Since opening its doors in March 2023, TruCha has sold more than 10,000 cups of bubble tea.
Truc Hoang ’26 cannot wait for her parents, who live in Vietnam, to experience the sweet-tasting joy in a cup she’s delivered to Denison.
Hoang, along with co-founder Charlie Kuchler ’26, are the entrepreneurs behind TruCha, the student-owned and -operated business that’s been nurtured by Red Frame Lab and adored by a boba tea-loving campus.
TruCha has become one of Denison’s most successful student-driven enterprises. Since opening on the third floor of Slayter Hall in March 2023 — known on campus as The Nest – TruCha has served more than 10,000 cups of the drink and expanded operations to three days a week, creating 20 part-time student jobs.
Hoang admits her parents struggle to visualize that level of prosperity.
“My mom still thinks I operate this out of my dorm room,” Hoang says. “I hope she can see it someday.”
“It far, far exceeded the way I imagined it was going to happen,” Truc Hoang says of the shop’s success. It expanded operations to three days a week in December 2024.
‘Mind-boggling’ success
Sometimes, the best business ideas are born out of frustration.
Kuchler, a Houston native, arrived on campus in 2022 and quickly discovered there was no place in Granville, Ohio, serving boba, which consists of tea mixed with combinations of milk, fruit flavoring, ice, and, typically, tapioca balls.
The gregarious Texan, who majors in global commerce and “minors in boba,” spoke to fellow students who shared his cravings. They had neither the time nor, in some cases, the vehicle to drive off campus in search of it.
So when Kuchler attended a Red Frame Lab gathering in February 2023 and heard a visiting entrepreneur ask if students had an idea for a business, he immediately raised his hand. Kuchler wanted to open an on-campus boba shop. Hoang, also in attendance, reached out to Kuchler after the seminar.
“Ideas started flying as soon as we met,” Kuchler says. “Truc is such a go-getter. She was setting dates right away.”
Growing up in Vietnam, Hoang was quite familiar with boba tea, which originated in Taiwan in the 1980s and spread across Asia before becoming popular in America.
Kuchler and Hoang met with Rick Coplin, an associate director of Red Frame Lab, which helps students explore and develop their entrepreneurial skills. Coplin enrolled them in Red Startup, a program designed to turn ideas into prototypes within a semester, and connected them with mentors and campus food service providers.
“Red Frame has been an essential part of our success,” Kuchler says. “We spend a lot of time brainstorming there — I don’t think you can find another place on campus that radiates with such energy.”
Coplin lauds the initiative Hoang and Kuchler took, who cleared potential hurdles with alacrity, allowing them to open TruCha within two months. They completed a food safety program, started a grassroots marketing campaign, and set up an Instagram account. They also founded a limited liability company using their own money for start-up costs, equipment, and products.
The university’s food service provider granted Hoang access to the Curtis Hall kitchen to make batches of bubble tea and toppings for taste tests. Kuchler and Hoang distributed free samples to about 200 students outside Slayter, soliciting feedback.
Nothing could have prepared them for the crush of students who stood outside the Nest, waiting for them to open the doors on their launch date – March 24, 2023.
“Those first few openings were mind-boggling,” Kuchler recalls.
“It far, far exceeded the way I imagined it was going to happen,” Hoang says. “I was shocked to see a line all the way to the back wall.”
The bubble tea shop employs 20 students.
‘Amazing team’
Kuchler and Hoang come from different cultures and are worlds apart in their thinking. Kuchler knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur before ever setting foot on campus. Hoang arrived as a computer science and mathematics double major.
Each plays a vital role in the success of TruCha, which is a combination of their first names.
“They are a pretty amazing team because they’re so different,” Coplin says. “Charlie is the visionary, and Truc is the operator, and those roles are absolutely essential in the growth of any company.”
Hoang became so invested in the business that she changed majors, switching to economics and global commerce and retaining computer science and mathematics as minors. While studying abroad in Seoul, South Korea, she immersed herself in the city’s vibrant coffee house scene, paying attention to the atmosphere and operations in each shop and bringing the best bits back to The Hill.
Heeding her mother’s advice, Hoang remains focused on her academics, but she and Kuchler acknowledge running a business is an education in itself. They are in charge of monitoring profit-and-loss statements, ordering products, hiring staff, scheduling shifts, and offering constructive criticism to student employees.
TruCha’s menu offers eight options in a rainbow of flavors as well as four toppings. An added bonus is the delight customers derive from jamming the wide straws through the thin layer of plastic atop the cups.
“You gotta stab it,” says professor May Mei, chair of mathematics and TruCha fan. “Whenever I bring someone new, I tell them they have to drive the straw in with conviction.”
Significant decisions are on the horizon for the co-founders. Do they want to expand the business to other college campuses? Do they want to retain a piece of TruCha at Denison after graduation and allow other students to gain valuable experience running the shop?
Differences aside, they agree on the primary objective: delivering a tasty product and customer satisfaction.
“We want to bring smiles to people’s faces,” Hoang says. “We want to give students something they can enjoy while sitting around sipping with friends.”
