Chelia
We opened our first shoppe in 2008 to serve Vietnamese dessert drinks the old way — cold, layered, made by hand each morning.
Click anywhere to see more
A dessert, served cold
Chè is a traditional Vietnamese dessert drink — a cold, layered blend of beans, jellies, taro, pandan, fruit and coconut milk. We spoon it into a tall glass rather than pour it, so each layer keeps its own texture. You eat it and drink it at once, one cool spoonful at a time.
Read top to bottom: coconut milk, pandan jelly, taro, red bean — a cross-section you can spoon straight through.
Why we carry chè
We carry chè because it is the dessert we grew up on — the thing our family made at home for holidays, weddings and ordinary hot afternoons. It was never sold on a menu; it was passed between kitchens. We wanted to keep that habit alive, and to make it well enough that it did not need explaining.
Our mission is plain — to share Vietnamese culture, one glass at a time. A drink is an easy door into a country. When someone asks what pandan is, or why the coconut tastes like that, we get to answer. That is the whole point of the counter.
It’s not just a drink.
It’s Chelia.
Four sisters · One shoppe · 2008
We began as four sisters — Hana, Mai, Trang and Vy — who missed the chè of home and could not find it made right. In 2008 we opened a single shoppe in San Jose’s Vietnamese community, cooking the recipes we had eaten at home our whole lives.
The first shoppe was small and did one thing carefully. We cooked beans in the back, cut fruit at the counter, and learned which regulars liked more ice or less sugar. Word moved the way it does in a tight community — by aunties, by cousins, by the person ahead of you in line. We were, for a while, a neighborhood secret.
One counter becomes many
One shoppe became two, then a handful, mostly because families who had moved away wanted the same glass near their new homes. We grew slowly and on purpose, opening only where we could run a real kitchen and train people to cook the way we do.
Today there are 34 shoppes across the United States, from California out to the East Coast. Each one is run by people who live nearby, and each cooks its own beans, jellies and syrups rather than shipping them in.
Born in San Jose,
brewed from tradition.
Nine families of drinks, one counter
The counter is arranged in nine families: chè, boba milk teas, Vietnamese coffee, real-fruit smoothies, fruit teas, refreshers, yonami yogurt, sweet treats and fresh coconut. Some are old; some we added as regulars asked. What holds the whole board together is that everything is made from real ingredients.
Our chè runs from the layered classics to the halo-halo bowls. Red bean, mung bean, taro and pandan jelly sit under coconut milk; fruit versions carry lychee, longan and jackfruit. We build each in a tall glass so the layers stay separate until your spoon goes through them.
For everyday drinks we brew Thai, black, jasmine and oolong teas, pull Vietnamese coffee dark and slow, and blend smoothies from real mango, avocado and strawberry. Milk teas take boba or jelly; coffee takes condensed milk or whipped egg cream. This is the daily half of the menu.
Just the way you love it
Nothing on our board is fixed. You choose the size, the sweetness, the dairy and the toppings, so the same drink can be light and barely sweet one day and loaded with boba the next. Swap milk for coconut. Cut the sugar in half. Add pandan jelly, basil seed or extra fruit.
This is what the tagline means, plainly: your own version, built at the counter, just the way you love it.
It’s loved in
every layer.
Every shoppe keeps its own kitchen
Behind every one of our counters is a working kitchen, not a stockroom. We cook beans, steep teas, cut fruit and boil jellies on-site, in small batches, through the day. It is slower and takes more hands, which is exactly why its own commercial kitchen stays in every shoppe.
We buy young Thai coconuts whole and open them ourselves — cracking, draining and scooping by hand. The water goes into drinks; the soft meat over chè. Nothing about the young coconut arrives pre-cut.
We treat avocado the Vietnamese way — a dessert, not a savory. Ripe fruit blended with milk and a little sugar until it turns thick and cool, closer to custard than guacamole. This is nature’s butter, sweetened.
The tiny black specks through many drinks are basil seeds — sabja, soaked until each swells into a soft, jelly-edged bead. They add texture and a faint cooling note. We keep the sabja seeds hydrated fresh daily.
Our coffee is a French Wood Roast cut with chicory — the dark, slightly bitter blend that gives Vietnamese coffee its backbone. We drip it slow through a metal phin. Everything leans on the French Wood Roast.
Where it comes from
Our teas come from where each leaf belongs: jasmine and oolong from China, black and Thai tea from Thailand, and blends from Vietnam. The coffee is a French Wood Roast, dripped the traditional way over condensed milk.
The coconuts are simpler: every one is opened by hand, in-store, every morning, before the first customer walks in. We do not count them or ship them frozen. We just keep cutting.
Recipes rooted in tradition,
not shortcuts.
Find your Chelia
We are in 34 neighborhoods now, most of them the kind of place where a boba shop doubles as a living room. Come in, sit down, and find your order.
Order onlineSan Jose · San Francisco · Milpitas · Sunnyvale · Elk Grove · Stockton · Garden Grove · Westminster · Portland · Chicago · Columbus · Baltimore · Washington · Kent · Lowell · Holland · & more
Vietnamese chè, coffee and boba — made by hand, just the way you love it.