LYNN — Damaso Hernandez and his fiancé, Bobbi Insisiengmay, are opening a bubble-tea café, Kimochi, in the old Item building on Exchange Street this month.
Bubble tea is different flavors of tea with boba in it, which are round, chewy, soft tapioca pearls.
For those who don’t like the soft and chewy bobas, there are also other kinds that are similar to gushers.
“It’s getting more and more popular on this side of the country now,” Hernandez said. “Boba’s been in California for about 14 years now and has slowly been making its way across the country.”
Hernandez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, and Insisiengmay, who is Laotian, have three kids together who they’ve always taken out to get bubble tea.
“Everywhere we went there’d usually be a line out the door,” Hernandez said. “My fiancé has a lot of allergies, so we thought it’d be cool to open up a bubble-tea shop that was completely vegan.”
All of the menu items at Kimochi are vegan and nut free, but milk can be added upon request.
Raised in Woonsocket, R.I., Hernandez and Insisiengmay moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. about eight years ago, but moved to Attleboro two years ago.
The pair opened their first Kimochi location in Attleboro last year, and now have locations in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the Hamptons, N.Y., and Pawtucket, R.I.
“It’s been a blessing. We did not see this coming from a mile away,” Hernandez said. “We’re very, very happy that things have been going the way they have been.”
Deciding to open another Kimochi location in Lynn was influenced by the small bubble-tea scene in the city that they witnessed when coming to see friends. When looking for a location, Hernandez said they fell in love with the old Lynn Item building.
In addition to bubble tea, the Lynn location will also be selling mochi donuts, which are a mix between cake donuts and chewy mochi. The couple is opening a mochi-donut location in Attleboro and will be delivering donuts to the Lynn location daily.
Opening a new business during the pandemic was very nerve-wracking, Hernandez said, but the couple was all in and decided to go for it.
“My fiancé and I put literally every penny we had in our life savings into this and we didn’t know how it would go, especially with the new variants that have been coming out,” Hernandez said. “Luckily, everything has gone very well.”
Before opening Kimochi, Insisiengmay was a stay-at-home mom and also worked in marketing, while Hernandez owned car washes.
Hernandez sold his car wash in Florida before moving to Attleboro, and said they were experimenting with things to do when they had the idea for bubble tea.
Now owning their open bubble-tea cafés, Hernandez said they have to limit how much of it their kids drink.
“They do love the fact that they can just pop in and have bubble tea,” Hernandez said.
Their youngest child is a year and a half, the middle child is 11, and the oldest is 14 years old.
“My oldest daughter really understands and my middle son kind of gets that we now own these places and they’re both super excited,” Hernandez said. “We do fundraisers for both of their schools. One in particular, we have a blueberry bomber, which is a drink that we created for the Attleboro bombers and 10 percent of proceeds goes to them to get field trips and stuff like that.”
The couple is planning to have a soft opening for the Lynn location on March 15, and are hoping to eventually open a location in Boston and elsewhere in New England, but said they are just going with the flow.
