Why is average cafe matcha so bad?

Ryan · 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan, this is my co-founder Zongjun. Hello. Hello. Who also goes by Sam and we're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha products. We launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey, matcha shares, startup stories and interview experts. And this is take 3 of this episode. I don't know why it's been so hard to record, but today we wanted to talk about why matcha at cafes are generally so bad. Yeah, I think our thoughts evolve throughout the way as we keep trying to re record this episode. But there is a very coherent observation is that you no matter how good some of the

Zongjun · 0:38

coffee program in some of the cafes around the world that we have been to that matcha program that they serve, it's frequently just not comparable. Yeah, it's pretty bad it that cafes on average, of course there are people doing fantastic work. But I think if I had to generalize the current matcha scene, especially in the United States and in Europe, but also in other places around the world, either the matcha that is served at a coffee shop or a cafe is either really bad or extremely expensive.

Ryan · 1:11

The places that are doing like decent quality, especially in a place like New York or in California, there are good matcha places and there are cafes with good matcha programs. But typically, you know, it's 8 bucks for a matcha latte or even higher for an usucha. Maybe you know, 14 bucks, which you know, certain places you need to charge certain things to make the economics of the business work.

Ryan · 1:34

And you know, if you can make a lot of money selling $14.00 usuchas, that's fantastic, but not necessarily a replicable playbook for all like the general coffee shop. So I guess it's a good way. Let's start, Zongjun, with sort of talking about our goals. Like the observation here is that the status quo for quality for a matcha drink at a normal cafe is really bad. Typically you have problems in storage. Typically, you know, they're sort, they're storing it in a transparent container which helps accelerate oxidation, especially with chlorophyll and chlorophyll related compounds. Typically they're not moving

Zongjun · 2:09

through it fast enough. It's not a fresh ground product. It might not even be a fresh ground product by the time it arrives. You have a big freshness and supply issue. You also have mistreatment around preparation. Some people are using boiling water, sometimes they're using equipment that doesn't work very well. So you get very clumpy matcha or they're not sifting the matchas and sorts of clumps.

Zongjun · 2:28

And that's sort of the status quo that we see if you walk into a random coffee store. And you know, the reality is, is that most of us who are in the matcha industry, when we go to cafes, typically we order coffee. If we ever meet at a cafe, anyone who's listening and we walk into a cafe, there's about a 99% chance unless I'm doing some type of market research. But if I'm just doing there and I need some caffeine, I'm going to order a coffee just cause the standards are just so low. No expectation really.

Ryan · 3:01

Not even low expectation. No expectation. So really trying to save myself from some misery. Probably not for me, and probably for the barista too. So in this episode we really wanted to break down and try to better understand why is matcha so bad and why is the status quo so bad on average within cafes. And we think a lot of it has to do with the incentives and personal experience of baristas as well as like broader structural problems in the supply chain and an education and an equipment.

Zongjun · 3:38

And also the consumers. And the consumers too, absolutely. But like a lot of these, you know, expectation goes both way. You know, the consumer didn't expect or didn't have any formative experience of having a good matcha experience in a cafe that they, they, they do not have the expectation or the, the demand that they do not have the expectation or the desire to pull a good product out from the cafe. And vice versa.

Zongjun · 4:07

You know, baristas do not have any expectation or do not have any experience of how to make a good matcha either. So they don't necessarily have the knowledge and the agency meaning, like the equipment and the infrastructure to prepare a good cup of matcha for the consumers.

Ryan · 4:25

So there's a lack of demand and there's a lack of supply. Yeah, that's true. It's almost a chicken and egg problem because if your customers aren't asking for more, why source a better or more transparent product? Invest and make any investments in the expensive equipment.

Zongjun · 4:40

But if you don't invest and make more better matcha program and educate your consumer, the customer would never get to that point. So it's really a vicious cycle. And I think once people actually try a good product, it really changes their mindset. Something that Johnny Matcha talked about, who works with a lot of cafes and a lot of businesses, is he does comparative tastings.

Zongjun · 5:01

He asks them for the matcha that they're serving and he prepares it. And he also prepares from his matcha blend that he sells to cafes. It's called the IE blend from Tsujisan, and it's 80% Yabukita, 20% Samidori. And he hasn't tasted side by side. And he says that the reaction on these people's faces is insane. It's like really the first time they're trying a fresh product. A Johnny matcha has a lot of freshness guarantees sourced from an incredibly skilled small producer in Uji, in Shirakala. And having this side by side, you can realize that they probably have actually never had good matcha. You know, this is really not

Ryan · 5:38

that surprising, right? Like if this is almost like you put in a side by side comparison of a very well roasted, you know, specialty coffee beans prepared in a very, you know, professional way, probably through a pour over versus a canned coffee like or an instant coffee or an instant coffee like.

Ryan · 5:57

The difference is probably going to be very obvious and obvious for a reason. And very sadly, you know, like the canned coffee is the status quo for how matcha is getting served most of the cafes. Around literally, and people don't just their primary experience doesn't know any different. And you know, it's important within the matcha industry and matcha consumers and people who live and breathe this stuff and drink it every day is that like people don't inherently care about matcha.

Ryan · 6:25

It's just like, let's use Chai as an example. All of us listening. Some people do. But I, you know, I and you don't know very much about Chai. I have some basic understanding. I know in different parts of India they use different spice blends.

Ryan · 6:38

I know they generally use some Assam tea. But that's about all that I know about Chai. And I know that I like it. But could I tell apart a really high quality one from a lower quality one? Probably not. I don't know. The notion of single origin Chai probably hasn't existed.

Zongjun · 6:55

Yeah, well, I mean, it's also interesting. Yeah, it does sound interesting actually. As a product. I really love Donut Chai. I think that with their concentrates, they've done a very good job creating a fantastic product that mixes with milk. Yeah, but like average consumers probably don't even know that there are different varieties of Chai out there. Yeah, true, true, true, true.

Zongjun · 7:16

Or different blends of Chai so like most people don't inherently care about this so if you put yourself in do a little empathy experiment and you're a barista you don't know anything about matcha and you don't really care about tea you're kind of into coffee and you go there to work and you were told by your manager now that you work at this Cafe.

Zongjun · 7:34

We work with a really good tea vendor and we buy usually about a kilogram or about 2 lbs of matcha at a time. And we source ceremonial grade and they really find us the best. It's first flush ceremonial grade. Our customers really love it.

Zongjun · 7:47

And you prepare it as an usucha or you know, you prepare it with just water because you want to try it, want to better understand this is an ingredient that's going into a latte and you taste it. And let's say because ceremonial grade literally doesn't mean anything.

Zongjun · 8:00

I mean, typically this very bulk ceremonial grade product that's priced for cafes, unless you're getting it from a very good vendor, usually doesn't taste very good. I mean, part of the reason why matcha is so bad at so many cafes is the product itself. It just doesn't taste very good inherently because it's some mass produced agricultural stuff. And the very sad first exposure of that inferior quality is the barista.

Zongjun · 8:27

And how do you make someone care about an inferior quality product to begin with? That's making your drink like how like the prepare, like the the, you know, matcha is really not a finished product. Like there's the last prepared part of the strength. The preparer themselves inherently doesn't care about this.

Ryan · 8:48

Product. They need to care. Like, how can that product be good? That's a that's a very sad reality that we are facing today. And I'll make this super tangible. I was at a cafe in Dallas, TX a few months ago and there had a very sad looking matcha setup.

Ryan · 9:03

I actually posted it to my stories. This gigantic amount of matcha in this huge glass jar which like the lid wasn't even on fully like right by the window. So like everything is going wrong with these storage conditions like light air. And then they had a chasen which was dirty and the bowl had this crusty matcha.

Ryan · 9:25

They don't clean it in between runs. So they will pump the contents of it into a cup. Oh my God. And then they just put the bowl back. Maybe they clean it at the end of the day. And I remember thinking, imagine I got hired to work here and I didn't inherently care about matcha and I tasted this product and then it says the first matcha I ever had. I I couldn't imagine like why are people ordering this? Yeah, like, you know, like, honestly, the way they treat matcha in those cafes, probably, you know, they deserve to be treated that way because they are so just so tastes so bad to be in with.

Zongjun · 10:02

Like probably in those bristles, mine, they were thinking like, wow, this product really sucks. Didn't really deserve any of my mental energy to put in any effort, you know, into this whole process. Or like. Probably what's going on in their.

Zongjun · 10:15

Mind or like to learn more about or to learn more about. This is not like to give baristas a hard time. Like they're doing fantastic work. But if you think about like, like what we care about and why like, there's probably not very much they can do to make that product taste better if they're not even sourcing very good things. Yeah, yeah.

Zongjun · 10:36

I mean, like we're really trying to put in our, you know, outfit into their shoes and trying to make some synthesized, you know, assessment on the whole situation. But you know, really it's there's a lack of equipment, there's a lack of good supply chain of a good product.

Ryan · 10:51

I mean like if those things exist in a coffee level, I bet people will be much more interested into try to create and improve the quality of the product that they're going to create every day. Yeah. So I mean, at the very baseline level, you have garbage in, garbage out. If you're not sourcing good product, you're not going to make very good drinks and it's not going to taste very good. And then the second level is like the responsibility of the preparer.

Zongjun · 11:18

So how they deal about both preparation and storage? And the Third Point is consumer, no consumer had the experience of the high quality product, thus they don't have any expectation to the barista. Thus, the barista doesn't have any responsibility to improve the drinks that they're already been making every day with the same procedures.

Ryan · 11:39

Yeah, Why change something that people already like? Because a lot of coffee shops serve matcha more out of obligation. It's more of a pool than a push where consumers are pulling it. There's demand for this thing. People want matcha. People are asking for matcha.

Ryan · 11:55

It's not companies finding something really good and pushing it on to consumers. You do start to see more and more of that now, but at least historically, we're talking about your average cafe and your average consumer.

Ryan · 12:07

By the way, this is a very reductive discussion. We're very much talking about the average case. There are people doing fantastic work and a lot of baristas doing a lot of fantastic work as well. We're really are interested in what are the structural barriers to get the average cafe serving a good product so that it's ubiquitous and available, it's at a good price and there's a lot of variety that is like the the really good three things that make up a specialty market where you have fair pricing, you have choices and you can find it everywhere. And that's like, I hope at that when like we're later on in our career looking back that we can

Ryan · 12:47

see a matcha industry at a random cafe and not have to ask the question, why is all of the matcha so bad? But you know it, we've come a long way. I mean, you go back 10 years ago, not every cafe had matcha, right? So we are making a lot of progress. It's entering the mainstream consumer lexicon. Cafes are starting to adopt it.

Ryan · 13:06

And we're in the Super early, early, early days. And like, if you look at the pipeline of education, if you're a barista, if you're a cafe owner from a knowledge perspective, you will basically run into two different things.

Ryan · 13:19

If you are researching and want to learn more about matcha, the first tea ceremony, right? And typically people who are baristas or at least stereotypically who are baristas are very inclusive, very culturally sensitive and aware and don't want to sort of negatively contribute to what could be perceived as cultural appropriation or like these neo forms of colonialism. And then people who really generally care about coffee programs and giving farmers a fair price and direct trade very like.

Ryan · 13:53

Respectful. Very respectful, right So when you're educating yourself about matcha, you run into tea ceremony and these are a group of people who are already generally very sensitive to like these types of things and want to do it justice. So they buy, you know a bamboo whisk chasen and in a tea bowl and doing it the way that it's been done in Japan. The problem is, is that the ceremonial equipment may or may not make much sense within a Cafe context. So that that's one problem that people run into. And then the second direction you can go is if you are just product focus is you get educated about different grades if culinary grade and

Ryan · 14:31

ceremonial. And because anyone can call anything ceremonial grade, at one point it was probably a reliable descriptor for quality. When Japan started making more and more matcha at an industrial scale as an ingredient to be used in things like ice cream or desserts or confectioneries, they needed a term to differentiate matcha as an ingredient. So they chose culinary grade and matcha that was meant to be consumed.

Ryan · 14:56

And at some point, the history is actually very unclear. Someone somewhere invented the term ceremonial grade. And at one point in those early days, it was probably a very good descriptor. But now you have hundreds of matcha companies that can call anything anything, and everyone claims to be sourcing the best. And ceremonial grade could be a fantastic product or a really crappy one.

Ryan · 15:17

Yeah, the term is not regulated by any means. So, and it's a form of top down positioning where your vendors self labeling product as quality and the average quality is very bad. So you're educating yourself on ceremonial grade. You're trusting these vendors, you're tasting samples or someone else has already made a purchasing decision at your Cafe or in your company and you taste it and like, it doesn't taste very good on average.

Ryan · 15:44

Of course there's good and bad ceremonial grade because that label doesn't mean anything. It's so it doesn't create much of an incentive, doesn't create an aha moment. Oh, I want to learn more. It's like, oh, I had this amazing cup of coffee. Like why was it so good?

Ryan · 15:57

Let me learn more about this thing so that I make it even better. Yeah, it's not inspiring. Not enough people have that primary sensory experience of liquid inspiration, of liquid green inspiration that really strikes a passion within them and something that we're starting to see a lot of people build businesses around our workshops. So like a lot of people I know, MTCH does a lot of workshops. Chaseki in Thailand is a lot of workshops, Matcha Moments and Jacque and Matcha in the Philippines do a lot of workshops there.

Zongjun · 16:27

And they're teaching cafes and other businesses on how to prepare it well and giving them that first taste of a good product. Yeah. And they're really, you know, the pioneer of the first push. I think that's really important because like right now for the average consumers and the average Bristas, they all don't know better. How could they know if there's not good much of just to be available for them in a lot of places. So I think this is really meaningful for the community and the industry because like there, there has to be a first exposure for a good product for anyone to start carrying. Yeah, exactly.

Ryan · 17:04

You have to taste something good for for people to value it. And the same thing needs to be true on the consumer end too. So I think consumers are finally getting to a state where they can demand more out of a out of a business.

Ryan · 17:17

And actually a lot of these much influencers that go around to different cafes reviewing their products sort of doing the best of or the worst of in New York or LA or San Francisco. And it actually is kind of nice. At least there is some form of consumer accountability. Forcing function.

Ryan · 17:34

Yeah, we're like, bad product is getting more exposed. You create an incentive for cafes to increase average quality. And so in that sense, they're very good. As a small business ourselves, I would be horrified if someone gives like, like it's a really like exposing yourself when someone's going around being very publicly critical. It is much more difficult to create things in this world, like to judge other people who have created that. Yeah.

Ryan · 18:02

So I mean, these people have a big responsibility. But at the same time, it does allow for some standard incentive for standards to to be raised. And so in that sense, they're actually a really important part of the value chain and the feedback loop that is required to have Matcha become to get better.

Zongjun · 18:18

Yeah, but if you compare it to coffee, you know, Matcha right now does have a lack of passworthy information pool or knowledge pool, right? Like, if you look at coffee, you can, you know, look at James Hoffman, all of these successful coffee people. Matt Berger.

Zongjun · 18:33

Matt Berger Hostel. Really teaching this this like very practical, actionable coffee knowledge for baristas, for coffee business and. For consumers. For consumers too. And you have all these coffee equipment manufacturer making really professional equipments for coffee, not only for consumers, but also for professional businesses to survive fires their needs and they understand the needs. And these equipments were created specifically for coffees like for Cafe shops.

Zongjun · 19:04

They are not some retrofitting weird adaptation of some legacy tools that were created for a totally different purpose. By that I mean, you know, chasen and chawan and all of the tea whisking bowls from the legacy tea ceremony practice.

Zongjun · 19:18

That's a very sad reality for matcha right now because like where where is the upgrade for equipment? If for for a chasen. Like you can buy more expensive chasen but it's still a chasen. For the whisking bowl, you can buy more expensive whisking bowl like you can upgrade from raku to a tenmoku but the functionality wipes is still the same. Yeah, there's no functional upgrade. Yeah, so like but you can also go down the quality. But the other direction that you can pick is that you know, you totally ditch all of these equipments you are starting preparing pre made matcha mooch that should you know, pour straight into your your milk and

Zongjun · 19:59

to make. A matcha matcha latte. These are really the two directions that you can go right now for matcha preparation. In coffee you have this great ecosystem. I mean, you can just constantly upgrade your grinder to get like better and better results, or your espresso machine to get better and better results, or all of these tools that can automate and help the workflow work. There's no.

Zongjun · 20:24

Up doesn't exist in matcha yet. Yeah, it doesn't exist yet. There's a big infrastructure gap, which is something that we're working on to be totally transparent. But we do think and we, you know, we wouldn't be working on it if we didn't think it was a big structural problem holding matcha quality back, which is what we care about.

Zongjun · 20:40

But you know, we are working on a grinder and we're working on a bolt, but there are so many other things that people can be working on and people can find new ways to optimize Bristol's professional endeavor to help them make better tasting matcha.

Zongjun · 20:56

And I think another angle to this about creating demand for a better product, ultimately what we're advocating for is a group of consumers. We would like to see a large group of consumers all over the world who are willing to pay more for a better product. That is what a specialty market is. People who can look at products, understand how they're differentiated based on origin or processing or cultivar or all these interesting things that can lead to different sensory outcomes, different flavor outcomes, and be willing to pay more for a better product that's handled with more care. And once this group of consumers

Zongjun · 21:29

is created, it will create the demand that both will lead to better sourcing. So Cafe is getting an inherently better product because garbage in, garbage out. You can take very low quality matcha, put it through an amazing process and still get bad matcha at the end.

Zongjun · 21:45

Same thing with coffee or anything else for that matter. But then also on the preparation side where, you know, it can be a flex for a cafe to have this piece of equipment or that piece of equipment where you really understand that they're focusing on quality, which is their value add.

Zongjun · 22:00

Like there's this wonderful saying and I forget what it's a tribute to, I apologize. I think it's in the coffee world that they say like coffee is made three times. Coffee is made at the farm, coffee is made by the roaster, and coffee is made by the barista.

Zongjun · 22:14

And things can go very wrong at each stages in the value chain. And cafes are in a wonderful position at both selecting coffee from roasters or sometimes they're the roasters themselves. And then the preparers, so they have like 2 very critical decisions to make, both like the inputs and the process that lead to the final outcome.

Zongjun · 22:35

So we need to see improvement across that entire workflow because right now, like where is the process upgrade? No, doesn't exist. This equipment doesn't exist. And where do we, where, where do we learn from that the trustworthy information pool that you know, everybody can look and reference and have, you know, a common vocabulary and language to communicate with each other also doesn't exist yet. So let's talk a little bit about that process. So one very obvious low hanging fruit is fresh ground. If you have the like let's use Ooika for an example in New Jersey, they have ishi-usu, they've taken great liberty and agency of milling matcha fresh.

Zongjun · 23:17

So their inputs are tencha, they mill it fresh, which is part of their value creation and then creating the final beverage. And so that's one very important processing step because once matcha is milled, everything goes wrong and then immediately starts oxidizing. Another huge one is around ratios and temperature, huge issues within matcha and can lead to drastically different sensory outcomes.

Zongjun · 23:40

And some good, some bad. And sometimes it's very context specific. And something you see a lot in Southeast Asia are cold wasting or even whisking with milk where people don't want their drink watered down at all. So they'll use a plastic chasen and a bowl and cold whisk with milk. And it's actually a very labor intensive method because it takes quite a long time to get the matcha into suspension within cold milk.

Zongjun · 24:03

So you see things like that. You also see an MTCH, for example, variable temperature extraction and same thing in koto tea space in Bangkok, where they start with lower temperature, create a very thick paste similar to koicha, and they kind of have to knead it. And then they add in hot water right at the right ratios and then mix it in and leads to very different sensory outcomes, both because you're drastically changing extraction time, but also extract variable extraction temperature. And so there's all of these various inputs that can lead to a very different flavor profile outcomes. And sometimes foam is a good

Zongjun · 24:37

thing and sometimes foam is a bad thing. So there's all of these agencies or different steps that you can do to modulate the flavor profile to lead to different outcomes. Because depending on how you're serving it, whether or not it's a tonic or a latte or an americano or a koicha or an usucha, the product needs to be treated in very different ways, right?

Ryan · 24:58

Matcha is not made once, it's made three times. And at the end, it's the primary job of the cafe. So Sam, let's think about other industries for a second. Let's reverse this question and pick one of the oldest specialty industries probably in the world.

Zongjun · 25:13

And let's think about it from a consumer perspective. Why is wine so good in? France, it's, you know, it's the country of origin 1st and there are generations of the experience both at the manufacturer's side, the farmer's side and the consumer side of, you know, knowing and expecting what is a good product.

Zongjun · 25:35

And it's a finished product. It doesn't need to be prepared. You control the bottle and you know, you open the cork and pour it into your glass. I wanna you have a fantastic product right into your face. It's kind of a minor miracle, like even if we ignore the piece about it being a finished product, right? Like you can buy fantastic wine for two to €5 at the grocery store.

Ryan · 25:57

If you're really splurging maybe 20 unless you're buying champagne in which maybe you need to spend 30 in France, which I mean, these prices are crazy. It's everywhere. It's very easy to find and there's a huge variety. And I think what's driving that is not only what you said around the producers, but you have a, you have a group of consumers that understand the difference between these products and value it and then thus spend money on it. But you know this, this group of consumer can only exist when there is availability of the the choice. Chicken in an egg problem again.

Ryan · 26:31

It happens both ways. So you need both the supply and the demand side of this. Yeah, similar, you know, situation that we're encountering in Matcha too. We can only have a experienced consumer group out there pulling higher quality product from cafes, from the manufacturer if they know better. The ultimate responsibility I think lays on us, you know how do we offer consumer better quality product? US as an industry.

Zongjun · 26:59

How do we offer them better quality products? How do we offer our peers better quality products so that we can grow the pie larger as a whole? I think that's something that we should consider and we should really push ourselves.

Ryan · 27:15

Yeah, and actually, I think it relates back to the the last episode that we did show don't tell. I mean, we should not be preaching to cafes and coffee companies and shaming them into creating a higher quality product. We're the ones selling the matcha. It doesn't look, it looks very disingenuous actually to say, look, you are treating this product horribly and you're sourcing crap.

Ryan · 27:35

That's not that's not a good sales pitch. It's not going to work. You have to show. You have to show don't tell. Like the Johnny Matcha demo. Taste side by side, taste the difference yourself or even better and arm them with knowledge.

Zongjun · 27:46

And you know, and also arm them with the supply. Now you know better. Voila, we have the solution too. We can help you. And the infrastructure or the supply chain is already here? Now I'm showing like look at how other businesses and other places are doing it, especially taking a very similar playbook in Southeast Asia and where you have like people, MTCH, for example, wonderful example where the sensory description, the flavor description of each matcha product is different depending on if it's served with water or with milk. But that's a really next level level of detail and you can get profiles there that and taste

Zongjun · 28:24

anywhere from like super clean umami, creamy all the way through, like dark chocolate, roasted chocolate notes all the way to like this very green fresh vegetable. They have all this diversity of different flavor profiles in the way that they're communicating it and really expanding the potential for what it can be. And it'd be interesting to get the coffee people interested. I bet if they went there and they tasted it and tried it themselves they would fun realize this is incredible that they can also then explain it to their consumers as well. Yeah, the preparer needs to get excited first. Yeah, the businesses need to get

Zongjun · 29:01

excited first. I think the pendulum needs to swing back and forth. But right now it's currently very much in the consumer side, in the home market, people making matcha at home. The average quality of matcha at home in the US is probably better than with being served in cafes on average. And that should probably swing back the other way. And where coffee companies can see it is a real point of differentiation not only among their competitors, but better serving the the needs and preferences of their consumers. And so maybe sourcing something like Yame matcha, which is more roasty, toasty, nutty profiles,

Ryan · 29:36

which are most Americans and Europeans are probably more primed to like than the Super grassy profiles. Then maybe the Super grassy profiles really met the preferences of the early, early adopters of matcha in the US where the health, health food people, you know, people who would want to take get a green juice or take a wheat grass shot, right? Like if it's a really widen the aperture of potential consumers, new flavor profiles need to be made too. You know, matcha is not a monolith. Matcha isn't matcha isn't matcha. But typically on a menu, that's all you see. You don't even get the the place

Zongjun · 30:09

of origin to see work matcha latte. Matcha latte. I'm a. Uji matcha latte or Yame matcha latte? Or Asahi matcha latte. Well, that might be a waste of precious Asahi. That's true. That's to go back to that controversy. That's true. But yeah, I don't know what do you, we'd love to hear from anyone listening to what you think about why the quality is so low from a structural point of view and what we can do as an industry to raise quality so that it's ubiquitous, there's great variety, and it's at an affordable price with a group of consumers who really value this incredible plant, this incredible product, which is

Zongjun · 30:48

Matcha, which is high quality matcha, right? I think that's a great place to end. And do you have anything to finish off on? No. You know, there's still a lot of missing pieces out there. We talk about the product, the matcha, the self and also the preparation method equipment.

Zongjun · 31:04

There's still a lot of missing pieces on the equipment and we are working on one of them. It's it'd be a little bit unfair to criticize people like not making their or milling their matcha fresh at the moment. You know, it's not everyone can afford an ishi-usu straight from Japan and know how to maintain them from a day-to-day basis or have the supply chain to, you know, import very high quality tencha in this whole matcha shortage, You know, reality that we are facing right now.

Zongjun · 31:33

You know, it's that there are still a lot of missing pieces from different parties. But you know, we as a community should work on it. We all work on our own unique difficulties and solve them, and then we can all grow together.

Ryan · 31:46

And hats off to all the matcha businesses out there. Huge thank you from us who are hosting workshops and interacting with consumers and doing lectures and getting like really high quality product into people's hands for the first time. I really think this is like literally going to be a door to door type of activity where people like, there's no reason for them to be interested unless they have a good experience with the product 1st.

Ryan · 32:11

And so everyone who's doing all that great work, thank you so much. I think it's going to make the future of specialty matcha a really great and it it's sort of the key to making this all work because without intrinsic motivation, why would anyone bother creating something that's good enough when when they already think it's good enough.

Ryan · 32:29

So anyway, if you have a, if you have anything to add, please reach out, let us know. We'd love to talk with you. We'd love to record potentially another episode when this is just our perspective after having talked to a bunch of people. But thanks so much for listening and we'll see you in the next one.

Zongjun · 32:44

See you in the next episode.