Thirsty? New business venture opens inside Rexburg restaurant
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REXBURG — The Kingdom of Pho, a popular Vietnamese restaurant on Main Street in Rexburg, has recently expanded its menu and is offering more than 20 varieties of large-portioned boba and lemonade drinks.
After opening a very successful shed in an outdoor food court, Vitali quickly moved “the Kingdom” into a restaurant location on Main Street in 2023.
In July 2024, Vitali also started a line of boba and lemonade as a separate business entity, housed and sold in the same venue as the Kingdom. Just like his original recipe for pho, Vitali created the formula for 10 boba varieties and 10 distinct lemonades with popping boba, which he sells under the new Sumo Boba brand.
Each drink is sold in a 32-ounce cup, and Vitali isn’t offering any smaller sizes – hence the “Sumo” brand, which is meant to invoke the hefty portions for the new drinks.
Vitali mentioned his experience in buying boba, which is often sold in smaller portions, such as 12 or 16 oz.
“Why not offer 32-ounce cups and charge around the same price, maybe just a little bit more? (At Sumo) our customers are getting 12 ounces more for $1 more.”
Sumo boba flavors include honey dew, iced mocha, coffee pudding, pumpkin spice, tiramisu, creme brulee, mango, brown sugar, thai tea and taro. Lemonade varieties include kiwi, raspberry, pineapple, peach, lychee, cantaloupe, blueberry and watermelon.
Sumo boba is served in 32-ounce “buckets,” while lemonade orders are served in a taller, more narrow cup with a different design intended to fit cup holders.
“We added boba because I was just sick and tired of paying overkill for a cup full of ice,” Vitali said. “We also added an orange chicken dish, for people that don’t know what they want to eat. It’s a little Asian fusion.”
Customers can buy anything from the Sumo drink menu in person at the Kingdom of Pho or through the DoorDash app, in addition to the food already on the menu.
Of course, the Kingdom of Pho specializes in its namesake dish – pronounced “fuh,” but spelled “pho.”
“‘I grew up eating pho,” says Wayne Vitali, the owner and operator of the Kingdom of Pho in Rexburg. “The area I was raised in was heavily Asian, and the place across the street from my work was a pho place. I ate there almost every day.”
Vitali was born in Southern California, close to Los Angeles, but ended up moving to eastern Idaho in 2019, after serving a two-year mission for his church in France and later a term of service in the Navy.
Vitali came to Idaho to be close to his brother, who was living here at the time, and ended up staying.
“When I first came to Rexburg, there weren’t a lot of food options, aside from fast food,” Vitali recounts. “I thought for my own health, I needed to get something healthy.”
Thus, the Kingdom of Pho was born, with some help from Vitali’s wife.
“One of the most important things for me is having a good partner, like my wife, Sarah,” Vitali said. “She constantly pushes me to do as much as I can. At the beginning we thought we’d only sell like maybe 14 bowls a day, but we do well over that amount. We haven’t had a negative day since we opened.”
According to Vitali, “‘Pho is a healthy food option with lots of flavor. Most of the people that try it for the first time love it. People say they don’t really feel weighed down after eating a bowl of it.”
The recipe for pho Vitali uses come entirely from scratch. “There’s no cubes, paste or powders. We use all the normal spices: cardamom, cinnamon, bark, yellow rock sugar, coriander, cloves, lots of ginger.”