Selling bubble tea now makes you racist - if you’re white.
Thanks to a race-baiting guest star on Canada’s version of “Shark Tank,” the inventors of a bottled popping boba and alcoholic bubble tea brand called "Bobba" are now apologizing for their existence.
Sebastien Fiset and Jess Frenette recently appeared on an episode of CBC’s “Dragon’s Den,” a show where entrepreneurs pitch their product to a panel of multi-millionaire investors. They entered the Den with Bobba samples, hoping to get $1 million in exchange for 18% of their business. Instead, they walked away with a lecture on “cultural appropriation.”
#WATCH: Toronto actor Simu Liu shuts down bubble tea pitch for cultural appropriation. pic.twitter.com/TtSUMH2E5b
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The pair introduced Bobba as a “convenient,” “healthier ready-to drink” version of the original Taiwan-based tea that contains tapioca balls. Typically, they asserted, consumers are “never quite sure about its contents.”
“Hang on, hang on. I am quite sure about its content, but continue,” grouched Chinese-Canadian movie star and guest investor Simu Liu.
That’s where the trouble began.
“There’s also an issue of cultural appropriation,” Liu complained. “There’s an issue of taking something that’s very distinctly Asian in its identity and ‘making it better,’ which I have an issue with,” he continued before the duo even began their pitch.
“What respect is being paid to this very Asian drink that has blown up around the world and is it in your teas? Is it in your product development?” he asked.
“Who is on your staff? Who is on your cap table that is providing for you?” he added, implying the company needed a Tawianeese DEI hire to be successful.
The duo defended themselves, stating their “best partner” is in Taiwan.
“We travel to Taiwan…we speak with them,” stated Fiset, adding, "They are part of our team."
But that wasn’t good enough for the smug actor, who turned his nose up and surveyed his sample judgmentally.
“I am studying your can and I am looking for anything that tells me where boba came from,” Liu scolded the duo.
“Where boba came from is Taiwan,” he reiterated, describing that he started his own venture company to “uplift minority entrepreneurs.”
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“And not only do I feel like this is not happening here,” he whined, “but that I would be uplifting a business that is profiting off of something that is so dear to my cultural heritage,” he explained as the reason why the Bobba inventors won’t receive a penny from him.
Except bubble tea isn’t part of Liu’s “cultural heritage” either. He’s not Taiwanese. He was raised by Chinese parents who brought him to Ontario at five years old. And his self-important lecture is pretty rich, given the fact that he acquired his fame by culturally appropriating a Korean character.
But I’m sure all the Uyghur Muslims in Chinese concentration camps are proud that he’s standing up for their cultural heritage.
“It makes me sad how successful this business is,” Liu moaned to his co-panelists, as Fiset and Frenette exited the hostile den in defeat.
But the duo’s reprimand didn’t end when they left the show. Liu’s snarky rejection of the entrepreneurs sent an online cancel mob their way.
Out of a desperate attempt to diffuse the haters, they waffled in a note posted to their brand’s social media platforms, apologizing “for the harm (they’ve) caused.”
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