Matcha Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the chasm in new markets

 

In his book “Crossing the Chasm”, Geoffrey A. Moore lays out a framework whereby mainstream consumers adopt new technologies. He segments buyers into “visionaries” and “pragmatists”, between which resides “the chasm” of adoption that all products must cross before fully entering the mainstream. This chasm arises from visionaries and pragmatists valuing different things. What attracts innovators and early adopters will not necessarily work for the early majority.

Matcha has crossed the chasm in many markets already, including the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. In these places it is not difficult to find a cafe serving matcha, and most people are aware of its existence, perhaps having even tried it.

Who were the matcha visionaries?

Matcha visionaries went out of their way to source and prepare matcha. They tolerated inconveniences and lack of transparency, and paid the price for what is now considered an inferior quality product, after innovation in the mainstream worked its magic to make matcha better, cheaper, and easier to source and prepare.

• Japanese Tea Ceremony practitioners: in particular the Urasenke and Omotesenke schools of Japanese Tea Ceremony can be considered early missionaries for spreading the popularity of matcha. They have branches all over the world from Sao Paulo, to New York, to Bangkok. Through public events and the recruitment of new students, these practitioners helped introduce matcha to entirely new markets of consumers.
• Cutting-edge health-minded people: individuals who sought new ingredients that have “superfood” properties. For millennia, health has been a common pull for the adoption of tea consumption into daily life.

Who are the matcha pragmatists?

Matcha pragmatists come in many flavors. They’re everyday consumers who don’t like the taste of coffee and want another caffeinated beverage option. They’re people who are more sensitive to the crash or jitters of caffeine and are looking for the functional benefits matcha offers. They’re people who are looking to introduce better-for-you products. They’re people that are really into tea. This early majority of matcha consumers probably won’t go out of their way to consume matcha, but it would certainly be their preference when offered.

• Starbucks: Starbucks was a very early pioneer in promoting matcha to mainstream consumers, especially in North America. While they were not the first to introduce a matcha latte on their menu, they were early to the scene in 2006, increasing access and awareness. They regularly find new and delicious ways to delight existing matcha drinkers and bring new matcha drinkers into the fold, such as with the release of their new lavender oat milk matcha latte.
• Specialty Cafes: it’s now hard to find a specialty coffee shop that doesn’t have matcha as an offering. Specialty cafes are elevating the matcha experience with mocktail-inspired specialty drinks like matcha tonics or higher-quality ceremonial grade offerings that can be enjoyed just with water for the purist matcha consumer. This promotes accessibility and education about what matcha can be.
• Grocers: it used to be that you could only find matcha at a specialty shop, but now you can find it in nearly every major grocery chain in the US.

Lessons from Specialty Coffee

The typical journey for a consumer moving from lattes to pure, single origin, lightly-roasted specialty coffees is a newly acquired disdain for Starbucks. They’ll complain that Starbucks coffee is over-roasted, bitter, and lacks the character that makes specialty coffee, well, special.

As James Hoffmann, popular Youtuber and Founder of Squaremile Coffee, put it so eloquently, darkly roasted coffee leads to... “predictable flavor outcomes”. But not necessarily delicious or unique ones.

However, if you ask any specialty coffee professional, almost no one will hate on Starbucks. Why? Starbucks gave them a job. Not necessarily because they worked at a Starbucks, but because Starbucks created the conditions for their business to exist.

“Third-wave coffee”

In 2002, Wrecking Ball Coffee founder Trish Rothgeb introduced a framework for describing the rise of specialty coffee. She described three waves of consumer preference acquisition, each more differentiated and “specialty” than the last.

The first wave was commodity, pre-ground, canned coffee. Coffee was considered a pantry staple after World War II, served in diners across America. Little attention was paid to origin, freshness, or quality.

The second wave was the rise of Italian-style espresso-based beverages. Companies like Peet’s and Starbucks championed the rise of second wave coffee, romancing the consumer with lattes, cappuccinos, and a so called “third-place”, acclimating consumers to drinking coffee outside the home.

The third wave was the rise of specialty coffee. Defined by light roast profiles, transparency about origin, processing, and cultivar, and a new focus on quality, examining grinding science, extraction theory, and brewing methods. I’d describe it as a celebration of what coffee could be—exploring and expressing the flavors inherent in the seed of a coffee cherry.

Prerequisites for success

Specialty coffee needed second wave coffee to exist. They created the sub-group of “super-consumers” who were interested in exploring coffee at an entirely new level. Without so many people already consuming and interested in coffee, the market for specialty coffee could have never crossed the chasm.

The Beginnings of Specialty Matcha

The “third-wave coffee” lesson is that large, mainstream markets create cohorts interested in exploring products in entirely new dimensions. Every ten new matcha latte consumers probably creates one early adopter of specialty matcha.

Matcha benefits from headwinds of both the second-wave and third-wave coffee movements, which champion matcha in new markets outside of Japan. Outside of the home, cafes that serve coffee are where most people are ordering and consuming matcha.

What happens when matcha gets the third-wave treatment and is treated as a specialty product?

Stay tuned for our next blog: The Future of Matcha - Opinion

 

Want more? Our team recorded a podcast on this blog, links below: