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Opinion: Where is all the perspective? · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:06
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Much Podcast.
0:09
My name is Ryan. This is my Coho Zhongjun who
0:11
also goes by Sam. Hello.
0:12
Hello. And we're the cofounders of
0:14
Sanko Match Products. Yeah, we launched this podcast
0:16
to discuss our learning journey, much our share startup stories
0:18
and into the experts. And today's episode is where is
0:21
all the perspective. This isn't necessarily where we
0:24
have a fully fledged solution that we're here to present.
0:28
We actually just started talking about this casually and we were
0:31
like, actually, this probably could be a whole podcast
0:33
episode. And what we're trying to
0:35
decipher is why a lot of the new magic companies look and feel
0:41
the same. Everyone has their own color
0:43
palette, their own aesthetic choices.
0:45
But when you really look at modern contemporary matcha
0:48
marketing, there is remarkably little unique perspective.
0:53
Everyone is using the same philosophies.
0:56
Everyone is using very similar set of aesthetics from from from
1:01
mostly from tea ceremony or for some Japanese motifs.
1:05
And it's just not quite like what we see in other industries.
1:09
Yeah, I think the problem, it's a little more fundamental in the
1:12
way that they probably get their macho from the same supplier
1:15
too, I guess the same. And it's just getting
1:18
repackaged. So some June there's something I
1:21
didn't mention to you, but so the other day I was listening to
1:23
a podcast with a woman named Andrea Allen was being
1:26
interviewed. Her Cafe in Bentonville, AR,
1:30
Onyx Coffee Labs and her grandma, home of Walmart
1:35
headquartered the Walmart's global headquarters, which is
1:38
one of the founders of Onyx Coffee and their cafe in
1:41
Bentonville, AR was recently named the best cafe in the
1:44
world. And she's being interviewed by
1:46
the two hosts on a wonderful coffee podcast called It's Just
1:50
Coffee. Great podcast, highly
1:52
recommended. Those guys have so much energy.
1:54
I really would love to invite them on our podcast.
1:57
They also hate matcha. It's actually like every single
2:01
time they talk about matcha, it is like, I just anyone want
2:05
this? It's super earthy, It's
2:07
disgusting, we have to make it. But what do people even see in
2:11
it? Like I'm sure they're experts in
2:12
it, but really this is just earthy pond water.
2:19
I might have added some illustration to this reenacted,
2:22
but it's certainly what it sounds like when they talk about
2:24
matcha. And one of the things that they
2:26
do, which I actually would someday like to include,
2:29
although I think it's too early in our industry, is they ask
2:32
their guests that they invite on to be interviewed for their hot
2:34
takes. They call it a hot take with
2:37
cream and two sugars. And they asked her, her hot take
2:40
about the coffee industry in general.
2:41
In other words, where does she have an opinion where people
2:45
might disagree with her in the industry?
2:47
And they really asked her to be like intellectually honest with
2:50
herself and pick something where she would expect pushback.
2:54
She said something really profound that got me thinking
2:57
about our industry, Mata. And she said, you know, so many
3:00
people open a new cafe and a lot of them just don't really know
3:04
what they're talking about and aren't bringing any unique
3:07
perspective. They're recycling and reusing
3:10
someone else's thoughts, someone else's philosophy, someone
3:14
else's words, without even having like the depth or breadth
3:18
of knowledge to approach it and form their own opinion on the
3:22
topics. That got me thinking like, wow,
3:25
actually so many matcha companies look exactly the same.
3:30
Like not to pick on anything in particular.
3:32
It's just the observation that came to my mind.
3:34
The word hana or flower in Japanese, HANA is the name of so
3:40
many people's matcha. If you just Google hana matcha,
3:44
there are like dozens of different products from
3:47
different brands. And everyone likes calling their
3:50
blend hana. And then, you know, they put a
3:52
big sakura blossom somewhere. Maybe that's over
3:55
generalization, but you know, I was talking with Sam and I was
3:58
like, you know, our industry, everyone feels like they're
4:00
doing the same thing. There are these unique
4:04
perspectives and to be perfectly clear, you know, everyone that
4:08
we've invited on our podcast, we feel like they have a unique
4:10
perspective. So we realized in this complaint
4:13
that it sounds like we're describing a lot of people's
4:16
Matcha brand, but this is more of an investigation as to why we
4:20
get this vibe. Like we don't have hard data.
4:23
It's more of a vibe that if you compare it to specialty coffee
4:26
or some other industries, Matcha just feels incredibly boring
4:31
with lack of a better word. There's the specialty camp,
4:34
there's the people that kind of sell Japan, and there's very
4:37
little diverse or unique perspective.
4:39
I think one reason of of what could be causing this phenomenon
4:42
is the matcha specialty. Matcha is just so new.
4:46
It's a scarce. There's a real scarcity of
4:49
information and story that could be told by people.
4:53
A lot of people are still trying to explore into, you know,
4:56
what's going on out there and, you know, like, coffee has been
4:59
around for millennia and so are a lot of other beverages.
5:03
So as much are, you could argue, hundreds of years of practice.
5:07
By a very niche group of people and.
5:10
And a country with closed borders.
5:12
And that evolved into a very interesting culture that that
5:16
has its its own complexities. And with modernization, it
5:21
really brought forth commercial matcha, like matcha as
5:26
ingredient, matcha as a, you know, a flavor to, you know,
5:30
things like ice creams and snacks.
5:32
And I would say that's a very good foundation for any kind of
5:35
special product. Like for any kind of true
5:38
thriving special product, you, you need a commodity market to
5:41
support that. And I think that's, that's,
5:44
that's a prerequisite necessity for a specialty matcha to exist.
5:49
But but for specialty matcha, it's just so new, like people
5:53
are still trying to figure out what to how to weave the story
5:56
or the narrative. And there is a very established
6:00
place playbook, and that playbook draws on genuinely
6:03
beautiful philosophy. If you're about creating a
6:06
mindfulness ritual, if you're about seeing imperfection in
6:10
things and finding those imperfections beautiful, If
6:13
you're about seasonality and having things change with the
6:16
seasons, If you're about the calm and zenness or something
6:20
like matcha and its energy profile that it gives you, these
6:23
are pretty like universal selling points.
6:26
And when you're in the business of selling tea, which is what
6:29
all matcha brands are, it makes sense that you draw on that
6:33
established playbook. But then how do you develop a
6:37
unique perspective on top of that?
6:39
Like everyone's pulling from the same source of inspiration.
6:43
Is it that there are no other sources of interesting things
6:48
for people to gather inspiration?
6:50
From well, one thing that people would naturally look into is
6:53
Channelview, right? You know, like people draw
6:55
inspiration from it, people trying to mimic its statics and
7:00
and I think that's a trap in disguise because people trying
7:04
to do innovations on top of channel, you will naturally fall
7:10
into a very dangerous realm of being accused as cultural
7:14
appropriation. And I, I don't, I don't have
7:18
any, you know, side to take on on that.
7:20
And I think it's really about intention of boring ideas or
7:25
getting inspired by, by things. But, but I think it's a dilemma,
7:29
right? Like people, people will look at
7:32
channel view and they were trying to borrow ideas from
7:34
channel view. But then like either they're
7:37
getting accused of being culturally, you know,
7:40
appropriating something or they just become so careful about
7:44
this very element or whatever elements that they appreciate.
7:48
And and that mindset is the opposite of innovation.
7:52
Yeah, well, you draw criticisms from both sides.
7:56
If you take the liberty to do enough interpretation and you're
8:00
careless or even slightly careless about it, you know
8:04
someone's going to criticize you for using a plastic chassen.
8:07
That's not what they use in Japan, Sam.
8:09
No samurais are using these plastic chassen or mixing their,
8:14
you know, their macho with sparkling water, right?
8:17
So it draws criticism from the accusers, the population of, I
8:22
mean, the subpopulation of people that like to accuse
8:26
others of cultural appropriation.
8:28
And then on the opposite side, if you go too close, you're
8:31
literally just copying the form of chanoyu and like, and
8:35
sometimes it really manifests itself in some really beautiful
8:38
ways. Like if you do, if you go to
8:41
Kyoto and you go to a wonderful cafe called Yugen, I think they
8:45
have a beautiful high fidelity, quick version of matcha
8:51
preparation that mimics the spirit and the form of Chana Yu
8:56
that happens at a bar. It's fast, it's beautiful, it's
9:01
easy to take your picture. They work clean.
9:04
Everything is presented clean. There's all this crap
9:07
everywhere. Everything has its place.
9:09
Just like in Chana Yu, the bowl gets preheated, then the bowl
9:12
gets dried and then they take out the natsu.
9:15
It's like really particular set of sequences.
9:18
The way you get created, the interaction you have, you get to
9:21
pick out your own bowl. It's a really nice modern
9:24
interpretation of a very traditional thing.
9:26
And but there's also when you get that close to something so
9:31
traditional like a temi, you can't make that much extra
9:36
interpretation. Yeah, unless you are a Yamoto.
9:40
Or you're really someone with like a lot of seniority that's
9:44
really looked up to enough. And actually this is something
9:47
David from Tizumi was talking about in his school, which is a
9:49
little more flexible. And apparently finding some of
9:52
the tea dogu or tea equipment is very difficult in the US.
9:56
It can be very expensive. And one of the time eyes that
9:58
they were doing needed a Candlestick holder.
10:01
And like they just didn't have the Japanese Candlestick holder
10:05
that was typically, and he said that someone and these
10:08
Candlestick holders, I think believe they have three feet.
10:11
So someone took a three. I don't know what they're
10:14
called, a three time a fork and they bent one of them to make a
10:19
little tripod and then use that as the Candlestick holder,
10:23
which, you know, he described is just brilliantly creative.
10:27
And this is both trying to mimic the form, but also really
10:31
mimicking the spirit of utilizing what you have.
10:35
Ah, to your vet in terms of what you have available to you.
10:39
Yeah, a little more scrappy, but a lot more authentic to that
10:42
practitioner themselves with they have access to.
10:45
But technically there's very little room to do that because
10:48
you're going to get called out on either side for making those
10:51
types of interpretations. Yeah, I I totally agree.
10:55
And and you know that particular school and also you can being
10:59
Japanese to begin with, I think true offers them a lot of
11:03
immunity. And Japan's not really a place
11:05
where you see any form of a major step forward and
11:09
revolution for anything. I they seem to be master
11:13
perfectors and they import new things and then perfect them.
11:18
But as a hub or a source of really new innovation, it
11:22
doesn't feel like it's the proper breeding ground for those
11:26
types of ideas, especially things like matcha that are just
11:30
so entangled in Japan's past. And you know, it's just another
11:34
way of saying it has a lot of cultural baggage and maybe
11:37
entangled to slightly more friendly word, but it's, I don't
11:41
know, it's a it's a little bit crazy.
11:43
So like, why hasn't anyone been more innovative on the in
11:48
innovative on the speciality side, you had some early movers
11:52
like with Kettle, you have Olika, which is a huge early
11:55
mover in promoting Matcha as a fresh ground product.
11:59
But like now we're starting to see as a playbook for specialty
12:03
matcha and it all kind of begins to feel a little bit more like
12:06
the same where everyone's copying the specialty playbook.
12:09
And you can see people had creating reels explaining about
12:13
why they're moving away from the term ceremonial grade to all of
12:16
these other things. But like, how is it that we're
12:19
not creating more companies, more brands, more thought
12:23
leaders that are doing things that are genuinely provocative
12:28
in the space that take a real risk?
12:30
I think one of the fundamental reasons of this is not happening
12:34
in a way that coffee or beer or wine have happened in the past,
12:40
is that up until very recently, matcha can only be produced in
12:45
Japan, proper matcha. And there's a real lack of
12:49
agency of people doing any kind of serious innovation like
12:53
cultivation, processing, blending a cultivar selection,
12:57
and all of those would require participation of people in Japan
13:03
or facilities in Japan or equipments in Japan.
13:06
And that's really bottlenecking a lot of innovation, I think.
13:10
Yeah. What risks or perspectives can
13:13
you take on? You can have a sourcing
13:14
perspective. You can have perspective on the
13:17
way you present it to someone and how it's in their life feel.
13:19
In a cafe. You can do perspective because
13:22
you can control the product that's being actually consumed,
13:26
right? When you hand someone a matcha
13:27
latte, they're actually doing the, the consumer is not really
13:31
changing it anyway. Or you hope they're not changing
13:33
it in any meaningful way by dumping in, you know, a ton of
13:37
sugar or something like after you've prepared them really nice
13:40
koicha or something. Although honestly, even
13:43
something like a sweetened koicha, I bet someone somewhere
13:48
could make a sweet and koicha taste incredible.
13:52
Yeah, yeah. There is some combination of
13:54
things you can do even there that could just dimensionalize
13:59
and move you from point A to point B that allow you to see
14:04
this product from a very different perspective.
14:07
And in a way where anyone who knows what they're talking about
14:11
is going to say, oh, wow, I don't, I don't know.
14:14
That seems wasteful. It seems expensive.
14:16
If someone went to all the effort to make that flavor
14:20
profile for you and now you're putting your hand on that
14:24
painting, you're adding a brush stroke, which is and that's
14:28
where I think some of these most were the most brazen, but also
14:32
some of the most interesting perspectives lie where there is
14:36
failure. If there's not room to be
14:39
criticized, are you really creating new perspective or new
14:44
risk? Yeah, yeah.
14:45
And for the majority of the people that you are going to
14:49
work with in Japan, there's a serious generation gap between
14:54
you and those people. Like the average age of tea
14:57
farmers are 65 in Japan. Even higher, I think.
15:01
Even higher now and, and you know, older people are naturally
15:04
less risk tolerant, which is very understandable.
15:08
And occasionally you will see people like, you know who we met
15:13
in Bison Nakamura being very innovative.
15:16
Yeah, that was the first time in Japan that I thought, oh, wow, I
15:19
see this differently now. Yeah.
15:21
They're young, Yeah, they are young.
15:24
I think that really matters. Very true.
15:26
And they know what they're talking about.
15:29
They know a lot about matcha. They have enough context to do
15:33
that exploration. Because if you don't have a lot
15:36
of context, you're just a fool wandering around in the dark.
15:40
You deserve to be criticized by those people because you don't
15:44
know. You don't know that you're, you
15:47
know, making this grave mistake for this weird cultural context
15:50
that you weren't even aware of. So knowledge really is a
15:54
prerequisite into forming a new perspective in the same way
15:58
that, let's be real, like you couldn't be like a restaurant
16:01
critic and critiquing a new, I don't know, let me pick an
16:06
obscure cuisine Bolivian restaurant in New York if no one
16:10
should be doing that critique. No one has any business doing
16:13
that critique if they don't know anything about the culinary
16:17
history of Bolivia, if they've ever eaten Bolivian food, right?
16:21
Like same thing. Like it's a big problem in the
16:24
critique worker. I'm sure it's a big problem in
16:25
the art world because all of this stuff, all of these brands,
16:29
all of these markets, all of these industries exist in some
16:33
pre-existing context. And unless you are aware of that
16:36
context, it's very difficult to give thoughtful critique or
16:40
criticism, which is ultimately the feedback by which all of
16:43
this moves forward. But it is so much more difficult
16:47
to take the risk and create a new idea that it is to critique
16:51
someone who has actually done that creation.
16:53
It's like literally like 99 times harder birthing something
16:58
into the world than it is critiquing what exists in front
17:02
of you. Like, and I mad respect to
17:05
everyone who does take that risk in those perspectives, because
17:09
if it's not a risk, then it's not that interesting.
17:11
And as you said, I think a big problem with the industry in
17:14
general, Like if you compare it to coffee, there's all sorts of
17:18
risks that you can take as a producer.
17:20
You can do it in your sourcing. There's this whole new thing
17:24
that we've talked about here about Co ferments and coffee
17:27
where they take first when when you process coffee, you need to
17:31
remove the fruit from the coffee seed and you can ferment it with
17:35
other things such as fruits. So there's a lot of coffee now
17:38
that are called KO fermenter. They'll dump in some pineapple
17:41
juice and some mango puree. They stuff it in a bag and
17:44
typically it's anaerobic. So they close the bag, no
17:47
oxygen. It sits there and the and the
17:49
coffee end up ends up tasting like what you put in it, like
17:53
mangoes and like pineapple. And a lot of people in the
17:56
specialty world say, OK, now it's not very terroir driven,
17:59
right? The reason you taste mangoes are
18:00
pineapple because there are mangoes and pineapple like had
18:04
nothing thing to do with the cultivar, the roasting, the the
18:07
growing, the production and then so that's a very valid criticism
18:11
that those products are no longer to are expressive.
18:13
The people on the other side say, well it's a flavor people
18:16
like and typically no one takes their best coffee and does this
18:21
type of Co fermentation. So it's a way of turning what
18:24
would have been considered a defective specialty coffee batch
18:30
and adding value to it, right? This is a beautiful example of
18:35
new perspective creation, right? So if you took tensha and
18:38
commingled it with osmanthus flowers and remove the osmanthus
18:42
flowers, this argument on both sides is literally exactly the
18:47
same. I mean, people have done that in
18:48
China for hundreds of years, sending, you know, green tea
18:52
with mantis or gardenia flour. So basically identical to do the
18:57
process of coffee, maybe less wet, but they would basically
19:01
pile flour and tea together and then they ferment oxidized
19:05
together, generate some heat and then they will remove the
19:09
flower. They sift the flower out.
19:10
I can see that totally being done to Tanja or like, I don't
19:14
know, dry mango peel. Or that could could totally
19:17
work. That could totally work.
19:19
But Even so, I mean, this would be risky.
19:21
I know a lot of people, and I'm sure a lot of people that we've
19:24
even interviewed on this podcast would be horrified by that idea.
19:28
And they'd actually be very against any tampering of a
19:32
product that someone's already put so much work and time and
19:34
money into. Yo, we should do that with
19:36
Chinese Tanja, right? Let's do it to experiment.
19:40
No, why not? And then the other thing is, you
19:42
know, process driven, when you're a roaster, you have a lot
19:46
of control over the end flavor profile of coffee.
19:50
And like, if you go back, I don't know, like 1015 years ago,
19:54
around the same time that I got into specialty coffee, a lot of
19:57
people were really critiquing the Nordic countries because
20:01
they were roasting what they considered to be.
20:04
Very light and the way we're way the language that I would hear
20:08
at the time, I think it's a way too green, way too sour.
20:11
And you know, I guess it's sort of terroir driven.
20:14
But really we don't like these flavors.
20:16
The sort of a debate within the specialty coffee industry of how
20:19
now we don't talk about levels of roast so much.
20:21
It's about how roast developed it is.
20:25
So the vocabulary is kind of moved on from light, medium,
20:27
dark to like how roast developed.
20:30
So when a coffee person says a well developed coffee, they mean
20:34
burnt to all ash, at least by their perspective.
20:37
Which, you know, some people actually do prefer that.
20:41
If you look into the coffee scene in Japan, like and the
20:46
coffee roasting competition, every year that's happening in
20:49
Japan, like dark roast is like the gold.
20:53
Well, yeah, historically less and less thankfully, and then
20:57
the emerging speciality scene. But these Kisa 10s that take
21:01
this sometimes even aged coffee. I've had a Cafe Dambra on Ginza,
21:06
you can get like 1980s aged green coffee.
21:09
So on roasted aged green coffee. I don't know why, what why no
21:16
one did anything with this green coffee from Brazil from 1980
21:21
until 2025 or 2026. I guess we're in now.
21:25
And then decided to roast it a little horrifying.
21:28
I've tried it once. It's actually not even that
21:30
expensive. I think it was like 20 bucks.
21:32
I was like, I have to like, I like, I've never had aged green
21:36
coffee that was freshly roasted. Yeah.
21:38
I I don't really understand its appeal.
21:41
I'll leave. It at that I got to try that.
21:43
I've never tried that in Cafe L'ombre.
21:46
Yeah, it's it's skippable. But it's the the the Quesatan
21:49
itself is very unique. Totally worth the visit and
21:53
there are other coffees are much better I think.
21:57
Yeah, they're all well roasted, developed.
22:00
Well developed. Got to have that preference.
22:03
A unique charm about that. If you're with someone from an
22:05
older generation that tends to like that, I go with them.
22:09
But if you're a modern specialty drinker, maybe go to them to to
22:13
like leaves coffee or something anyway.
22:15
So but what they can do is they can express these different
22:19
flavors, how much they want to express terroir, how much they
22:21
want to express these flavors from my R Browning and
22:24
caramelization that happened during that process.
22:27
And that's exactly what we saw at Baisa Nakamura when he took
22:30
this Atsatsuyu Tensha from Kagushima and did this crazy
22:35
like 30 second toast at high temperature and then milled it
22:39
fresh like, like those notes of hazelnut and nuttiness and the
22:43
chocolate. And this, I mean, we're not
22:45
talking about Hojichai either. I mean, this matcha was still
22:48
bright green. Like I've I've never had
22:51
anything that was so, so fragrantly roasted, but still so
22:56
green. Like I've had like, yeah, we've
22:58
both had this a lot of yummy tea.
23:00
But when you whisk it as a lucid chime, you smelled it.
23:03
You get a very different, like roast freshness, I guess, then
23:07
when you did, when it's very freshly roasted coming off of a
23:10
tensha, a mini tensha. I don't even want to call it
23:14
oven. It's like finisher that he does.
23:16
Yeah, roaster, mini tensha, roaster.
23:19
But I mean, I guarantee you take that exact product and process
23:23
and you plop it in the cafe. They have a very successful
23:26
company. It'd be so interesting to add
23:28
that kind of value. But then again, people kind of
23:31
treat tensha like it's nearly finished when you buy it.
23:35
I mean, it still needs to be milled and you're still doing
23:38
work on top of someone else's work.
23:40
And also just the fact that we have only seen that in Bison
23:43
Nakamura, we don't even know where to buy that piece of
23:47
equipment. It's the availability of
23:51
information and equipment or agency.
23:53
It's very scary. Or mill.
23:55
Or the ability to mill yourself. We're trying to actively solve
23:58
that, but you know, still like people, it's that they, they
24:02
don't have the right equipment to to render their imaginations.
24:06
And even us, let's say we decided to do that tomorrow.
24:09
Like now we know something about milling because we're creating
24:12
this machine, but we don't know anything about tansha roasting.
24:15
And we could very rightly be criticized about the way we were
24:19
doing it if we decided to open a cafe in one of the cities where
24:22
we're based, let's say. Paris totally, I think.
24:25
We don't know anything about processing.
24:27
I think there's some serious magic.
24:29
I mean by some Nakamura get that tension roasted so perfectly and
24:34
so tasty. And so green because that's just
24:37
growing the color. We would have been to other
24:39
places that also roast their tension.
24:42
Maybe I don't call out the name, but if a tension is badly roast
24:46
really really develops this, this burned plastic flavor
24:51
that's very off putting. And I personally tried to roast
24:54
some tension or trying to, well, the intention was to burn out
24:57
the moisture, but that flavor really persist when we were
25:02
trying to do that too. So yeah, it's there's, it's
25:05
unique art and, and requires a lot of experiment and
25:08
experience. I think people need to have
25:11
access to these equipments to be able to even try, and I think
25:16
that's super important and I think that's what's lacking in a
25:19
lot of places. And just straight out knowledge
25:22
transmission, like another way that you could offer a unique
25:25
perspective on matcha as a product is through blending,
25:29
right? And like a very interesting
25:31
unique perspective is to create a blend of the same cultivars to
25:37
homogenize it and create a perspective of an average
25:41
Yabukita, an average Oku Midori. And let's say we did that, we
25:46
sourced Oku Midori from Kagoshima, from Kyoto
25:49
Prefecture, from Nye, from Shizuoka and from Jijiang China.
25:55
And we mixed it together as a Oku Midori blend.
25:58
We would totally get criticized by a lot of people for creating
26:02
a multi country blend, which actually if you think about it
26:05
from a coffees perspective, it is absolutely super weird that
26:10
something like creating a multi country blend would be so taboo
26:16
and so so easily criticizable for for everyone in this
26:21
industry. You literally the first person
26:24
to make a multi country blend that is a serious brand like has
26:28
a lot to lose. I don't think any of the
26:31
predominant matcha specialty players would ever take the risk
26:35
of not taking Japanese tea seriously enough by trying to do
26:40
their own multi country blend. Yeah, I agree.
26:44
The risk is too high on the supplier side with your partners
26:48
in Japan. And and also I think a multi
26:51
country blend has its unique stigma too because it's very
26:57
commodities what a lot of commodity company would do.
27:00
And what a lot of fishy companies Do the shady companies
27:04
do this? Yeah, yeah.
27:05
So the intention really matters and the the result really
27:08
matters. But you really have to be
27:10
fearless because you don't know how you're going to get punished
27:13
in Japan. I'll spare everyone the details,
27:15
but like there is a lot of background politics that go on
27:20
behind the scenes in the industry and even doing
27:23
something that could be perceived as very innocent make
27:26
its way back to people in a chain of communication that goes
27:32
way longer than you would ever know.
27:35
And you would have no idea that you just got blacklisted from
27:40
that producer. You'd have no idea.
27:42
Very rarely are these types of things explicit.
27:45
There's a real price to pay for this level for for doing
27:49
something that would require you to take on such a risk as like a
27:53
multi country blend. There's AI actually, probably
27:57
about half of the Japanese producers that we've met that I
27:59
can think of would stop taking you seriously.
28:02
And maybe it's not. Even cut you out probably.
28:05
And you wouldn't know, and you also wouldn't know if it's their
28:10
perspective or they're afraid of other people's judgement for
28:14
working with you because you did that thing.
28:18
It's a really interesting level of soft power.
28:21
And the deeper you get into the Japanese tea industry, the more
28:24
you realize this implicit culture is like an octopus of
28:29
soft power and control. The way people get blacklisted,
28:33
the way people won't work with some people, but there were
28:35
others. The way that gossip and
28:37
information flows in the industry is all of these levels
28:41
of soft power. And you have to wonder at some
28:44
of these people that do this communication, do they actually
28:46
care that so and so person did this thing?
28:50
Or are the reason they can't work with them is because
28:53
someone else doesn't like them? And like all of this draws back
28:56
to someone somewhere making a judgement.
28:58
And unfortunately, and this is the big problem within the
29:01
Japanese tea industry, as it's an industry controlled by old
29:05
conservative Japanese men, not everyone, but almost entirely
29:10
controlled by very conservative people like like try
29:15
establishing a single origin matcha blend, sourcing from Uji
29:18
itself, and having very visible tattoos.
29:21
That person probably will not allow you to to say that they're
29:26
your farmer. Yeah, I mean, tattoo is very
29:29
tabooed in Japan overall. You can't even go to a regular
29:33
onsen if you have tattooed on your shoulder.
29:37
There's all these like cultural stigma and taboo and boundaries
29:42
that people need to be very careful of when you're working
29:45
with them. And and it's just that, you
29:48
know, like, how do I frame frame this right?
29:50
But it's, it's all these things that you, as you learn more
29:55
context about all these boundaries and stigmas and
29:59
things that you should not speak or touch, it slowly creates a
30:03
cage, a illusioned, a fear of what if you know, like for, for
30:10
any kind of things, any kind of innovation that you are not
30:13
following the rules. Like would I be touching
30:15
something that I should not be touched?
30:17
Like, and, and I think that's very toxic to to, to, to
30:24
people's mind because it, it's, it's almost a paranoid.
30:28
It's like a mental cage that you put yourself in, a safe space
30:32
where you're pretty sure you're not accidentally making this
30:35
mistake. That if you did make that
30:37
mistake, no one would actually tell you that you made that
30:40
mistake. Exactly, exactly.
30:42
Actually, I feel that way all the time when I'm in Japan.
30:46
It's this feeling of being watched or judged, watched and
30:50
judged. I feel less so in in in southern
30:52
Japan, people are much, I would say friendlier for the lack of
30:56
better words, but it's. Well, less uptight.
30:58
Less uptight? Yeah, less.
31:00
Definitely less uptight, much more opened.
31:03
I think it's part of the reason why our friend named Baisa
31:06
Nakamura is so innovative is that he got his knowledge and
31:10
training from the South. In Kagoshima.
31:12
Kagoshima So yeah, if there were any revolution or innovation
31:18
that got started within Japan, I think it will be coming from the
31:22
South most likely. Or from outside Japan.
31:25
I mean, there are people who are unique, uniquely adding to the
31:29
conversation in really interesting ways with new
31:32
perspectives. And for me, at the very
31:34
beginning of my matcha journey, like Ohika was a great example.
31:37
There was no one else talking about fresh ground matcha, the
31:40
importance of fresh ground matcha, how it loses so many
31:43
nutrients and antioxidants even after room temperature, like 30
31:47
to 40% of the EGCG matcha's most prized antioxidant will degrade
31:52
within two months. Like no one was talking like
31:55
that. No one was talking about these
31:57
cultivars in the art of blending.
31:58
It was really fresh perspective, but I was I didn't necessarily
32:03
know I was searching for. Yeah.
32:04
And if you were a matcha innovators, new brand owners of
32:10
back in the days trying to bring fresh milk matcha to the market
32:15
and if you go to Wuji and talk to all these farmers, you were
32:19
most likely will be discouraged to do fresh milk.
32:23
Probably. They.
32:25
This is not your domain. It's very expensive, very
32:27
difficult. And, and for what we have, you
32:32
know, heard from all these farmers that we talked to in
32:34
Wuji, they will tell you that fresh meal matcha doesn't taste
32:37
good. It needs to rest for a few days.
32:40
Just don't do it. You are not creating a valuable
32:43
product, which is I think true for some tensha based on our own
32:49
experience, but definitely not true for a lot of tensha.
32:52
Actually the higher quality it gets the more benefits from a
32:55
little rest, but like 98% of the tenshaw made in Japan absolutely
33:01
tastes better the first day it. Smelled totally agree.
33:05
So yeah, it's like like, imagine you were, you know, like that
33:10
was your first exposure to your idea, like by from arguably the
33:15
most senior people in Japan that knows anything about matcha
33:19
telling you that it's a bad idea.
33:21
Like what would you do? Actually, reasonably speaking,
33:24
if you're using an East Japanese to you so to mill matcha, it is
33:29
especially someone like Mark who is really the first to to do
33:32
this and create a brand that became very highly visible.
33:36
Let's say huge, huge social media presence.
33:39
Like you're importing this giant machine that costs an insane
33:42
amount of money and the shipping.
33:44
And if you drop a stone and you have two stones, you lost half
33:48
your production capacity and it needs to be re sharpened
33:51
periodically to which you need to spend 50kg of granite back.
33:55
And you don't even, you know, if anyone in the United States
33:59
cares that their macho was grown fresh.
34:01
You're, you're like you're, you're entering a market where
34:04
your biggest differentiator is something that most people have
34:07
never thought about before, right?
34:09
Like that's creating new perspective.
34:11
And the reason it's so interesting is because it took a
34:15
risk. You could argue the same framing
34:17
for Kettle, who is super early in specialty matcha days.
34:20
Does anyone actually care about who the farmer is that grew the
34:24
tea or about the specific cultivar that's being sources?
34:28
Is cultivar even a meaningful differentiation?
34:31
If no one knows what a cultivar is, that means you got to
34:33
educate the market, which means you got to create all of the
34:37
demand for that thing that you are now tasked with selling,
34:41
where it's its largest differentiator, right?
34:43
That takes time, money, expertise, and also a massive
34:47
amount of risk because you just don't know if anyone wants it,
34:51
right? Like, you know, and there's so
34:52
many of these categories like that.
34:54
And that's what sort of makes these pockets of perspective so
34:58
interesting. And once someone has done it, it
35:00
becomes quite a bit less interesting because it's not a
35:04
unique perspective anymore. People can iterate on it, refine
35:08
it. You can take it to a market
35:10
that's not even aware of it yet, which is largely what's
35:13
happening now. But like a lot of these things,
35:16
you got to be first and to be first means you got to take
35:20
risk. But you should only take that
35:22
risk if you have enough context to make sure that you're not the
35:25
fool and that everyone who's judging you is the fool who's
35:29
stuck in a very different version of the past.
35:33
And they they're no longer really contemporary.
35:36
They're, they're more preservationalist than they are
35:39
about progressing the praxis forward.
35:42
Yeah. Innovation is hard.
35:43
That's true for other products too.
35:45
And it results in failure most of the time.
35:47
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's difficult.
35:50
And it's even more difficult to scale.
35:53
Like some of the best innovations just don't make any
35:56
commercial sense at all. Or for some reason or another,
35:59
like they just cannot ever like become a thing.
36:03
And for the intersection of those to come together.
36:06
But, and it's the beautiful thing.
36:08
Now you have dozens and dozens and dozens of countries all
36:11
around the world with people who are becoming exposed to this,
36:14
becoming curious, learning more about it, going to Japan,
36:17
talking to producers, A lot of cases, some of them are doing
36:20
their own experiments. And then like this can slowly
36:23
start to happen. And one of the what's is our
36:25
main motivation of the Specialty Matcha podcast.
36:28
We want to see matcha become more interesting and we want to
36:31
see a lot new and interesting and fresh perspectives.
36:35
And you heard it here first, folks, we support failure.
36:38
Try something, anything like, you know, we need to have a
36:42
community that embraces failure, embraces people pushing the
36:47
boundaries, trying something new.
36:49
And it doesn't even have to be like product focus.
36:52
It could be in aesthetics, it could be in messaging.
36:56
I mean, look at Tom Sachs, the artist in New York who did this
36:59
tea service ceremony where people acted out as if they were
37:02
on the moon, like serving chawans that say NASA on it that
37:07
get shipped that add konsugi. And then the wagashi comes from
37:12
a Yoda Pez dispenser. Like that is a fresh perspective
37:16
on something Japanese and something very highly
37:19
traditional. And it's interesting because he
37:22
took a risk. It's like this could very easily
37:25
be perceived as cultural appropriation and insensitive.
37:28
And if Thompson tags didn't know anything about tea ceremony or
37:32
chawan design or the reason why things are placed a certain way,
37:38
it would be cultural appropriation and bastardizing
37:42
and make no sense. But it was precisely that he
37:45
knew the context of tea ceremony that made this so funny.
37:51
Both for people who know nothing in Chanu, but anyone who knows
37:55
anything about Chanu looks at that setup and you cannot help
37:58
but smile. You see so many parallels.
38:02
It's so perfectly captures the spirit of what's going on in tea
38:06
ceremony, not just the form. It's a It's a meme.
38:09
Yeah, it's exactly actually that's it's a meme.
38:12
Yep. It's a, it's an insider meme.
38:14
And I, I think that's, that's very cool, but it takes time for
38:18
people to develop a meme culture in any realm, like a share
38:22
vocabulary, shared inside jokes, shared insider information.
38:26
In talk. Yeah, yeah.
38:28
And yeah, yeah. I think we we just need to be a
38:31
little bit more patient and and people just need to be a little
38:35
bit bolder. Indeed, I think that's a great
38:37
place to stop. All right, so thank you for
38:40
listening. If you enjoyed this, please
38:42
consider sharing with friend and take a risk today when it comes
38:45
to matcha, do something radical. See you in the future.
38:48
See you.