Reflections on Season 1 of the Specialty Matcha Podcast

 

 

 

Ryan (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the 25th episode of the Specialty Match podcast. This is also the end of season one. My name is Ryan and this is my coho Zongjun.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (00:09)
Hello

Ryan (00:10)
and we're the co -founders of Sanko Matcha Products.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (00:13)
Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in matcha share startup stories and interview experts. And today, with the 25th episode of this podcast, we are going to end our wonderful journey of season

Ryan (00:29)
So we thought of no better way to do that than to bring on the entire team. So we'd like to welcome Gwen onto the podcast for the first

Gwen (00:36)
Hello, thank you for having me.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (00:36)
Welcome.

Ryan (00:37)
But Gwen's on the founding team and handles the look and feel of everything Sanko. So you look at her website, Instagram, YouTube, everything that all runs through Gwen and she keeps all the trains running on time and probably we'd have much less content to share if it wasn't for Gwen.

Gwen (00:53)
Probably.

Yeah.

Ryan (00:56)
So we wanted to talk about three different things in this podcast. First, we realized that not everyone sort of knows what the Specialty Matcha podcast is and the broader company, Sanko, which publishes it. So we wanted to talk a little bit about that. We wanted to reintroduce ourselves and what our motivations are and why we're even doing this. And three, we wanted to reflect on...

all the lessons that we've learned over the course of researching for all the different episodes that we did, as well as all the interviews that we did from experts that are already in the matcha industry. So, Zongjun do want to talk a little bit about the company Sanko that we've all founded and what our mission

Zongjun (Sam) Li (01:36)
Yeah, so we kind of saw the opportunity of Matcha before we actually found the company. So before Sanko Ryan and I both work at a tech startups that specialize in using AI to model human taste And we help a lot of these large companies to develop new products in different regions around the world. And it was through that journey that

really start to see matcha being a flavor that's trending everywhere in beverages, in snacks, in all kinds of food and beverage contexts. So that's when we saw the opportunities and there's really, matcha was a pretty interesting existence at the time that a lot of people like it, but there's very little innovation involving in

And there's very little innovation in the preparation of matcha, in the manufacture of matcha, in the final consumption of matcha. So we kind of saw these industry white space and we founded Sanko in order to capture

Ryan (02:41)
Yeah, to put a little color on what Sam's around what we were seeing at the time as kind of dissatisfied consumers was like matcha that had no story. You didn't know when it was made, who made it, if it was made from a particular cultivar, when it was milled. It was just kind of this weird commodity product that you could easily get a matcha latte at a cafe, whether or not you're in Paris or New York

Like, it's not like what we were seeing in coffee, where it's this like explosion of a specialty movement and realizing that one of the biggest quality barriers to getting good matcha was the ability to mill it fresh. And that was really our first problem space that founded the company. So we're working on hardware now to give different people the ability to mill matcha fresh.

anywhere and at scale. If you're not familiar with the way that matcha is milled right now, it's all centrally milled in Japan on large granite millstones that weigh about 100 pounds or around 50 kgs a piece. And by the time it gets to you, it's usually if you have a really good vendor, maybe it's three months. If you also have like are working with a good company, maybe it's been milled six months. It's been in powdered form.

but most of what everyone's drinking is over a year old. And the color, the taste, and the nutrition all disappear and degrade, and it's a much worse product than it once was when it was ground fresh. So we wanted to democratize matcha milling and our building the entire company around that to bring better matcha to everyone at scale. So that's sort of our mission. And then in the process, discovering

You know, all the different flavors available from different matcha cultivars. The way the matcha leaves, it's called tencha is produced can have many different flavors. right now it's very difficult to buy matcha leaves to mill into powder because no one has really the capacity to mill matcha fresh unless you import one of these industrial pieces of equipment. So we're also co -working on setting up a supply of of tencha.

so that people have the ability to make their own choices or do their own blending, etc. to create really high quality products and to sort of bring craft into the process of making matcha in places in the world outside of Japan in a similar movement that we're seeing in specialty coffee where people are roasting it and blending it and adding, doing their own value add or brewing their own beer or brewing their own wine or making their own chocolate.

And we want to bring that into matcha and create the infrastructure to make that all possible.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (05:22)
Yeah, and really, you know, like for a lot of these traditional matcha making houses, you have very few choices, which are pre -blend and, you know, they have preset tiers to tell you the quality and what you would probably expect. And we kind of want to offer really the consumer freedom to choose your own path.

We want to offer products that would tell you the cultivar, tell you the million days, tell you the terroir tell you where it's from, and tell you the process, methodology, and let you to decide what do you like instead of pointing you directions and tell you what's good or what's not good, essentially.

Ryan (06:04)
Yeah, exactly. So that's a bit of the mission of the broader company and what we're doing. And we started this podcast, one, because we realized we had a lot of knowledge gaps ourselves where we needed to do some learning. So, you know, it's a forcing function to do research and sort of develop our own opinions on a lot of these topics and then publishing them as a blog post and then record a podcast about it. But also gave us the opportunity to interview experts and to put that knowledge out into the world.

and to kind of centralize and aggregate a lot of this knowledge in English, which we really hope to continue to do through the Specialty Matcha podcast. So if you're not already subscribed, please do subscribe and like and comment. It really helps us know that we're producing something that people actually like and want to listen to and sort of gives us the signal to keep doing this. So in part two, we wanted to reintroduce ourselves a little bit. Who are we?

and what are we doing here? Why do we care about the world of specialty matcha and making it better? I guess, Zongjun we'll start with you and then we'll move to Gwen and then I'll go last around like, who are you? What's your background and what makes you so passionate about creating higher quality matcha for the

Zongjun (Sam) Li (07:18)
Hi, my name is Songzhen and you would hear Ryan and Gwen refer to me as Sam or Samuel throughout the podcast. That's all me. So at Sanko I in charge of all of the product development works and related tasks. And, you know, before joining Sanko, Ryan and I actually met way back about a decade ago when we were still at the Penn State Institute

That was actually my first time not only meeting Ryan, but also knowing about matcha. So at Penn State, we run this institute that kind of incorporate Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tea ceremony all at once. And we would routinely invite teachers from Omotesenke and Urasenke tea ceremony schools to visit the university and offer lessons.

So that was a very, I guess, traditional exposure to matcha. For the first time, I learned about how to prepare matcha. I learned about all of the tea ceremony culture, the history of matcha, and all of the associated art centering around Chanoyu the weight of tea in Japan. like calligraphies and Chabana and all that.

After graduating from Penn State, Ryan and I both end up joining this startup, Gasograph, which we utilize artificial intelligence to model human sensory experience and their perception, their preference to help large companies to develop new products. And from that angle, we start to viewing matcha from a very different

perspective, matcha as an ingredient in a product, which it triggers a lot of human perception and related preference onto this very thing. That's a very different perspective compared to our days back in the tea institute So these two kind of

Related but also unrelated exposure to the same thing really triggers my interest in learning more about matcha. So that's part of the reason why I agree so fast when Ryan proposed the idea of founding Sanko

Ryan (09:32)
Awesome. Gwen?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (09:33)
Over to you, Gwen.

Gwen (09:34)
Yeah. Hi, I'm Gwen. I am usually a little more behind the scenes editing and planning and keeping these two in line. But I have been really excited to join a small team. While we all have our specialties, it's fun to be at such a small team and such a small company because you all get to work together on pretty much everything and learn as you go, which has been really fun. I'm a little bit more of a tea novice, but it's been really exciting for me to learn as I've been

here from the podcast, from the blogs, from our conversations offline and all the guests that we've had on the podcast.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (10:08)
Over to you Ryan!

Ryan (10:09)
Yeah, I'm Ryan. And as Zongjun mentioned, my journey and interest in matcha started all the way back at the Tea Institute at Penn State when both Zongjun and I, Sam and I, were students there. And we were both students of Omotesenke. And it was an active research institute. And one of the earliest pieces of research to come out of that was applying some AI methods.

on human sensory perception, which was later spun off into its own company, Gastrograph. And I joined the founding team at that company. And it was actually there that I developed a love of specialty products. So at the time, we were mostly trying to sell into craft producers, craft beer, craft coffee, and craft chocolate. And I was hired as an intern after my freshman

And my job was solely to create content marketing, to attract craft producers, to come to our website and then discover our services. So one of my first projects were like learning all about the craft of coffee, like where it was come from, how it was processed, how you can over under roast it, the way it gets blended and try to come up with the right keywords to attract industry people to come read about it. And I did that for a couple of different craft industries.

And later on the company evolved and we ended up selling to much larger companies. But that was very formative for me and building up a framework and knowledge structures around the way that consumers and industry people view the depth and breadth that anyone category has to offer. Coffee are not just coffee beans. There are the producers, the roasters, and all of the stories behind what

those products special and as culturally rich as something like a fine wine would be appreciated in Western culture. These same things exist within tea, within chocolate, within all sorts of other products. So very fascinated by this concept. And one of the things that we became students of was learning how consumers, how companies built ladders for consumers. How do you get someone from drinking

commodity product like instant coffee to ordering an espresso or ordering a pour -over or then ordering like a pour -over that costs $15. What had to have happened along their journey to get them to build the context and knowledge to appreciate something like that? And realize that a lot of these ladders also didn't exist with the matcha. So that was hugely inspiring. And then as the company got more advanced,

As Zongjun alluded to, got to work with the matcha a little more on the ingredient side and a little bit more at the large food and beverage company scale, where consumer preference was really the center of all that type of product development. So we did a lot of travel. I think I've been to over 20 countries doing consumer research for food and beverage companies, understanding what flavors consumers like or dislike, and then helping give feedback based on that data

on how to change the flavor of these products. So we also come into this with the realm of like consumer science and improving products that way, which is sort of, we're both very much one foot in the old craft tradition tea ceremony Chanoyu because we've been educated that way. And also one foot in the more advanced side of the food industry and product development. So that's where our background comes

And we're using this podcast almost as a journal of our own learnings in matcha as we develop our own opinions about the specialty matcha in general. And as we learn new things and create more curiosity gaps for ourselves. And we want to share a lot of that education with everyone else too, which is why we started this. So using that as a segue, Gwen and Zongjun

What have been some of the highlights of season one of the podcast from the interviews that we've done or from the unique pieces that we've published on Specialty Matcha as a broader

Gwen (14:22)
particularly liked having guests on. think having new perspectives has been really fun and it's also really interesting to hear stories other people have had and the knowledge that they can share with us and with the world and the different ideas from different people.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (14:37)
Yeah, I really enjoyed the interviews too. It's really not just finally not just Ryan and I talking all the time. We can get to hear other people's perspective throughout the way too, which was very refreshing. And throughout the podcast season one, I think we have learned a lot. It's a really interesting learning journey so far.

I think some of the highlights are how we're trying to, you know, really, I guess as Ryan was talking about, like we were very deep in these sort of, you know, what we call specialty product in other places like coffee, beer, wine. And throughout the journey as we're trying to put a similar lens.

from other specialty products onto matcha and how we are trying to figure out what exactly, for example, is ceremonial -grade matcha. How do we define what's good quality, what's bad quality, or what's good matcha or what's bad matcha? What does it mean if you're referring to a product as good? Is it just good in quality or is it just like you like

That's a very different concept of when we're talking about something that's good. So as we are trying to debunk that, I think we have a lot of interesting findings. For more details, audience, you can try to tap into that specific episode.

And also, you know, like the need of transparency, like as we were talking about all these matcha, what's good matcha, what's bad matcha, like how do you define that? Like who has the authority to define what's good matcha or what's bad matcha? What's matcha that's good for you, right?

For coffee or craft coffee or craft beer, as people moving away from big breweries, for smaller breweries, oftentimes they tend not to really tell you what's good or what's bad or what's mediocre. What they're trying to do is that they would preload you with a lot of information related to the product. What kind of hops, what kind of malt.

what kind of fermentation method, what's the fermentation vessels, and for coffee and for wine, know, similar things, like all of the information relating to the creation of the product in front of you. They want to let you know and let you to decide, you know, if you would like a IPA over stout over a amber, you know, what kind of style that's really good for you is for you to decide instead of, you know, telling you.

what's more premium, what's more expensive or more rare. know, rarity doesn't necessarily relate it to quality. That's something in the first place. They, of course, tend to charge you more, but it doesn't really mean that it's better or it's better for you.

Ryan (17:25)
Yeah, I mean, what's crazy is that the industry standard is you literally give yourself your own grade. And like everyone gives like themselves an A plus or purposely make something that's like A, C and like E or F grade. Like meaning like, I'm just going to call this ceremonial or culinary or super ceremonial or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ceremonial grade. Like it's just words.

Gwen (17:50)
What are some questions that you're hoping to answer in the next season of the podcast?

Ryan (17:53)
Something that I don't have a very firm understanding of that I'm just very curious about are more about cultivars. You can read about like some baseline information online for cultivars. So if anyone doesn't know, cultivars stands for cultivated varietals and just like, you know, different apples. You can have like different types of apples, like a jazz apple versus pink lady versus red delicious, et cetera. Same exists in tea and for matcha. And

There's some common ones like Asahi, Yabukita, Samidori, Okumadori. And you hear the top line level of, okay, yeah, this one's usually vegetal, this one's super umami and creamy. But there's very little nuance. And I'm really curious, what is the distribution of flavor available in something like Yabukita or Asahi? Is one grown in one region versus another drastically different?

Like how different are they and what is the universe within each of these? And then something else that I really would like to have a better understanding of for the next season is how people actually blend these things and what the framework is around having one plus one equals three, or how it is like you have an end goal. I want to create like, I don't know, a super refreshing matcha with a little bit of bitterness. How do you go from that prompt?

to knowing what to blend. I'd really love to learn more about that. Zongjun?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (19:24)
Yeah, this I guess will be our first time going to Japan with the mission of learning more about matcha and all of these first hand exposure to I guess to the farming, to the manufacture will probably bring a lot of new fresh information and opinions for us to talk

Because so far, we have taste matcha, we have milk matcha, but not in Japan. We have been drinking a lot of matcha, but we have never really touched a piece of green tea or tea leaf in Japan that offers us this very down -to -earth experience. I guess that will really change a lot of things.

Ryan (20:06)
Yeah, no, absolutely. We don't know what we don't know from the actual production and cultivation of Tencha, which then gets milled into matcha firsthand. We've both been to Japan, we've worked there, we drink, we're consumers, in some cases super consumers. But in terms of that whole journey, we need to experience it ourselves first before we probably even know what the right questions are to ask.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (20:35)
Yeah, I guess it will be very interesting because it's not like Ryan and I have never been to a tea production place, right? Like we've been to Korea, we've been to China, mainland China, we've been to Taiwan. We've been seeing how tea are grown there. It would be very interesting to compare the difference between Japanese tea makings and tea making methodologies in other places. I guess that will

have a lot of observations, at least for me, to be able to talk about in the next season.

Ryan (21:08)
What have been some of the interesting contradictions that we've noticed, either in our own thought development as we develop opinions and revise them with new data of content that we've put out, where you kind of look back and think, yeah, I had that wrong, or between two different guests that we invited on that might have had two different perspectives on the same issue?

or have been some good like contrast moments

Zongjun (Sam) Li (21:33)
I guess not necessarily contrast, but a very refreshing point of view is that first, was just Ryan and I, we've been talking about matcha and as we invited guests, they're also talking about matcha. Matcha as the leaf, the matcha powder that goes into your drink. But...

When we invited Arby from Empirical Water, it was the first time that I... It's kind of dumb, realizing that there are other ingredients in your matcha other than matcha itself. There is water, and water is not just H2O. There's a lot of dissolved minerals.

things that are within the water that you consume that will get mixed with your matcha that produce the ultimate matcha that you are going to put in your mouth. So it's not just the tea that you're drinking, but you're also drinking the water.

Ryan (22:24)
Yeah, I didn't agree

with that more. After the episode we did with Arby, I spent a lot of time living in France and there's a bottled water brand that's marketed to help you sleep. So it has very magnesium heavy, which Arby was telling us, accentuates umami. And I went out and this water tastes disgusting, by the way, plain. It's really, you got to choke it down. I was like, okay, I'm going to try to make my matcha with this. my word.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (22:46)
Hahaha

Ryan (22:52)
It was so different. When I was comparing to drinking it before and after, the degree to which it impacted the taste of matcha was wild to me. I went from having a kind of nice, crisp, a little bitter, nice aromatic matcha to like an umami bomb with no bitterness, with just the water change. That was wild to me. That really changed my perspective too.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (23:20)
Yeah, I mean, I guess I had similar realization when I was drinking Chinese tea in the past, but didn't really connect the dots. But before that, in Chinese tea, at least, you tend to really brew the tea that you consume with the water from the similar, the same region.

which tend to always produce the best results. Which is a very interesting thing to think about because people making those teas in different places, what they are available is the water around them and they will use those water to brew their tea for themselves. And as they develop the manufacture, the production style of that specific tea,

they will tend to optimize those processes with the water that made available to them. water is really a critical factor to tea, not just in Chinese tea, but also, I guess, now in Japanese tea, as we observe too.

Ryan (24:24)
We really urge everyone to go check out Arby's website, Empirical Water. He publishes a lot of research on tea and water and coffee and water. Also, his product is amazing. So it's definitely well worth checking Arby's website, Empirical Water out.

Gwen (24:41)
of off of this, as water being such an important part of matcha and coffee and tea in general, why is it so misunderstood stuff like this? Like why is there so much misinformation or lacking information or contradictory information in the world of matcha? Like why is this happening?

Ryan (24:56)
Yeah,

I don't know if there's so much contradictory information but water is very difficult to control. It's really a pain to manipulate your own water chemistry and like buy the different salts and then do the different recipes and mixing it and diluting it. It's very labor intensive and what Arby does, so there's actually some physical restraints, which is pretty interesting.

So if you want, for example, calcium carbonate, which is chalk, it doesn't dissolve in water very easily. So you actually have to do a special process to lower the pH to get that to dissolve if you want to attain certain water recipes. So sometimes it's not even as simple as mixing things together. So very labor intensive. So I think because that complexity is not abstracted away, it's very rare.

to see companies do this. I've actually only been to one cafe in my life. It's called Substance in Paris. They make their own water from scratch by mixing different salts together. But everyone else uses some type of filtration and then maybe they remineralize it a little bit. But it's...

Even within coffee, it's very uncommon to see this being an engineered step. And I think it's just because it's so complicated.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (26:18)
Yeah. Well, audience, if you want to learn more about Arby's work and how it related to tea and coffee, you can go check out the episode that was published on June the

you can learn more about water chemistry and all the interesting things related to how Arby developed its methodology to really be able to manipulate all the solvents and composition of the water that he creates.

Ryan (26:44)
Any other contrast moments that you guys noticed? I have one if you guys

Zongjun (Sam) Li (26:49)
what do you think,

Ryan (26:52)
So I find it very interesting when we meet people from the industry who are Westerners, from the outside looking in, like people who live in the States but on logic companies and do direct sourcing.

versus people that are in Japan really deep in the industry who are inside looking out. And people like Marc from Ooika and John from Johnny Matcha have really interesting perspectives on preserving heritage farms and working with very traditional producers and keeping the craft of traditional matcha alive from the practitioners that are doing it in Japan and how more and more people are dropping out of the profession.

which, you know, very, like a very cool, wonderful mission and one that we're a hundred percent aligned with as well. And it really struck me when Ian from Yunomi who runs basically a big marketplace for Japanese tea, I think it's the largest marketplace for artisanal Japanese green tea. And his explicit mission is to, you know, basically be an online sales platform for small Japanese producers. And I think they work with over 130. So he's really deep in the weeds.

when it comes to artisanal producers. And he feels like everyone's getting into matcha. And he's like working with these people day in and day out. And there's definitely something very interesting to be explored there. I don't know if he's just talking about the really commodity industrial matcha products that are on automated farms and gigantic factories. But that was a pretty interesting contrast, an interesting double clicking into that

Zongjun (Sam) Li (28:27)
Yeah, I'm so spin off from that. I'm very curious to talk to all these new generation of tea farmers in Japan. So that will be something very interesting to learn about because everybody is talking about how this is a shrinking dyeing industry in Japan and there's all these global demands elsewhere.

Ryan (28:37)
Yeah.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (28:51)
and you are having younger generations not interested in matcha in Japan, moving away from matcha or tea to other products like coffee. How are people going to sustain this? Because in a lot of these older or more traditional industry in Japan, it's very generational. It's an entire family for generations doing the same

from grandfather to father to son to grandson It will be very interesting to see how this technique is passing down to the newer generation and how Do they think about all these new changes that are happening in Japan and also outside

Ryan (29:32)
Yeah, I'd love to go to the source on that. So to put some color, some statistics on what Sam was saying, I think in the 1980s, there were over 200 ,000 tea farms in Japan. And the last census, which I think was 2020, there are 12 ,000, 200 ,000 to 12 ,000. So it's a really sharp decline. And it's really easy to say, hey, you know,

This is crazy. This is sad. All of this knowledge and art is getting lost. And on the other side, these are people with agency, right? You know, if it's more profitable for them to farm mushrooms and lemons, which is very true in a lot of matcha areas where people are moving away from tea, I mean, they have bills to pay. You know, there things that are outside of their control. I know in Shizuoka, the largest tea producing prefecture, after the nuclear disaster in 2011,

China completely banned imports of Japanese products for fear of radiation and then kept those policies around. I think in the US too, we banned some stuff for a little while over fears of nuclear contamination. And it just wiped out a lot of tea farmers because the demand for green tea fell and they had to move to other products. So these are real people with agency. And it's easy for us to say,

from the outside, like all this stuff is getting lost, but really it's thousands of people making decisions that are best for themselves. So I think sometimes all of this gets a little overly romanticized. I think a lot of this can be solved by just growing an appreciation for specialty matcha outside of Japan. Just the reality is, is most of the good product doesn't leave Japan's borders. And by growing this movement of specialty matcha, right, we can create the demand to make it such

attractive profession economically to preserve the culture. Because if there's not enough consumers to enjoy it, why should the culture exist in the first place if it's not self -sustaining?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (31:37)
Yeah, absolutely. And also part of the shrinkage of all those tea production houses are consolidation too. Larger houses merge smaller houses into even larger ones. And with the specialty matcha movement, guess finally we can have the opportunity to offer smaller producers a stage for them to shine too.

So it's not just about the big names. It's about all of these local houses in different terroir with growing different types of cultivars. And we'll be able to taste the difference. I think that will be something really wonderful to experience.

Ryan (32:14)
It'd be really nice for us to help, you know, if anything at the end of the day that we can do to, help save what is a slowly dying industry, at least from a Japanese market perspective, very few Japanese people are interested in tea. It's not really a thing. Everyone's interested into coffee. Is if we can shine a big light on why matcha is special and what's great about it across the cultivars, the producers, the production methods, and all of these, the craft of creating it.

has historically been behind closed doors. They're gate kept by these large traditional matcha houses that don't tell you how they're blending or where their tea from or why anything special. They rely completely on their brand. But by having a more organic grounds up movement where we can explain to people how amazing handpicked tea is or how amazing tea is from a certain area within Uji and the fact that they fertilized

using natural fish and rice. These are really interesting stories that can really shape people's preferences and build demand for these products. And historically, that's all been abstracted away from the consumer. That's not how it's been sold. But if we apply these specialty principles that have been used in coffee and wine and chocolate, can we have a really rich, thriving industry on both sides of these things, which

a narrative and a conversation in the community we'd like to be a part of, is why we do this podcast.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (33:43)
So, Guan, for the coming new season, do you have anything that you want to see or hear Ryan and I talk about or

Gwen (33:52)
I mean, I have lots of things that I think would be fun to talk about. I think more guests will be really exciting. think having you guys traveling and all the plans for Japan and what you're learning there will be really fun. But I also think that it'll be good to do a dive into the basics, like working on matcha ratios and the temperature. I know that we've touched on those things a little bit, but I think having a deeper understanding of things like that

also very interesting and helpful. But we do have an Instagram for anyone that's listening and wants to follow along for short clips and or to contact us. That's probably the best way. We'd love to hear from you about guests you'd like to have on the podcast or topics that you think we should cover.

Ryan (34:32)
Yes, please, anyone listening, we are always looking for new guests, whatever perspective they have. So that's if you know anyone, even if they're just a super consumer and love matcha, you we'd love to talk about them and get their perspective and how they fell in love with matcha and sort of what they're excited about that's happening now. please do warm introductions for guests are very welcome.

Gwen (34:56)
I also know just internally, we have a lot of stuff coming up and I'm very excited for that to be shared and for us to be able to talk about it on the podcast.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (35:04)
Hahaha, any spoiler alerts?

Ryan (35:06)
Why not?

Gwen (35:06)
I don't know, think you've got the spoilers.

Ryan (35:08)
So what Gwen's alluding to, one of the things she's alluding to is we're building a mill to mill matcha fresh. We're on version two of that. And we're currently working out our go -to -market strategy for that. For the first commercial production run, due to some constraints that we have being a tiny three -person company that's self -funded, is that we're going to have a very limited first production

Zongjun (Sam) Li (35:17)
What?

Ryan (35:34)
And we want to partner with specialty coffee companies or specialty tea companies for the first release. So if you know anyone that would be very interested in partnering with us to having one of these matcha mills, to Mill Matcha Fresh, anywhere around the world where we can legally do business as a U .S. company, we would love an introduction and are actively looking for the right partners.

to have one of these mills and we'll work with you to get a tencha supply and also potentially have that mill be as a base so that anyone who lives around you will have access to fresh milled matcha in a retail setting or potentially a direct to consumer setting. So that would be wonderful if anyone's interested in that. Please do reach

Zongjun (Sam) Li (36:20)
Yeah, we are also really looking forward for feedbacks too. This is the first prototype, first machine that we ever built. And of course, there will be some shortcomings and we'd love to learn from you about how you use the machine and how you find it can be

Ryan (36:41)
And for this podcast in general or any content we pick out, we love feedback, good or bad. Only helps us get better over time. We very much try to put ourselves on the Kaizen continuous cycle of self -improvement.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (36:59)
All right, I guess we can wrap

Gwen (37:00)
Ooh, I have one last good question, actually,

Zongjun (Sam) Li (37:02)
let's do

Gwen (37:03)
I know you two met over tea. Do you remember the first time you each had

Zongjun (Sam) Li (37:11)
First time having matcha. I remember my first time having koicha That's more memorable. Well, yeah, koicha is almost like a matcha paste. it's how when in tea ceremony, sometimes people would intentionally put

Gwen (37:15)
You can talk about that if you'd rather.

Ryan (37:17)
Sam, can you explain what koicha is to everyone?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (37:32)
much less water into the matcha to make turn it into some sort of a paste usually for a higher quality matcha in more special occasions. So before that I only have had the Usucha before and it was with Koike -sensei. So they are of Omotesenke ceremony school in North

and we were having tea in their tea house, headquartered tea house in New York. And we were playing a very interesting game in the tea event. It's called Chakabuki. So basically we are tasting three sets of tea and they would tell us the name of those teas. And then we need to remember the taste of those teas. And then we are all gathered together at the end.

having a little competition. So we are going to taste all three teas again, but in mixed order, and there will be a fourth tea introduced into the order. So not only we need to guess the order of this new setup, but we also need to guess which one is the new tea that we have not taste before. And they were all in koicha format. So we drank so much koicha.

by the end of the game that both Ryan and I were self -flying by the end of the competition. But that was a very, very, very fun tea event to attend.

I guess Ryan you'll also remember

Ryan (38:56)
yeah, my stomach has never forgotten. It's very important not to go an empty stomach to a tea ceremony.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (38:59)
Hahaha

Indeed, indeed. That's why there's always wagashi accompanied with drinking tea in those tea ceremonies. They taste good.

Ryan (39:14)
always taste amazing.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (39:16)
What about you, Ryan?

Ryan (39:18)
Yeah, my first matcha was in high school, I think from a Tivana can. And I remember thinking it was okay at the time. Wasn't my favorite. I really liked the way it made me feel. So the energy profile of it, I found very interesting. But I didn't have matcha that I really enjoyed until I became a Omotesenke student. I don't know who scheduled the lessons, but all of the lessons as a college student in Penn State.

started at 9 a on Saturday and Sunday mornings. And there's nothing like sitting in Seiza for an hour and a half. then... I don't know if fear is the right emotion, but they're very vivid memories. And there's a lot of pleasure waking, forcing yourself to wake up that early

Zongjun (Sam) Li (39:55)
You can still taste the beer in your mouth before you drink that.

Hahaha!

Ryan (40:11)
sitting in Seiza and having your three bites of wagashi very kindly brought from like Minimoto Kichuan or sometimes the instructors made it themselves the day before. Sweets were always amazing and then having a nice bowl of usucha. was very powerful sensory memories.

Gwen, when was your first time having

Zongjun (Sam) Li (40:35)
That's great.

Gwen (40:37)
Zongi made me my first matcha. I went down to visit and it was I think a few months after I started working with you guys and that's when I had my first matcha.

Ryan (40:45)
Wait, really? Wait,

you didn't have matchup before working at Sanko?

Gwen (40:49)
I don't think I did. If I did, I don't remember it. It's very possible that I had, but I don't think that I ever did. At least nothing good.

Ryan (40:53)
Wow.

Okay. Interesting.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (40:58)
Not even

the matcha latte?

Gwen (41:00)
I don't think so. I have so many allergies that I don't usually get lattes when I'm out because they don't usually have an option that I can

Zongjun (Sam) Li (41:06)
interesting. So after your first exposure to matcha, how has your preference changed? Do you like it? And do you have any specific things that you like about

Gwen (41:19)
That's a really hard question for me to answer. I don't know if I've had it consistently enough to really state what my preferences are. I think visiting Ooika in Lawrenceville and having some matcha from there is probably the best matcha I've had, but I've only done that once. And I think, Ryan, you had a can that we then had a couple of times. So it's hard for me to really say because it hasn't been frequent enough.

Ryan (41:42)
We need to change that. We need to change that.

Gwen (41:42)
Yeah

Zongjun (Sam) Li (41:45)
Yeah, having fresh milled matcha from Ooika was something.

Gwen (41:45)
still working on

Yeah.

Ryan (41:49)
Having fresh -milled

matcha in general is mind -blowing. It's really sad that that's not more accessible for people.

Gwen (41:57)
Maybe someday it will be.

Ryan (41:59)
we'll be very singing with that.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (41:59)
We'll be soon!

Gwen (42:01)
If only I had my own mill here to work with.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (42:04)
Ahahaha

Ryan (42:05)
be on the lookout for more content from us. Thank you for listening If you have any episode, topic, suggestions, please let us know. And we'll see you on the next one.

Really appreciate the listenership through the first season and can't wait to release more content.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (42:24)
Yeah, I'll see you in the next season.

Ryan (42:26)
Whoosh!

Gwen (42:26)
bye.