We're at PARU, one of the best matcha shops in San Diego.
TikToker 2: You have to try PARU Tea.
TikToker 3: Guys, I drove 3 hours to try the most viral matcha spot in San Diego.
TikToker 4: They make one of the best matcha lattes I've ever had.
TikToker 5: The first thing I noticed was their matcha machine that produces house milled ceremonial matcha. Like, are you kidding me?
TikToker 6: This PARU, it's so freaking good.
Evans: Most of the TikToks show PARU's minimalist decor, with workers stirring up matcha with bamboo whisks, and carefully pouring it into plastic cups — all set to chill, vibey music. But if you took that serene soundtrack away, if you were there in person, the vibe was not so zen. The lines stretched down the street. Co-owners — and married couple — Amy Truong and Lani Gobaleza went through so much oat milk, they could hardly keep it stocked.
Lani Gobaleza: There was this idea that we were a cafe and we'd love cafes and stuff, but I think it got so busy to the point that we couldn't even talk to customers who were coming in.
Evans: Lani and Amy were grateful for the excitement around their drinks, but they are passionate about the mindfulness and philosophy of a slow, focused tea experience. Slinging hundreds of matcha lattes everyday was never quite their vision.
Gobaleza: It was a good reminder for us to revisit who we are as a business.
Evans: In August of last year, Lani and Amy announced they'd no longer be serving drinks and TikTok mourned.
Now, they're all about tea experiences and selling all kinds of loose-leaf tea and the equipment to prepare it at home. They broke all the rules of the notoriously challenging food and beverage industry. They shut the door on a huge line of customers. And now, business is better than ever.
Gobaleza: I feel like this is the, I think the healthiest it's been not just financially, but just in terms of: Do we know what we're doing and do we believe in what we're doing?
Evans: The truth is, PARU has never really followed the rules. When they started, they offered San Diego an unfamiliar product without a lot of proven demand: single-origin, loose-leaf tea — no tea bags! Amy creates all of their famous blends, which use only natural ingredients like in their blue chamomile tea, made from three kinds of real flowers. All their teas are inspired by memories from childhood and beyond, including Amy and Lani's own, truly cinematic romance.
This is their story: serendipity, big leaps of faith and a chance encounter in San Diego's Japanese sister city led them to each other. And led them to their own unique, committed way of bringing world class tea and community to San Diego. And they're doing it their way: slow, focused, happy, not taking anything for granted.
Amy Truong: It really goes into the principle of Japanese tea ceremony. Ichigo ichie is one chance, one meeting. You always want to be your present self because you never know what tomorrow might bring or within the few hours, so it always has to be everything at this moment counts.
Evans: Ichigo ichie — one chance, one meeting.
From KPBS Public Media, this is The Finest, a podcast about the people, art and movements redefining culture in San Diego. I'm Julia Dixon Evans.
[Theme Music]
Evans: Our producer Anthony and I went to visit PARU on a picturesque La Jolla afternoon.
Anthony Wallace: We see Amy and Lani.
Truong: Hi!
Evans: Hi!
Wallace: Hello!
Gobaleza: Come on in.
Evans: Inside it's all white and natural wood with clean, long surfaces and shelves full of dozens of fragrant teas. And before we can ask any questions, Lani starts methodically prepping the matcha.
Wallace: What are these you're using?
Gobaleza: So these are two different matcha bowls. They're called chawans, and then I'm just heating the bowl so the tea stays hot when you're drinking it.
Evans: Heat the vessel.
Gobaleza: Heat the vessel, yeah.
So after sifting it, we usually put it into a smaller vessel, so we do about two grams of matcha in each bowl. This one is from Kyōtanabe, which is a part of Kyoto.
Truong: So actually we have a matcha stone mill over there. And we're actually one of the only few shops in the States that actually mill our matcha fresh. Usually, matcha in shops or grocery stores, those have been milled sometimes already in Japan.
Wallace: OK.
Gobaleza: So when I first put the matcha in and then add the water, I like to use the whisk to mix the matcha and the water a little bit, but the way that we learned from our tea teacher is to hold the bowl and then go back and forth, and it takes a lot more strength than you would think. It's kind of using your whole arm.
Evans: Amy and Lani's tea comes from farmers in Japan they know personally. It's milled fresh in San Diego, and it has all kinds of nutty and floral notes. To me, this one doesn't taste like grass. No sugar and milk needed.
It's really nice. It's not bitter. I think I was expecting bitter, but no, it's really smooth.
Amy and Lani have been studying traditional Japanese matcha ceremony with a sensei for three years.
Truong: It feels like I don't know…
Gobaleza: I feel like I don't know anything still, yeah.
Truong: But that's the fun part. You're studying things and you never feel like you're a master of anything.
Wallace: Yeah.
Evans: And with matcha, Amy says, it's about the journey more than the destination.
Truong: I think matcha is more the act of making someone a bowl of matcha. It feels almost like hospitality, a nice little welcome, helps break the ice, and everyone can have this shared moment together. My dad's actually a big coffee drinker, but I've taught him how to make matcha. So we do that together whenever I visit, too. So it was a fun thing to do together. And he's really tactile like me, so we're more action-based. So I think it's fun for us to do something together and not have to talk — if that makes sense. We're nodding and we're like, whoa, this is great. So it's, it feels like a good connection.
Gobaleza: Yeah.
Wallace: What was the phrase you said?
Truong: One chance, one meeting? Yeah. Ichigo ichie. One chance, one meeting. Even if we come and do, gather and be hey, this podcast was so fun, let's do it again. Everyone won't be in that same feeling of where we are since it was today, so.
Wallace: Just remembering to be present.
Truong: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wallace: This is the only time you'll be doing this.
Truong: Yeah.
[Music]
Evans: Amy and Lani's journey of coming together and launching PARU is a wild one. And it starts with a decision to study abroad in Yokohama, Japan.
Truong: So we actually went to two different universities. I went to UC Irvine, Lani went to Berkeley but there is a study abroad program there that all the UCs can go.
Evans: Amy has family from Vietnam, but their grandfather did a lot of business in Japan, and Amy fell in love with that culture — and its tea.
Truong: One of my aunts who's like a second mom to me, she was like, oh, maybe you should go to Japan because your grandfather, and her words meant a lot to me, and she's like, hey, if you're nervous about going to somewhere that you've never been, I will, see you off. So she was like, I'll meet you in Japan. And then we'll spend a few days together, and she's like, I guarantee, I promise you that you'll love it.
Evans: Lani's family is from the Philippines. Her choice of Yokohama was a little more pragmatic.
Gobaleza: I chose it because it's the sister city to San Diego. And it was one of the few programs where you didn't have to speak fluent Japanese. And I spoke elementary, so I just wanted to be easy.
Evans: For Amy, visiting this place with their aunt was unforgettable and, in fact, would sadly be the last time Amy saw her — she'd pass away a few years after this visit.
Truong: She dropped me off at the Yokohama terminal where we were supposed to meet all of our study abroad buddies together. But then I am also again a highly, highly big introvert in larger groups. And then I was dropped off within this group and I sat in the corner and put my headphones in, waiting for the bus to come to pick us up while everyone was talking.
Lani: When I arrived to the terminal, I saw Amy, who, as they mentioned, had their headphones in, and I felt this immediate, oh connection of there's so many people around and we should be wanting to connect with each other, but I want to drown everything out. I didn't know that we would end up married years later, but I felt this immediate connection.
And then fast forwarding throughout the program, we spent a lot of time studying together and drinking tea. And a lot of people were partying, and…
Truong: We went on a lot of long walks together 'cause from our dorm to the university, it was an hour and a half walk. But I did find myself always waiting to see if Lani would come down and be, oh, we would walk together or something like that too, so.
Lani: Along the way there would be these sensory experiences: the vending machine with the hot drinks. We knew when there was going to be something coming up or we knew when we would be passing a bakery that would have fresh bread, so it's this routine that's embedded into my memory. And when I think about it, it's like life as well: There's this long journey that you're on, but there's these little things to look forward to along the way. But the little things along the way is something that I've come to enjoy in our lives.
[Music]
Evans: Their time studying abroad also happened to be during Japan's iconic and famously fleeting cherry blossom season.
Truong: For all the 14 years that we've traveled over dozens of times over to Japan, that first time that we saw the cherry blossoms, it's the most amount of cherry blossoms I've ever seen. But that pink and the smell of plum-like floral cherry blossoms, that one was always a big visual in my mind.
So every year now, we have a cherry blossom tea blend. It's called Hanadoki. It's like flowering season and flowering time. And that's made of actual cherry blossoms from Kyoto and some really good quality Japanese green tea and a little bit of rose in there. And that's one of my all time favorite blends. Every time I drink it, I feel that's reminded us of that time when we first met. And that's the cool thing about tea. It encapsulates memories. I actually have that one.
Lani: Do you want it?
Evans: Yeah.
Lani: Yeah, I mean you, you built it up so much.
Evans: I know.
Lani: Now I want it.
Truong: I'll be back. I'll be back.
Evans: Amy went to grab that Hanadoki tea and a tray full of all its accoutrements, and gave each of us a tiny gold-rimmed, glass tea cup.
Truong: I'm using all glass because with any sort of flowers in the tea, I really love highlighting the different aspects of the floral blend in there.
Evans: The tea was a pale golden color, and the flowers stuck to the sides of the glass pot when they poured it out. It was beautiful — and delicious!
Commercial tea bags, Amy told us, often use tea dust — kind of the scraps of the batch. And of course, they come from much less carefully grown leaves. They can also contain microplastics that leach out when you heat them. And when you put them in boiling water — like that one very famous coffee shop chain — they burn your taste buds so you can't taste much anyway. One thing we noticed about the tea Amy made us is that it was not excruciatingly hot at all — it was immediately drinkable. And its flavors were more delicate. The teas really rewarded a careful, concentrated tasting, being present in the moment.
Truong: And then we don't actually add any artificial oils or anything in our teas. So for us, all the teas honor its flavors in there. So, people often think cherry blossoms are sakura, it tastes like strawberries or something. Because there are cherry blossom Kit Kats. But it is supposed to have this subtle, plum-like, sweet flavor to it, too.
[Music]
Evans: But after all those romantic walks, bottomless tea and cherry blossoms, the study abroad program came to an end. And Amy and Lani were just friends. They went back to their respective colleges, became friends on Facebook and went on with their lives.
Amy got a sales job in the L.A. area and made decent money, but kept thinking about tea. Ever since they were a child sharing tea with their grandpa they dreamed of having their own shop. Also in the back of Amy's mind, though, was Lani.
Lani worked at a coffee shop in San Diego — her hometown — but she dreamed of Japan. And after a couple of years, she decided to move back to teach English. Lani's big flight abroad departed from LAX — close enough for Amy to meet up. Suddenly, it got real for Amy. Lani was leaving the country. It was now or never.
Truong: Actually we, a group of our friends took her to the airport and I think, oh, her actually physically leaving. I was like, well, I guess I should say something, but I didn't muster the words I said a friendly goodbye.
Gobaleza: But then… This is a movie moment in my head. I get an email — who emails? — I guess a confession of sorts.
Truong: Yeah, it was the written email that was almost immediate afterwards, she had stepped on the plane. I was like, oh, well, this is my chance.
Evans: What was in this email?
Truong: Oh, I, I, I, yeah, I said that I loved her and then I want to, you know, see if we can, you know…
Gobaleza: No, it just said, I love you. That's it. That's all. That's all it said. I think I still have it. I can pull it out.
Truong: I don't think I actually had the confidence at that time to ask her directly, cause when you're younger, you're feeling, oh, there's so much time ahead of us. And there's always tomorrow or something like that. So I think now that as life goes on further, that you should say things that you feel at the moment. And that's why, tying back with tea, I love it because tea forces you to be present, so when you're preparing or something, it's an immediate gratification too, so I try to think of that.
[Music]
Evans: Amy's brave email paid off big time. The pair started a long distance relationship. For two years, Lani lived in Japan and Amy would visit. And they made a plan: When Lani's time in Japan was up, they'd move to California together. And a little while after they reunited in the U.S., Amy started getting a little sick of the corporate world.
Truong: I think there was a turning point where I was like, oh my gosh, I don't think I could work for another company. And I think a bigger push for me that had happened too was actually when I did receive news that my aunt had passed away. And then, I think, with those things, those shifts and changes and perspective too, it's like, oh, now it's the time to maybe do something, too. So I think I decided to move to San Diego.
Gobaleza: We were living in a small studio in Bankers Hill with our dog and we had this tea station set up where Amy would create blends and I was the taste tester. So coming home, I felt like I was coming home to Willy Wonka but tea, in a way.
Evans: Lani was working full time as a copywriter and Amy was chasing their tea dreams, working on their now-beloved blends, and selling them at pop-ups at markets and shops around town.
Truong: Started a website, started Instagram and then I was doing pop-ups. I met some really great people. I would probably make 20 dollars a day or something. It's maybe one or two bags of tea. At that time there was the little, the Bird scooters around. So what I did too, at my off time too, I collected a few of those too and then dropped them off in spaces. And so then, oh, at least I pay for the gas that I was using around too.
Gobaleza: So charging them as a part time job.
Truong: But then it was loading up in the car and loading it back too. So, I mean, I made iced teas too, to help instantly introduce the taste of the different tea blends that I've made and everything, too. I went to different co-working spaces. People were all overall really kind and friendly. No one says, man, what are you doing?
Evans: So did you feel like introducing people to tea through iced tea was the path in a place like San Diego?
Truong: Yeah, yeah. I thought that was a way to at least have a little medium in between in case people didn't know what to do with loose-leaf tea cause even eight years ago, that was still a very new concept to people, too. I think people get shooken up by the word loose-leaf tea because if people are thinking about tea bags, you're like, whoa, what do I do with this loose tea? There could be so many ways on how to prepare it. Really you need maybe three things to prepare loose-leaf tea and then it'll totally change your world and not want you to have to prepare another bag tea ever again.
Evans: At the time, Amy and Lani said there really weren't many businesses selling specialty loose-leaf tea in San Diego. It just wasn't something that people were that familiar with, like as customers.
Truong: I think I learned a lot through conversation of what people's experiences were with tea, what they wanted from it and how they like to enjoy it. So those little things kept me going, but it was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done because you're packing things in your car and then you're driving and then you're not making so much money or you're not making any money at all.
Evans: And during that era of pop-ups, charging scooters and working in their Willy Wonka tea lab, Amy made something that's gained a somewhat legendary status locally: the blue chamomile tea blend.
Truong: It's the tea that is our most popular tea still standing today. But it's also really nostalgic because I think chamomile is probably one of the few teas that we've also shared together, when Lani first met my parents. It's chamomile tea.
So chamomile is known through the general public mostly because it's a sleepy time tea or a tea that you drink when you're not feeling too well. But I think when I was growing up, chamomile was just so nice and sweet and pleasant that I really enjoyed drinking it as one of my favorite beverages of all time.
And I think I wanted to create an adult version where people don't pick at it because they're not feeling well. I think you should drink tea when you're feeling good still. So I wanted to make it fun and uplifting, too. So the reason why it turns the blue colors from the butterfly pea flower that we sourced from a really beautiful area in Thailand, and it has a lavender rose together, too, and I think the vibrancy of it makes people really happy. I'm happy to brew it, too. You guys want to try some?
[Music]
Evans: That's beautiful. The colors seem otherworldly, the blueish-green. Oh I wasn't expecting… because I've had this before, I know chamomile, right? But I wasn't expecting this to be my favorite of the day, right? It is quite good.
Truong: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Wallace: Do you remember when Amy first made it?
Gobaleza: Yes. Amy was like, it's blue! We experimented with it as a milk tea. And so we pretended we had a bar in our studio, I'll order, so it was really fun that day and yeah, it's still fun, still fun.
Evans: Does this lend itself well to milk?
Truong: Hmm. Yeah. I say a lot of people prefer it. Yeah, actually chamomile is a really great base for cream, so it attaches really well and actually brings out more notes from the actual chamomile. I don't know if you guys are into An's Dry Cleaning?
Evans: That's North Park's renowned gelato spot, An's Dry Cleaning. In 2024, USA Today ranked it the best independent ice cream shop in the country.
Truong: So one of their most popular flavors that they'll have from time to time is their clue chamomile gelato. It's called Sandals.
Evans: And it's this?
Truong: Yeah.
Evans: Wow!
The rest is history. Lani and Amy got a store where they made their loose-leaf blends and sold them. They made many more trips across the Pacific to meet farmers and source special teas, many of which you can't find anywhere else in the U.S. People started to get what they were doing and fell in love with their colorful blends and high-quality, single-origin teas from across Asia. For Anthony and I, the visit to PARU was a tea education. Even for me, who spent my childhood surrounded by tea in England, I hadn't given much thought into all that goes into every tea leaf.
Truong: There are wild tea trees that grow 30 years up to a thousand years. If a tea tree has been there for thousands of years, it's going to absorb a lot of the beautiful nutrients of the roots that's been there for years and years. There's truly no pesticides or chemicals, only beautiful birds nests that can be there and be safe. So the tea leaves that we grow from Southeast Asia, those are picked, often has a little bit more smokier, a little bit stronger, foresty flavor, if that makes sense, and those could be done as black, green, white teas.
And the other ones from, for example, Japan, they're a little bit more manicured or cultivated. But also quite a bit of work to maintain that very landscape. So those teas, they can taste a little bit more floral, a little bit creamier, a little bit milkier, a little bit more vegetal. It's very fascinating.
Evans: Amy said that when they shut down the time-intensive latte part of their business last August, they didn't actually take a huge financial hit even though they cut out a super popular product line. In fact, they were able to eliminate a lot of costs: the labor, cups, straws and oat milk needed to make so many drinks. And they have training and wholesale partnerships with other places, so you can get PARU Tea drinks at cafes like Bica and Hatsuzakura. Besides, their business model was built around loose-leaf tea, that's what they're focused on. And more importantly, with less time making drinks, they rediscovered the time and energy to talk to customers and teach them about the world of tea. It goes beyond the drink, it's a way of living and seeing the world.
Amy and Lani's "tea philosophy," an authentic focus and commitment to their principles, gave them the courage to start PARU in the first place, and then to pivot away from a type of wild, viral success.
Gobaleza: And we actually looked at the principles that we made when we first started. Our principles of sustainability and building community in a meaningful way all led us into this direction of focusing not just on retail, but education. And so we made this decision and maybe at some point in the future we will look into cafe opportunities, but…
Truong: Not at this moment.
Gobaleza: Not right now. I think we're just focusing on getting back to ourselves.
Evans: It can feel intimidating to get into the world of loose-leaf tea, but Lani and Amy are always happy to talk you through it all.
Truong: I would say tea knows no boundaries in a lot of ways, but what was important to I think Lani and I was actually building a company culture that is very welcoming, very warm both for our team and for our customers and for ourselves, to be frank, to feel good in.
Evans: All you really need to appreciate PARU Tea is a pot, a strainer and a moment of stillness to appreciate all the details of every sip. Remember that concept of ichigo ichie? One chance, one meeting.
Yeah, you can mindlessly drink tea, and that's perfectly fine. But you can also look for the little things that make a truly great cup of tea special: the generations of flavors and histories the tea leaf has absorbed, and the meanings behind the blends. And you'll make your own connections, and your own stories.
Gobaleza: Yeah, I guess, this sounds so cheesy, but before I met Amy, I didn't realize that a home is really something you could build or even the concept or experience of a hometown. It could be also that when I was growing up, I had a younger mind and we're influenced by only a circle of people when we're growing up. But when you go out into the world and you meet people who have wild dreams just like you, you are able to design — even redesign — your perspective on things. And I think that's what happened here. Now when I come, when I'm flying back into San Diego from a trip, I do really feel like it's home and I see so much beauty in it. Whereas before, I'm like, oh, San Diego, it's the same and I think that also evolves every day with every single person that I meet through PARU and in San Diego makes me look at it differently.
[Music]
Evans: A special thanks to Amy Truong and Lani Gobaleza for their help with this episode. You can find an episode transcript, photos and more information about PARU on our website at KPBS dot org slash The Finest.
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe, leave a rating and share it with your friends.
Next Thursday on The Finest, how do you create a local music scene in a superstar economy? Southeast San Diego's SHUA opens up about his journey from signing a record deal as a teen to struggling to make ends meet.
Shua: There are points at which I, like, had no gas, no food, and I was like, well I'm stuck here, so I'm gonna have to take my instrument and go to a corner and just start playing.
Evans: The Finest is a production of KPBS Public Media. I'm your host, Julia Dixon Evans. Our producer is Anthony Wallace who also composed the score. Our audio engineer is Ben Redlawsk, and our editor is Chrissy Nguyen.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.