Aaron Chambers’ business plan is springing to life in a brick-and-mortar building near the corner of Stillwater’s Main Street and Hall of Fame Avenue.

A few years ago, Chambers learned how to navigate the entrepreneurial process as an undergraduate participant in the Riata Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s student competitions.

“There’s an anticipated step list that you would go through,” Chambers said. “It’s certainly not linear, though.”

This winter, the Oklahoma State University alumnus put those concepts into action to bring a beloved franchise to his college town.

Chambers, who graduated from the Spears School of Business in 2024 with dual degrees in finance and management information systems, is the owner/operator of the new Lucky Tea Boba House in Stillwater. Since the January soft opening, Chambers has incorporated various lessons from his Spears Business majors and campus activities into his cohesive vision for the tea shop’s growth.

"Aaron always gave me the feeling he would take off,” said Riata Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Director Chad Mills. “He was curious and dedicated to his ideas, but just as importantly, he was kind and always supportive of the people around him. You could just tell he was going to do something great, and his natural leadership in academia will no doubt play a significant role in his work at Lucky Tea Boba House."

Chambers strives for Lucky Tea Boba House to serve Stillwater residents who enjoy boba, a popular Taiwanese beverage also known as bubble tea, and introduce the drink to customers who have never tried it. “Boba” can refer to either the beverage itself or the chewy, slightly sweet tapioca pearls at the bottom of the tea. Along with honey-sweetened boba, Lucky Tea offers various other toppings, teas, smoothies and coffee.

Sparking the idea

Growing up in Tulsa, Chambers loved boba. As a freshman during OSU’s Cowboy Welcome Week, he and his roommate even attempted making their own on campus, but it wasn’t the same as the boba they knew from their favorite tea shops.

Chambers formed close friendships in OSU’s Asian community through his fraternity, Lambda Phi Epsilon, and conversations arose about bringing a boba shop to Stillwater.

“I think we had a running joke among my friend group in Greek Life of who was going to open up a boba shop first,” Chambers said. “It was just something that we were all aware needed to happen at some point.”

However, Chambers followed a different passion after graduation. His MIS degree included a data science concentration, and he competed on the winning team in the 2023 OSU Datathon. Chambers used these skills at Koch Industries as an analytics engineer before pivoting into a career in consulting.

After gaining experience with remote and in-office corporate work, Chambers sought a change while continuing to use his business education.

He casually floated the idea again, this time with a specific boba shop in mind. One of his fraternity brothers had become a franchise owner of a Tulsa-area Lucky Tea Boba House, which has its original location in Broken Arrow.

“I could just open up a Lucky Tea in Stillwater,” Chambers told his friends.

Building the business

The more he mulled it over, the more serious the goal became. Chambers enjoyed staying in Stillwater, and he realized he could invest in the community with a new, relaxing location where students could socialize and study.

That was an early step in the business plan: location. Chambers said he looked at a few spots, but the vacant shop on Main Street, only a couple of minutes from campus, quickly stood out.

Going through the steps, Chambers drew from his not-so-distant Riata Center days, when he and his student peers created a concept called ParkingU. Their idea, an app to indicate where parking spots are available on OSU’s campus, gained early momentum as a Business Plan Competition runner-up entry.

Although it never advanced beyond the conceptual phase, time was not wasted. Each step with ParkingU taught Chambers to think like an entrepreneur.

“It sort of worked in a similar way when I was opening this business,” Chambers said. “You work on the idea, so I did the business research behind it, in terms of, ‘Where do I want my location to be? How much will all of this cost, very roughly? And then, how am I getting the funds? What is the timeline on this? The runway, once I do have the funds?’ There are a lot of considerations.”

With the plan in motion, Lucky Tea’s original franchisor visited Stillwater and trained employees on making the drinks. After a January soft opening, Lucky Tea Boba Shop hosted its Stillwater grand opening in February.

The shop offered gift baskets to customers with “lucky numbers” on their cups, so everyone stayed busy between promotional activities and drink-making on a day Chambers described as “hectic, in a good way.”

Since then, he has figured out how to streamline day-to-day processes at Lucky Tea, which has 11 employees plus himself.

Envisioning the future

Chambers’ finance degree, of course, guides him on the budgetary side. Building on his MIS background, he applies his technical problem-solving skills at work, whether he’s keeping track of inventory and supply chain processes or organizing front-of-house and back-of-house operations.

“If I see a problem, I don’t want anybody — including myself or my employees ​​— to just have to grin and bear it through the problem if I can solve it,” Chambers said. “So, I go about trying to solve most of our workflow problems and system problems continuously, as I can.”

Chambers said he is also continuously learning about customer service and management. A professor gave him a thick management textbook for reference, and Chambers is no stranger to leadership. At OSU, he served as vice president on the team that revitalized the African American Business Student Association, spent a semester as Data Analytics Club president and served a full term as Lambda Phi Epsilon president.

Chambers considers himself an independent problem-solver, but when he has a specific question, he knows Mills isn’t far away and is happy to offer entrepreneurial advice.

The Riata Center showed Chambers the power of a solid business plan, and he updates his when inspiration hits. Over time, Chambers strives for Lucky Tea Boba House to make more connections in the local business community and on OSU’s campus.

“I have a lot of plans,” Chambers said. “I have a sheet that’s just full of plans, just notes of what I want to do later on, and I’m going to be working towards all of that stuff.”

Visit the Spears Business website to learn more about the Riata Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, designed to elevate and inspire the next generation of innovators and trailblazers.

Visit Instagram for more information about Lucky Tea Boba House in Stillwater.