The Future of Matcha - Opinion

 

 

Ryan and Zongjun

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan, this is my co -host Zongjun Hello, hello. And we're the co -founders of Sanko Matcha Products. Yeah, so we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in matcha, share startup stories and interview experts. And today we're going to talk about an opinion piece that we wrote recently.

titled The Future of Matcha. Yeah. So we purposely titled it an opinion piece because no one knows what the future is. So we put a framework around it of sort of what did matcha look like yesterday, what should it look like tomorrow, and what are some of the forces going on so that we could best hypothesize what a future of matcha could be and a future that we would be very excited about.

So Zongjun, could you give us a short summary of what the article was about? Yeah, so we cannot really talk about the future if we don't talk about the status quo. So right now what we've been seeing is really a specialty movement in matcha, just as what we have been seeing in a lot of other food and beverage categories like coffee and chocolate.

So matcha has long been this cultural element that is bounded with a lot of traditions. And now we are seeing these small but very passionate groups of companies and influencers that are really driving innovations. So we have people focusing on single origins, single cultivars, emphasizing nuances like a shape grow method or fresh milling or bring transparency to labeling. So really this is

departure

from the opaque you know traditional matcha blend in the past is now like really finding this new audience especially markets outside of Japan and now with you know all the domestic consumption of green tea matcha decline in Japan especially among the younger drinkers the export the foreign market is really

the only so to speak near future opportunity for a lot of producers who are willing to explore methods beyond traditional production. So some of the very interesting paths worth discussing that we have talked about such as fresh ground matcha, which we think is really the ultimate solution to preserve matcha freshness and also new preparation methods, equipments and also even emerging new matcha terroir for

from

tea growing regions outside of Japan. Yeah, now for certain. And the first half of the article is largely about how change is a double -edged sword. So there's a great gift to matcha and specialty matcha, where new vendors are focusing on single origin, single cultivar, highlighting cultivation techniques.

that are very traditional by different farmers and there's this huge booming market abroad, well at the same time it doesn't live and exist at home in the domestic market in Japan. Yeah, no one likes to drink tea anymore in Japan. Yeah, or if they do, its convenience is valued above all else. It's all in these PET plastic bottles. Yeah, ready to drink teas. And you know...

that technology is really good. Those teas taste excellent and you know the research and optimization that even goes into those products probably way far out outpaces the research and innovation that's going on in more traditional prepared tea like something like like matcha. And

You know, that innovation that we've seen on the ready to drink or RTD side in Japan is amazing. Anyone who's been to Japan knows this. There's vending machines nearly every block. You can get fantastic green tea 24 hours a day, hot or cold in a plastic bottle, and it tastes great.

And what if we took that same ingenuity and applied it to traditional matcha or matcha as a beverage that was not served in a bottle? It would be really interesting. Yeah, this is a really hyper -engineering vending machine that can basically make you anything. Yeah. It's not just all these bottled or packaged food, like even some of the prepared food.

that they can deliver in those machines.

So, Zongjun how do you attribute the decline of traditional matcha drinking, traditional, even like sencha brewing, or other forms of brewed tea in Japan? Where did that decline come from and why are so few people interested in making tea? Yeah, well, I mean, I bet it's not just in Japan. You see that in Korea, in China.

tea drinkers, especially traditional tea drinkers, it's a tedious process. It takes a lot of practice, it takes a lot of equipment and setup and space for you to drink or brew or make tea properly. And this is really not what people nowadays have the luxury to do.

Unlike coffee, you know coffee You can have instant coffee. You can have a lot of other very easy to prepare coffee solutions You can have coffee pots a lot of these Convenience exists to sustain the increasing consumption of coffee

And not to mention that coffee has a lot of functional capabilities too, like it makes you stay awake. Tea does the same job, but not as fast as coffee, which can be a part of the reason why coffee is overtaking a lot of the tea consumption.

And you know, a large part of it is both the East romanticizing the West and cafe culture that we have in the West. And you see a reverse trend happening in the West where we're starting to have a romanticization of the East.

And one reason why I think matcha is exploding so well. And in particular, you have countries like Japan and Korea, which have major initiatives in cultural export. If you look at anime, if you look at K -pop, if you look at all of these industries, these creative industries, you know,

Even you were saying in China growing up here in the late 1990s in Guangzhou, right, there was a honeymoon period between the Japanese and the Chinese and the market was flooded with anime, right? And with that comes the culture and greater aspects of appreciation. And interestingly enough, we were, you know, we got into tea at the Tea Institute at Penn State about 10 years ago. At the time,

the Korean tea club of the tea institute, there was very little interest in it from students at all. It was very unpopular. It was actually nearly on the verge of death until one of the members took an initiative to kind of revive it and bring it back to life. Now, I was just on the campus 10 years later, it is a different story. They might have more members now than the Chinese tea club. And I think that...

this explosion of Korean culture has had a huge impact on that. So I think both like all the cultural elements we see from, you know, Japan abroad and the broader cultural appreciation for it is really lifting the tides and driving awareness for what would otherwise be a rather obscure exotic neon green beverage.

Yeah, that's true. But still, the sheer lack of infrastructure to sustain this new demand really hindered tea going beyond its status quo right now in the West. Yeah. So, you know, it's hard to talk about the future of matcha without looking at its past. Matcha has a particularly rich history.

Both as a ceremonial element, as an agricultural product, as a trans -cultural agricultural product, as it has migrated from China to Japan. There's a really rich and interesting history, but it feels like a lot of the status quo companies are...

focusing their positioning, their branding, their messaging as almost a rediscovery or education of these ancient traditions, these traditional methods, these heritage farms and developing new markets for what was previously appreciated in Japan, but that appreciation is now waning and they're using very similar playbooks to introduce it to a new set of Western consumers.

or

even beyond the West, what we're seeing in Southeast Asia or in the Middle East. So, like, why do you think that is, and do you think that's what the future of specialty matcha is? Is this revitalization of what people appreciated in the past?

That's a very interesting question. To a lot of extent, you cannot really talk about a thing without talking about its past. You can't just start selling matcha to people without telling people where this matcha comes from.

the past and the history of matcha and its culture associated with it really is a foundation of a lot of these fantasy, you know, this interest coming from. But moving forward, you know, like these traditions or these new, these cultural elements really...

is the very reason that why matcha has not been so popular in the past, like in order to, you know, do matcha or make matcha in the ceremonial way.

really contradicts what people or why people drink matcha nowadays. So, I do think that, preserving these traditions, reviving these traditions is important, but the future of matcha as a specialty drink, you know, it's really should be, moving on its own path versus, continuing this traditional practices. Yeah. And by traditional practices, I mean, we're talking

about

you know handmade chasens and that rich history we're talking about tea bowls we're talking about rice straw shaded canopies

something called Honzu shading, right? Like all of these old practices that would result in tea or teaware that were highly prized, right? That is primarily now being used as marketing material with this new wave of companies who's trying to build appreciation for this thing. And I think it makes sense. How does an American develop a preference for, you know, the deep history of matcha in the first place, right? You go to Japan.

You learn about it. You don't go in with a bunch of assumptions. You keep your mind open. You're listening. You're actively listening. And people are explaining to you who have generations, sometimes 10 plus generations of continuous lineage of certain crafts. And to keep an open mind, you have to develop appreciation for it and then spread it. And the problem is, I think, Matcha is just a little too new for that not to be the focus. But if you look at it,

the

third wave coffee movement 20 years ago, that was not the focus. Like Ethiopian coffee ceremony and the really ancient rituals surrounding coffee and coffee preparation were not the focus of what the specialty coffee movement was. It's not the focus of what the bean to Bar chocolate is. And even in craft beer you also don't see that. Even in something like beer you have really rich traditions and some really interesting pieces of history. But at best you see

one

or two products that get made with some revivalist mentality. You know, a great example of that is a brewery in Delaware called Dogfish Head looked up and collaborated with some researchers at reviving an ancient Egyptian recipe for beer making. And it was called Midas Touch was the name of that product. But beyond that, it's pure innovation.

You see hazy IPAs, you see all of these cool hybrids, you're starting to see mixture of wine -beer hybrids, cider -beer hybrids, all these different new types of hop cultivation and cross breeding to have these new, what they call designer hops, have all these cool new aromatic profiles. It's way less retrospective than what we generally see in tea. And I think one reason for it is just because this movement is so new.

but should tomorrow look like the past just with the much larger market? And I think the answer is no.

Yeah, I think that's a very interesting point. You know, if you look at how tea gets spread from China to all the other places outside of China, like, you know,

not to mention Japan or Korea, but also like all the European countries or Middle Eastern countries that adopted tea as a beverage. None of them really carried along all of the cultural elements associated with tea in China. They all have some version of their localization or local understanding of what tea is or how even how to drink tea. You know, like if you look at the early days,

when

tea was first exported into Europe especially in the UK the legend goes that you know like people don't really drink the tea soup instead they eat the tea leaf and dump the tea soup and then they add like salt or other things into it kind of like how Tang dynasty people would drink tea back in the days but you know like later on they start to drink tea

and they add milk, they add sugar.

and really develop into its own tradition, right? Like nowadays we see all kinds of milk teas in the world that are so popular. It's still tea, it's still a tea drink, but it's nothing similar to how people are drinking tea, were drinking tea back in the days in China. And it's nothing related to Chinese tea ceremony, but people still love it. And that's one version of tea's future that no one cannot, you know,

no one could have predict back in the days. Yeah, when tea really conquered the world, there was tons of local adaptation, nothing to do with the way it was being brewed or treated in China. And those merchants and those people bringing the tea, they had no opportunity to learn about it. They could never get past the port at Canton. So it actually kind of makes sense that it took on its own flavors, its own traditions, its own rituals.

And you know, it's probably going to be the same for matcha, right? In the early, early days, you know, we do have access to a lot of this traditional knowledge, but what happens when matcha fully takes over the world and, you know, it's in every cafe is a coffee alternative and people love it for its health benefits and its taste, right? There's going to be a lot of natural adaptation and you're already seeing that in a lot of places, right? At what point does...

innovation crossed the line of tradition. Yeah well matcha latte definitely crossed the line. yeah. Adding milk to matcha definitely no no in Chano Yu. Yeah. But I love it. And you see like a lot of purists out there that like are very traditional centric they're trying to preserve really old things they

gatekeep telling people that things should only be done a certain way, but that's just not the way most people actually consume and enjoy matcha. But you know, to go back to like at what point is tradition go too far, let's use a really cool example. So actually a future guest that's going to be on the show is Marc from Ooika

who bought Ishi Usu traditional Japanese stone mills, and is milling matcha fresh every day at his cafe in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. And is that traditional? When you go to Japan, are there Ishi Usu just like coffee grinders where someone is grinding it fresh and to make it? It does sort of exist now, but it's a very new thing.

But I would say that was backend infrastructure, really. Yeah, I mean, these are traditional equipments. But you know.

The usage is definitely something new like you don't really see that in some cafe shops in Japan or anywhere like In Japan like even the tea production regions to have that running in the front end serving people fresh ground matcha Yeah, where they can see it smell it touch it hear it. It's you know, that is an innovation for sure But if you were to play this out

you know, even further or even further, at what point is it no longer traditional? What if we swap out those stones with gigantic metal millstones or ceramic millstones that end up producing a very similar result? Is it no longer traditional?

Yeah, it's basically an argument of thesis ship, right? Like for how many pieces you swap until the ship is a different ship. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, the argument, there's really no end for the argument. Like you can even argue that, you know, the tunnel is not traditional because it's coming from Song dynasty China and Song dynasty Mocha is the real traditional Mocha. Like...

You know, like there is no end of tracing back. Yeah. And you can argue that Song dynasty mocha is not traditional Tang dynasty Nian cha is more traditional. So I don't know. Like, I think like the obsession of traditions is really a very meaningless path. Like, like how do you define what is really traditional?

Even the traditionalists have innovation all the time throughout all of the historical eras. For every Iemoto in the Omotesenke or Urasenke they have the liberty to make a change in the tradition. That's innovation, right? And I think this whole obsession doesn't really go anywhere.

if we really want to dive into a discussion. Just a lot of toxic comment threads. Yeah. Really dumb. Like that is like the source of a lot of the toxicity or debates over these questions that have no right answers, especially around what is traditional. Yeah. I mean, like the ultimately for someone to be able to define.

tradition is essentially a position to exert authority. Like I have the authority to define or to tell you what is traditional. That's just not true. No one has the authority to do so. And they claim it on different levels. Having some form of knowledge is authority. Very few people know about matcha in general. Maybe they've heard of it. So if you know a little bit about it,

There's a great knowledge imbalance. That is a type of authority that unfortunately a lot of people like to exercise, saying, no, it should be done this way, not this way. That's at the basic level. But then you could start exercising more moral authority or direct lineage. Their voice might be a little bit closer. And you have all these voices intermixing. And you know,

It, I think is a overall, it's a distraction, We should be talking about what the future of matcha is. How can we get better matcha to more people in a more accessible way at a price point that they can afford so it can truly become a global beverage? And what are the things getting in the way of the industry from it being as ubiquitous and affordable and easy to access as something like coffee?

to make their lives better. Maybe they don't like the taste of coffee. Maybe they want something with a more balanced energy profile. Coffee gives them the jitters. Maybe they want something with healthy functional benefits. So, you know, like they just want the drink to taste good. They wanted to like to drink matcha every day. Yeah. Someone might not necessarily like drinking matcha straight. They add some other things like milk into the drink and mix it together. Sometimes even like fresh fruits like strawberry.

It's a pretty interesting trend that we've been seeing recently. You know, like you can argue that all these practices are not traditional, but they taste good. This is what people like. And I think these should really be the guideline of the future of matcha. It should be convenience. It should be tasty. It should be healthy. Yeah. So at a really high level, we developed

up

some sort of headlines of what we thought the future of matcha could be or what the potential for specialty matcha is and we'll have future episodes on this and more blog posts about it. But the first one is around fresh ground matcha which we've talked a lot about on this podcast but it really has the potential to change the game not only for freshness and making the best matcha taste better but also lower quality matcha taste better.

So we're actually in the middle of doing testing and our mill is outputting tea that is approximately the same size and particle morphology as an Ishi Usu with all of the references that we've created. And to do some experiments, we bought some very low -cost Tencha that was processed in mainland China, but using identical equipment. This Tencha would cost us...

0 .7 cents per gram. That's less than two cents per serving. It is radically cheaper than what is available. And we were milling it fresh yesterday. And you know, it wasn't the best matcha we've ever had. It also was way better than like stale matcha.

that most people are buying at their local grocery store. Yeah, definitely. You know, with some milk and maybe some sugar or some other fresh food, it's a totally passable drink. Yeah, and it was a beautiful color, bright green. It smelled good. It tasted pretty good. It was pretty bitter and astringent, but in something like a strawberry matcha latte, it would probably be very suitable for that application.

That those prices are insane. That does not exist right now in matcha that could exist as an experience that we could deliver for people. Now, obviously we'd need to charge more than two cents, but that would bring down the cost by an unprecedented level by delivering a fresher product that is much better. It doesn't taste like crap.

because it was fresh milled using material that's radically cheaper. That's exciting. That's an exciting future. And not only is it that cheap, we know what altitude it was grown at. We know where it was grown. We know what the cultivar was. We know all of it. I mean, it meets the bill of a specialty product. And we are talking to the farmers and manufacturers directly. Like the future of this matcha or this tencha will not always be.

the same. There are a lot of rooms of improvements and people are looking for improvements in innovation. They want to produce higher quality product.

So I would say that, you know, like with the current infrastructure, we can really deliver something very good, fantastic product with drastically lower prices, which like is really the foundation of making matcha more accessible to more people. Yeah, which is the goal. I mean, that was going to grow the overall size of the pie.

You know another huge one is convenience and something that we're working on is how do you reduce the number of steps and friction points and things you need to buy things you need to clean to make a good cup of matcha you know one of the greatest innovations in coffee ever was if you ignore the the environmental impact was were these pod based systems

If you think about the value proposition, what if I told you, you never had to look at another coffee grind in your life. You could have a cup of coffee made in five seconds after pushing one button. That is really radical. You don't have, there's no mess and it's fast and it tastes pretty good. It tastes fine.

And you know, we are specialty coffee people. We go out of our way to find a good pour over or to source, you know, really good coffee from great roasters. But there is a time and a place for this type of thing. And there is a large group of consumers that...

don't have the time or don't want to have the fuss to do that. And by innovating on this on matcha, I think that's also the future. How do we use science? How do we look at coffee industry's inspiration so that you can push a button and get fantastic matcha? Yeah, or like you can have different levels of automation, right? Like someone wants a little bit more liberty in tweaking their recipe. And, you know, it can cascade down into a more manual solution. But along the pathway, there are a lot of

of

innovation can be done from a very easy to cling, easy to whisk T -Bowl chasen setup to a fully automated solution that a perfect bowl of matcha is just a push of button away.

that will be the market, what the market is looking for in the future. If you're referencing what the coffee industry has evolved or developed, it's a really good benchmark of how we picture what the future of matcha would look like. Yeah, absolutely. So those are all great innovations for raising the floor. But how do we also raise the ceiling? And I think a large part of that

that's

going to come through through just general innovation. We've seen some really interesting things in chocolate fermentation around different types of inoculation, different types of fermentation environments. We've seen the same thing in coffee and coffee processing. It would be very interesting to start to have the idea of what is matcha and what are the flavors of matcha open up a little bit. But you're starting to see more hojicha powder being

milled into a matcha -like product and consumed. But there's a lot of other very interesting tea processing methods that result in radically different flavors, whether or not it's different cultivars, whether or not it's different types of application of heat. Something that you see a lot in mainland China and in Taiwan is very interesting applications of heat and the way things get roasted. How would a leachy charcoal -roasted, lightly -roasted,

tencha taste That sounds pretty good. So, you know, we might not be able to necessarily call it matcha, but you know, like, you know, some powder green tea form is going to be developed in the future. Because you know how diverse the flavor profile can be. Yeah, absolutely.

Or even other types of oxidation is another variable that you can play with. What if we produce something that was much more similar to white tea that was then milled more like Song Dynasty Mocha, whether or not we're using a Japanese -like product or that? There'd have to be some processing steps because the very downy parts that make white tea white cannot be easily milled, so you'd have to use the larger leaves. But it is still very possible to create a product like that. It wouldn't be

what people know traditionally as matcha, but it might be something that people love. And a fresh milled could taste very good and really grow the size of the pie and things that are available to people. Because, I mean, let's face it, among different matcha powder, right now, even at the highest levels where you're paying over a dollar, a gram for quote unquote ceremonial grade matcha, most people are looking for a lack of flaws.

They're looking for things that aren't bitter. They're looking at things that aren't a disgusting color. They don't want a lot of astringency. That is even among professional matcha reviewers or connoisseurs. That's the current status, which is a little bit sad. And then at the very, very tip top, it's a discussion about whether or not people like Roasty profiles or Umami profiles.

And that's like the level of awareness at the moment, but it'd be really cool to move away and to have the infrastructure in place and the experimentation in place to divert the discussion away from flaws towards other flavors that people like and can develop a preference for. Yeah, really diversify the potential flavor profile or options for people to enjoy the drink. Yeah.

And it might make matcha less delicate. Right now, matcha is really delicate and it tastes really bad after it's been exposed to light or it's aged too wrong or kept in the wrong environments or your water was too hot or your water chemistry wasn't any good, your base water quality wasn't any good. But what if some of these products after a little roast or a little bit of oxidation like a white tea really make it much more difficult?

to bring out those flaws. And we have to do a really interesting podcast coming out where we interviewed a water chemistry expert and how that's one of the most overlooked things that can make your matcha taste really bad or really good. Yeah, like by the end of the day, you know, most the most abundant ingredient in your cup of matcha is water. You're drinking water with some tea powder inside.

And there's not nearly enough experimentation and innovation, even at that base layer of the stack. It's a really interesting discussion that gets us very excited about what the future of matcha can be. As we explore these different perspectives, we learn from other industries, we look towards the past, but with one foot in the future.

as we speculate and ultimately help co -create what the future of matcha looks like. The current ecosystem of vendors and matcha companies and tea people and even every consumer with every dollar or euro or whatever your currency is that you spend are deciding what the future of matcha can be. Yeah, and I think what...

Our job should be to really offer this selection or abundance of options for people to explore.

And people will eventually narrow down into certain areas that they end up preferring. But without offering this optionality for people to explore, I think there will be a lot of missing opportunities out there. And I think treating it as a specialty product really is the future. That's what most consumers care about. They care about transparency. They care about a better tasting product. And they want to know everything.

about

it. The future of matcha is not going to be a random commodity product.

They're going to be fantastic brands built on all of these pillars that we're seeing all these new successful modern food and beverage companies doing. They're products with the story, they're products with transparency, they're products with values, with sustainability in mind, with quality in mind, with social justice in mind. And that's what we think the future will be. And that's what we hope it evolves into.

So that's all we have time for today. If you enjoyed this discussion, please consider giving us five stars or sharing this podcast with a friend. We have some very exciting interview podcasts coming up that we'll release soon in the coming weeks. And thanks for listening. Take care. See you in the next episode.