Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / New Culture Creation & End of Season 3

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New Culture Creation & End of Season 3 · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello Ryan from the future here. Apologies, we had a slight audio
0:03
issue with my track, had a slight echo.
0:05
We've tried to remove it and just nothing's working.
0:08
Apologies in advance. Thanks, and welcome to the
0:11
Specialty Match podcast. My name is Ryan.
0:13
This is Michael Hosenjung, who also goes by Sam.
0:16
Hello. Hello.
0:17
And we're the cofounders of Sanka Matcha Products.
0:19
Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss learning journey
0:22
matcha, share startup stories and interview experts, and
0:25
today's episode marks the end of Season 3.
0:28
Yeah, I believe that, Ryan. I know over what was it, 75
0:33
episodes nearly almost every week.
0:35
I think we did one or two weeks off, but I can't believe we've
0:38
kept this going for so long. Yeah, it's been a long time.
0:42
A lot of people came up to our podcasts, discussed their
0:46
journey, share their stories, and we also share a lot of our
0:49
own discoveries throughout the journey.
0:51
Yeah, we learned a lot in the season and we were reviewing all
0:54
of the episodes that we had done and we really think we came a
0:57
long way. We're very happy with the
0:59
progress that we made in Season 2 and with the guests that we
1:02
were able to invite to come on the show.
1:04
Originally, we probably never thought would have agreed to
1:07
come. So that was really exciting and
1:09
just hearing everyone's reaction both to the community and the
1:12
work that we are doing at our other company, it's very
1:15
exciting and validating. Yeah, kind of feed.
1:17
Them and getting their stories and their reactions in this very
1:21
interesting time that we are having right now.
1:24
Matcha shortage, global trend of matcha that is booming.
1:27
All of these, you know, conflicts between, you know,
1:30
manufacturers, tea farmers, consumers.
1:34
So much dramaters, so much drama, so much fun.
1:37
It's almost like watching a drama TV show.
1:41
Yes, from our angle a little bit, but well, we are kind of
1:43
the characters too. So we thought the perfect way to
1:46
put a capstone on Season 3 is to look backwards and talk about
1:51
this new culture that's forming within the global Matcha
1:54
community, which is very different, different than
1:56
anything that's existed before that has caused this shortage,
2:00
but it's also going to lead path into the future.
2:02
So we wanted to do a more like meta analysis from a lot of the
2:06
interviews that we had done and hearing different perspectives
2:09
and kind of distilling in that down and synthesizing it.
2:12
But before we do that, I have a question for you.
2:15
I recently looked up our stats. I'm from our podcast host.
2:18
And how many unique countries do you think listen to this
2:21
podcast? Oh, interesting question unique
2:24
countries. Does it cover all the continent?
2:27
Yes, yes. Wow, getting popular, Ryan.
2:30
I'll just give a random guess 20 it's. 8383 one click from 83
2:36
different countries. Oh wow, you know the number one
2:39
country. United States.
2:41
The US and top three What do you think the next two are was.
2:45
Probably somewhere in Europe, maybe.
2:47
No, no, no. Yes, yes, sorry.
2:49
Like France or Germany maybe? OK.
2:51
And then Australia. You can.
2:53
Illustrate. So I mean English.
2:55
English speaking channel makes sense.
2:57
So that's exciting, That's encouraging.
2:59
Thank you, guys. Thank you.
3:01
Thank you for all the love. Thank you very much.
3:03
We couldn't do this without you. We wouldn't do this without you
3:06
and we would have given up long ago if we weren't able to find
3:10
their own community of other very like minded people, which
3:13
has been very gratifying. Yeah, community is a good word
3:15
to put it together because it's really the foundation of this
3:20
new culture that's being created on top of, you know, all of the
3:23
historical culture and legacies that matcha has been brewing
3:28
across, you know, different countries from China to, you
3:31
know, Korea to Japan. And it's really thriving
3:33
globally right now. Yeah.
3:35
And you know, and these are places probably in the world
3:38
when you look through this country list, if you wind back
3:41
the clock 5 or 10 years, no one really probably knew what Macho
3:45
was or cared about it or had any deep sense of preferences.
3:49
But like, it is like really important to reflect in general
3:52
just how new this culture is of people wanting to drink matcha
3:58
and have and to drink matcha every day, which is the perfect
4:01
segue into this topic. So Zhangjun Sam, you were the
4:05
one who came up with this topic. So can you share a little bit
4:08
about what your initial thoughts were?
4:10
Yeah. So, you know, we've been making
4:12
a lot of analogies between matcha and, you know, coffee and
4:15
wine. And if you look across, you
4:19
know, time and history and, you know, different countries, there
4:23
is a very clear lineage of how different drinking habits,
4:27
drinking culture evolved from time to time related to their
4:30
local, you know, culture, their local cultivar, their local
4:33
tawa, their local interpretation of the very beverage that they
4:37
appreciate. And we are kind of seeing this
4:40
happening like on time right now for matcha.
4:43
Like imagine that there is Internet, there is a coffee
4:48
podcast, you know, 2 or 3000 years ago when we are observing
4:52
coffee stepping out from Ethiopia or Yemen to other
4:56
countries throughout the silk growth throughout trading and
4:59
people starting talking about this, you know, magical black
5:02
beans. It's happening right now too
5:04
much and we are seeing it and we are seeing it's very infancy.
5:10
It's, you know, a couple 100 or like maybe a couple decades
5:14
later, we look back and examine the topics that talking about
5:18
right now. Like, like people are literally
5:20
debating over whether or not we should add milk into matcha.
5:24
That's like a hot topic, a hot debate.
5:26
Like people will probably laugh and be like, you know, that's
5:30
kind of, you know, a childish to argue about.
5:33
But you know, like this is, you know, reality that we're living
5:36
in. This is a conflict between this
5:38
new culture versus the old culture.
5:41
This is a conflict between the new drinking habit versus the
5:44
old drinking habit. And this is the conflict between
5:47
you can almost say the new kind of beverage versus the old kind
5:50
of beverage. Same form but different spirit.
5:53
It's still matcha, right? But it's taken and completely
5:56
removed from its original context and found deep cultural
6:00
resonance in many of other ways. That's that's very true.
6:04
And you know like right now we are seeing this whole matcha
6:09
shortage happening right now because it's really shortage of
6:13
top quality matcha in Japan. A bad matcha is not in shortage,
6:18
you know like lower quality, more industrial level matcha are
6:22
you know, being manufactured in Kagoshima in China or even in
6:26
some countries in Southeast Asia.
6:28
But we are seeing a it's, it's a slowly happening, surely
6:35
happening, that happening dynamic shift of, you know, who
6:39
hosts the narrative to define matcha in this world.
6:42
It has been Japan historically and has to be largely Japan.
6:46
But, you know, as we are, you know, seeing this manufacturer
6:51
power being offset to other territories, as we are seeing
6:55
this appreciation and consumption of disparage being
6:58
offset to places outside of Japan, we're inevitably going to
7:03
see a discourse or a narrative shift that is no longer
7:08
controlled by a very small group of people inside Japan for
7:11
centuries. In a formerly heavily
7:14
isolationist culture that was not open to the rest of the
7:18
world at all, especially during Matcha's infancy as it was
7:23
becoming a much more rigid ceremony and culture even within
7:27
Japan. Like it grew up completely
7:29
isolated from the rest of the world in a society that was
7:32
virtually isolated from the rest of the world and actually
7:35
started to undergo some major changes when Japan opened up
7:40
during the Meiji Restoration, through the Industrial
7:42
revolution, through modern times.
7:44
There's actually a pretty interesting argument that matcha
7:47
is this ever changing, continuously changing thing.
7:51
You can trace back the lineages. And it just so happened that the
7:54
first international audience to become exposed to matcha 20
7:58
years ago, 30 years ago, was through the context of tea
8:01
ceremony, largely in part because the Japanese government
8:04
had such effective policies at literally having it be the item
8:09
or the focus or the ritual or the embodiment of Japanese Ness.
8:14
They had it through policies where it was taught to an entire
8:18
generation, multiple generations of young girls as part of their
8:22
formal education. It was the topic of TV shows.
8:26
It was the cultural exchange element.
8:28
When shine, excuse me, when Japanese ambassadors will go
8:32
abroad, right? Like, what are the cultural
8:34
things they bring with them for these exchanges?
8:36
It's tea or when people go there, and there's a lot of good
8:40
reasons why it encompasses Japanese NIST.
8:43
But if you separate out the tea ceremony and the culture that
8:47
has evolved within Japan away from the product of the beverage
8:51
itself, which actually I think is a very fair thing to do, and
8:55
it's now being consumed by an entirely new group of people in
8:58
an entirely new way. And now, like, that sounds very
9:03
threatening. It sounds very disruptive to the
9:06
world, to the very traditional world that still exists within
9:10
Japan. But you know, Sam, you see all
9:12
these commentaries and we've, we're trying to source tension
9:16
right now. We're like knee deep in sourcing
9:18
tension. And I'll be honest, it's
9:20
extremely difficult for any of the macho founders out there.
9:23
Like, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
9:25
People will not promise volume. People don't know when they're
9:28
willing to sell it, how much they're willing to sell it.
9:31
More than half of the people you're actually reach out to say
9:34
they're not open to accepting any new clients, any new
9:37
customers. And it's an extremely difficult
9:41
position. And we've also heard stories of
9:43
a lot of tea farmers not liking all this volatility.
9:46
Not liking this fluctuation is being called the matcha boom
9:49
within Japan, and they're just putting the brakes on.
9:52
We've even heard of a factory that has stopped milling matcha
9:57
until the price volatility drops.
10:00
So you have people not contributing to the supply,
10:02
which probably makes the volatility worse.
10:05
And you have these weird set of independent actors and agents,
10:09
right? Farmers can do whatever they
10:10
want. That farmer can do whatever he
10:12
or she wants. But when you have all of these
10:14
people in concert wanting to pump the brakes on during this
10:18
matcha boom, it is actually making the situation a lot worse
10:21
for people trying to source it and to have it like a product
10:25
that people want to drink. And you hear these farmers
10:28
saying, I can't wait until this boom is over.
10:30
But is that a good thing? Yeah.
10:32
What about this new culture that has existed within Matcha?
10:36
Yeah, I think the core problem here is that these farmers or
10:41
these two groups of people, like the consumers and the people
10:45
that are, you know, working on matcha, making matcha and, you
10:50
know, calling this whole matcha trend as a boom and wanted to
10:54
put a brake on this whole, you know, rolling train.
10:58
They don't necessarily talk to each other.
11:00
I think that's the problem. They don't understand each
11:03
other. They don't talk to each other.
11:04
They don't actually care about each other.
11:06
Like matcha drinkers wants to drink more matcha, but these
11:09
farmers wants to take a break. They are tired, which is very
11:13
understandably, you know, true picking matcha process is
11:18
tedious. It's hard.
11:19
And these farmers are they're getting old.
11:22
They're very old. They are very old.
11:24
And there's very little people, you know, wanted to take over
11:26
their business. They're like, like if I put
11:29
myself into their shoes, like I want to retire soon.
11:33
And actually the Japanese government, I've been doing some
11:35
research, I think it's 2014, I came across this reference
11:39
material is a promotional material, a promotion strategic
11:42
plan for promoting Uji Macha and Uji tea in general let's put out
11:47
in 2014. And if you look at the tone of
11:50
that document, one like they're very aware farmers are aging
11:53
out, don't have a secession plan.
11:55
They're worried about the exact problem was their solution back
11:59
then. They're worried about there not
12:01
being enough demand and they they got way more than they
12:04
wanted. And actually it's pretty
12:05
interesting. They, I think if you're under 45
12:08
years old, that's what's considered basically considered
12:10
a young farmer, non Japanese standards.
12:13
I wouldn't classify that group as like a young farmers.
12:16
So they get around a 10,000 U.S. dollar equivalent tax credit for
12:21
the first five years. That's how badly they want new
12:24
people entering this industry. And now they're suffering from
12:28
their own success. Well, I guess that program
12:30
wasn't successful enough, and they were talking about keeping
12:33
the landscape pristine, setting up viewing platforms so that
12:36
people take photos. They wanted people to come and
12:41
have this be like a very unique cultural landscape escape and
12:44
cultural legacy to build up international demand.
12:47
And now it has happened and the industry isn't able to keep up
12:51
with it, which we totally understand. 20 years later
12:54
though, imagine like this happened 10 years later, I mean
12:57
imagine this boom happened like at that time I'd probably be
13:00
happy, but this? Sentiment, that of waiting for
13:03
this boom to go away, I think is not the right sentiment.
13:07
Yeah, it's not. Like it's it's new culture.
13:11
Creation is what's actually happening and what are the ways
13:15
in which that new culture can be killed.
13:17
It's matcha getting too expensive, which is happening,
13:21
which is going to cause a bunch of people to not form the habit
13:26
of drinking matcha on a regular basis.
13:28
And that is what's going to have them fall off the trend.
13:32
And the people who are left are only the people who are able to
13:36
afford to drink it, right. Like you're, you're, you're
13:39
churning through all of this really interesting new culture
13:43
formation around people wanting to form a this relationship with
13:47
this beverage and something. And this is part of the broader
13:51
reflections of season 3. Erin from Matcha youth.
13:54
She's based in Australia, said one of one of the most profound
13:57
things that has been resonating and echoing in my mind ever
14:01
since we did that recording. She does a lot of markets and
14:03
then has a lot of consumer interaction, these gigantic
14:06
markets of different products where you have a lot of chance
14:09
to give people samples and talk to consumers.
14:12
And she said the number of people just in the past few
14:14
years who are young teenagers, mostly girls, but not
14:18
exclusively come up dragging their parents saying like mom,
14:21
dad, try this, I love this. I want this to be part of my
14:24
life. And they're completely skipping
14:26
over coffee. You have a whole generation in
14:29
many different countries in the United States and Australia and
14:33
all throughout Europe and all these different countries that
14:35
are entirely skipping coffee. Think about what it means to go
14:39
from being a child to entering adulthood.
14:42
There's many things that happen over that phase, and forming a
14:46
relationship with caffeine is like one of the first steps to
14:50
becoming an adult. And if you're skipping coffee
14:53
and forming that with matcha, we have an entire generation of new
14:57
consumers that want a different source of caffeine because it
15:00
makes them feel better. Maybe they're caffeine
15:02
insensitive. Maybe they like the color.
15:04
Why do we pass so much judgement on the fact that people find
15:08
matcha beautiful? You know, no matter how you
15:11
appreciate it through, no matter what sense or what the taste,
15:15
the smell, the color, the history, no matter how you're
15:19
appreciating it, Why are we passing so much judgment and
15:22
viewing these people as tasteless?
15:25
Like, this is a good thing. This is what Matcha needs.
15:28
If you look at the number of tea ceremony practitioners, I think
15:31
it's in the like the last 15 years, they went from 2 million
15:34
to 1,000,000 in Japan. Like the tea ceremony community
15:38
in Japan is literally dying and there is no hope of replacing
15:43
these people. There's not enough people
15:45
interested in matcha or in tea ceremony.
15:47
It is a structural decline and will eventually probably
15:52
stagnate out at a very low number.
15:54
It is not enough people to support and prop up this
15:58
industry in any rich or interesting ways into the
16:02
future. The future of Matcha traditional
16:04
methods, innovative methods like the whole campus relies on
16:09
bringing new consumers into the fold.
16:12
And if the industry isn't able to keep up, you're just gonna be
16:17
left with the richest, which is like, not a good or interesting
16:20
future. Yeah, there are many layers of
16:24
this whole new culture creation movement and the supply of
16:29
matcha, indeed, this is like the foundation of this movement,
16:33
right? Like without matcha to drink,
16:35
like there will be no culture associating with matcha.
16:37
And if, like you say, Ryan gets too expensive, so people become
16:42
less, you know, exploratory, like there's no culture to be
16:47
formed right there. Like there's no to be
16:49
discovered. There's no new cultivars to be
16:52
tried. That's that that's really, you
16:54
know, concerning in the sense that, you know, like a lot of
16:58
these, you know, producers in Japan are, are holding off their
17:03
capability to continue this. I think the core problem really
17:07
is that these farmers are not really part of this cultural
17:11
creation process yet. They've never been part of the
17:15
part of cultural formation. It's really important.
17:19
I think now that we are talking about it, we need to start to
17:24
find ways to connect with these farmers and loop them in like
17:27
this is a thing, this is a trend, this is a culture that's
17:31
happening globally. And make them feel that they're
17:34
a part of this global community. Make them feel that they're part
17:37
of this something, that this is something bigger than Japan.
17:40
This is something bigger than Wuji, bigger than, you know,
17:44
their local village, their local Township.
17:46
This is, you know, like something that you know they
17:49
can, they can feel proud of like telling their kids or like we
17:54
can feel proud of telling our kids that, you know, this whole
17:57
communities across the world are working together to create
18:00
something delicious. Actually, and you see success
18:02
cases of that. I mean, look at Obubu tea farms,
18:04
look at the cultural exchange that goes on at Obubu in
18:08
Wazooka, which has a wonderful internship program which brings
18:12
in people from all different countries from all over the
18:15
world to come learn and process and pick tea for months on end.
18:19
Like they're really become part of the community in Mazuka.
18:22
And then they go off onto their life and they think about the
18:25
wonderful ambassadors. And they recently did an event
18:28
during Paris Fashion Week that I came to where when one of the
18:31
founders of OBU Tea Farms, Matusan, presented and did a
18:35
collaboration with a brand called Gentle Artifacts, and
18:38
they were doing tea ceremonies in Paris.
18:40
But he also brought, like, his whole family.
18:42
They were like, it's exactly what you said.
18:45
Like people can see and feel people interacting with the tea
18:49
in these new and unique places where this culture is being
18:52
formed and where it like, it's in some Fashion Week.
18:56
Like really cool crossover between tea ceremony and fashion
19:00
and photography. In a place like France, this is
19:03
exactly what needs to happen. And like, this is not a scalable
19:07
thing for most tea farmers. Historically, tea farmers are
19:11
suppliers. They're ingredient suppliers
19:14
until about 20 years ago. They're like corn farmers in the
19:18
United States. Corn farmers are commodity
19:20
ingredient suppliers. They someone buys it.
19:24
We have no clue who grows the corn or the wheat or the barley
19:29
or anything, right? It's very different than really
19:32
rich specialty movements, cheese, for example.
19:36
Like there's a lot of independent cheese makers for
19:39
wine or coffee after the 3rd wave, for example, where you
19:43
know, you have a much better sense of where your food came
19:46
from and a culture can start to grow around that, right?
19:49
Like now you have a bunch of like all of these communities
19:53
all over the world, from Thailand to Indonesia to the
19:57
Philippines to Australia to all over the US and Europe and the
20:01
Middle East and South America in Africa.
20:05
Love Matcha? You're missing the, uh, the
20:08
other 70 countries from continue continue.
20:11
But like, I mean, there's some real appreciation for this,
20:15
right? Like, like, if you put
20:16
yourselves in like a radical empathy experiment, maybe
20:19
there's some high schooler in New York.
20:21
He or she has no clue where matcha came from.
20:23
But they really like their matcha that they get from Blank
20:26
St. And it helps them fit in with a
20:29
group of friends that also happen to really like matcha.
20:32
They don't think coffee's cool anymore.
20:34
Why are we passing judgment on on that person, on that kid?
20:38
They're just like these innocent people that like this and they
20:41
could be matcha consumers for life.
20:44
These are habits that people bring into them with adulthood,
20:48
especially if this matcha makes you feel better, You get
20:51
caffeine. It's a much more pleasant
20:53
caffeine profile. It's and it's healthy.
20:56
It's it's kind of crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:59
But you know, at some point or to some extent it's on the it's
21:03
understandable because like we are literally seeing like this
21:07
first wave of global like serious matcha drinkers like.
21:12
So new. Imagine like we are seeing the
21:15
first group of like global coffee drinkers that are right
21:20
now talking about different waves of drinking coffee like
21:23
that. There's obviously going to be
21:26
different degrees of sophistications in in the ways
21:30
of how people form the relationship with this beverage
21:33
or how to interpret it, this beverage.
21:35
And I think like to some degree, why did like the legacy or the
21:40
traditional macho community feeling threatening is that a
21:45
lot of these newer ways of drinking matcha is to some
21:48
degree deconstructing the seriousness of matcha, which is
21:53
really the vehicle that carries their, you know, traditional and
21:56
ceremonial culture. But you know, like as the
21:59
drinking culture of Matcha evolve, just like, you know,
22:02
Third Wick coffee or natural wine movement, we are going to
22:06
see a very sophisticated new macho drinking culture being
22:09
formed. It's just like so new right now.
22:11
All of these people are getting their first exposure to this
22:15
beverage. And once this movement becomes
22:17
large enough, there is a 100% chance someone is going to do
22:21
something stupid. That's just the nature of having
22:24
humanity be interested in a thing.
22:26
Yeah, that one Instagram video where that girl has this
22:29
gigantic plastic bag that must be like, at least a couple
22:33
liters large and like, it's sipping around this matcha.
22:36
Clearly a stunt for Instagram. Probably ended up dumping it.
22:39
That video has gotten so much hate and has been like the
22:43
poster child of what's wrong with matcha today.
22:46
Why can't these consumers just appreciate matcha for what it is
22:50
and what these farmers are doing and all of these things?
22:53
Like, if you really zoom out, we sound like a bunch of old
22:56
grandparents, their children, as if we do not understand what
23:01
their experiences are like, Just how like, you know, grandma and
23:05
grandpa were probably yelling at their kids in the 60s and 70s
23:10
about all of this horrible noise, which was like, The
23:13
Beatles or something. If like or like rock music.
23:17
Yeah. Like.
23:18
Well, like it's it's angered, triggered by, you know, not be
23:23
able to control these people, right?
23:26
Like these old authorities no longer have controlled over the
23:30
discourse. Like the matcha has been
23:32
internationalized. Nowadays they are free.
23:35
Like it's no longer a top down culture creation like the, you
23:39
know, major restoration, like the the idea of creating
23:42
Japanese Ness, right? It's no longer that it's
23:45
becoming a grassroot movement. Like people are creating their
23:48
own culture. And there's no a single
23:51
authority that has the power to tell people what to do anymore.
23:55
Yeah. I mean, look, I think it was in
23:56
the 70s, there was like, like an actual US Congressional
24:01
committee looking at whether or not Rock'n'roll was like trying
24:06
to control the minds of young people.
24:08
Like you can actually look this up on YouTube.
24:11
And actually, some of the people that they called in to give
24:13
testimony did a fantastic job trolling these people who are
24:17
asking them question, who are basically these old, like men,
24:22
like giving them a hard time, saying that they just make too
24:25
much of A racket. Yeah.
24:27
Like to some degree it shares a lot of similarities to matcha.
24:31
So this is a very unpopular opinion and taking this out of
24:34
context and actually this is a very unpopular perspective.
24:38
Sam, how would you react to this see of the new Matcha brand?
24:42
And part of their mission is to get people to at least
24:45
appreciate the history of matcha, where it came from, the
24:49
culture around it. Why does their consumer need to
24:53
have that appreciation for this thing, to that buy?
24:56
Do we put that bar on anything else?
24:59
We don't put it on coffee or wine or any food or beverage or
25:05
any other tea for that matter. Every time you have a bubble
25:09
tea, do you need to appreciate its Taiwanese origins or
25:13
something like that? Why is that what we're demanding
25:16
of people? Well, well, well, that there are
25:18
different, you know, I would say seriousness of within that
25:24
exists within within these beverage categories like bubble
25:28
tea, but you know, it has tea in that, you know, that I think
25:33
that's the only similarities between, you know, a Kung Fu cha
25:38
appreciation or a Chinese tea ceremony appreciation.
25:41
Like you of course, will have, you know, standards and, you
25:46
know, judgments in the kung fucha kind of scenarios, but you
25:51
don't necessarily impose that to to bubble tea.
25:54
You know, similar things happening in, you know, coffee,
25:57
right? Like you have all these serious
26:00
third weight coffee brands and at the same time you have like,
26:04
I don't know, G7 Nespresso or like instant coffees, right?
26:09
There are different levels of seriousness even exist even
26:12
within the same product category.
26:14
And I think that will also happen in matcha.
26:17
I think it has already happened in matcha, right?
26:20
Matcha latte is going to exist into eons in the future as long
26:25
as people are still making matcha.
26:26
And that doesn't inhibit the cultural formation of a more
26:32
sophisticated matcha culture. That's, you know, that cares
26:36
about single origin, that cares about the cult of art, that
26:39
cares about the processing of farming techniques.
26:41
These are, I would say, the part of this new culture creation
26:49
that has the potential to replace people's, I would say
26:55
the exploratory demand to understand a beverage in 80%.
27:01
I think that would, you know, be be be a good substitute for
27:05
people to, you know, switch back and forth between, you know, the
27:08
traditional tea ceremony versus the this new matcha drinking
27:11
culture. And I think that would
27:14
eventually earn respect to from the traditional as the matcha
27:18
ceremony practitioners that people on the other side of the
27:22
matcha drinking spectrum are not just dumping matcha into a one
27:26
liter big jug and you know, splash it around to do some take
27:30
out videos. I think this new culture at some
27:32
point needs to also have standards too.
27:35
You know, like kids are going to do like stupid stuff.
27:38
But I think, you know, in the traditional context or in this
27:43
new matcha movement, it will be, it's not OK to dump like a home
27:48
source shaded Asahi into a big jug and then, you know, like,
27:53
and then use it to do some kind of, you know, clickbait
27:56
material. I think like people still need
27:58
to have standard. Yeah, Well, I think one of the
28:01
biggest problems is creating stigma.
28:03
You have all of these people spending all of their energy and
28:06
effort trying to convince people that, for example, matcha that's
28:10
grown in China isn't real, it's fake, or that matcha grown in
28:14
Korea isn't fake. Well, there's a horrible reality
28:17
for these people. If Chinese quote UN quote matcha
28:21
disappeared tomorrow, we would be talking about a very
28:25
different level of shortage. Japan produces 4000 tons of
28:30
matcha a year, a little bit more.
28:32
I think this year it's just under 5000 tons projected or 4
28:37
around 45 or 4.5 metric tons. There's one company, just one
28:43
company in Guizhou in China called Guizhou.
28:47
It supposedly produces more matcha than the entire country
28:52
in Japan. If they were to disappear
28:55
tomorrow along with every other Chinese producer, how in the
28:58
world is anyone going to be able to drink matcha?
29:02
Even, like Starbucks matcha, which is everyone's first cup of
29:04
matcha, like a lot of people's first cup of matcha is not a
29:07
product that's just from Japan, right?
29:09
Like, now you've lost your ability to onboard new
29:13
consumers. You've lost your ability to have
29:15
it priced in a reasonable way. Right.
29:18
That's not an interesting or dynamic future.
29:21
That sounds like everything is about to get way, way, way more
29:25
expensive. Yeah.
29:26
Like, beyond what anyone could drink.
29:28
And the majority of this matcha, it's going to a place where no
29:32
one cares where it came from. No one.
29:35
It doesn't matter to those consumers.
29:37
They just want something that looks and taste like matcha, and
29:41
it kind of is. And we spent so much time
29:44
stigmatizing Chinese matcha, culinary grade matcha, like all
29:48
of this stuff. And what we've done now is
29:52
because there's all of this stigma and there's a lot of
29:55
companies out there that will tell you that Chinese matcha is
29:57
fake matcha. It's driven everyone to the
30:00
products that they love, which is like their Mariuku Koyama and
30:05
their big famous blend houses. All of this Fuji matcha, all of
30:10
this Yamai matcha. And now there's a shortage of
30:13
good matcha for people that don't appreciate it because they
30:16
want to drink of a better thing. And now that they've been
30:19
educated that it's better, now that's what they want.
30:22
And like, I don't want to drink fake matcha, do you Sam?
30:26
Yeah, but you know, to to to a very large extent, I mean, like
30:30
Chinese matcha do deserve its bad name.
30:32
Like a lot of them is like really, really bad.
30:35
We had the experience of drinking a lot of them.
30:38
But you know, the quality, the ceiling of Chinese matcha is
30:42
visibly getting higher and higher every day.
30:45
And it will get higher in the future, right?
30:47
Like at some point we're going to see, you know, very high
30:50
quality matcha being farmed outside of Japan.
30:53
You know, not just China, like Korea or even places in
30:56
Southeast Asia. It happened to, you know, wine
30:59
like different, like very high quality, you know, grapes, you
31:03
know, you name it cabinets Sauvignon or Gracio, like being
31:07
farmed in different countries that kind of, you know, infused
31:11
into the local tawa and develop its own unique flavor.
31:14
I think that that will eventually happen to matcha as
31:17
well. And, you know, stigmatizing it
31:20
or calling everything that comes outside of Japan, you know,
31:23
fake, I think doesn't necessarily do anything good to,
31:27
you know, the community. You know we are going to need
31:30
matcha coming outside of Japan in the future.
31:33
There's one thing that's very certain is that Japan is not
31:36
going to be able to keep up and it's going to be a good thing
31:39
for Japan because someone needs to be able to service the bottom
31:42
of the market or the top of the market.
31:45
It all needs help. There's just not enough supply.
31:48
And someone did a David from Tazumi did a calculation
31:51
recently that he put out on his newsletter and I think he
31:54
estimated around 1,000,000 people who can drink one matcha,
31:59
one serving of matcha every day. That's how much tea Japan matcha
32:03
Japan creates. And I, I did coincidentally had
32:05
did the same calculation a few days before that came out.
32:08
And I came up with a number depending on what assumptions
32:11
you make. So it's around 1 to 2 million
32:13
people. That is not enough matcha for
32:15
the entire when you really zoom out.
32:18
Yeah, compared to like coffee drinkers or wine drinkers,
32:22
that's like less than .1, less than 1% probably.
32:27
I don't think Chinese matcha is threatening to Japanese matcha
32:31
at all. I think it's highly
32:33
complementary, right? As the market gets more educated
32:37
and people start to learn and have developed different
32:40
preferences, right, The Japanese then can charge more for their
32:44
product and it's the quality for an average like matcha latte
32:48
Matcha blend in China gets better and better and better,
32:52
which it is every single year. Then it allows the Japanese to
32:56
do with their best at really focusing on creating the best
33:00
possible product that they can and very interesting.
33:04
So like for example, Suji San from Zenki Macha, I'm not to be
33:07
confused with the Suji San, the the Uji Macha farmer, rock star
33:12
Uji Macha farmer. He said that, you know, in his
33:14
experience sourcing tea and his experience just being a Japanese
33:17
person in general, they're much more product focused and
33:20
consumer focused. Like these types of traditional
33:23
industries are about creating the best product that they can
33:26
for their pride, for their family's pride.
33:29
And it's not the best product is not necessarily what consumers
33:33
want. So like, that will always have a
33:36
niche to exist in. But if we lose the momentum of
33:40
growth within the matcha industry because there's not
33:43
enough supply that can keep up, right, That you lose this
33:48
gigantic pool of consumers that could be interested in that in
33:52
10 years or 20 years or 50 years.
33:56
And those people are not going to be in Japan.
33:59
Like matcha is not cool. So like it's dependent on
34:02
creating people with deep pockets and deep preferences
34:05
abroad. And you constantly need to
34:07
regenerate these people. They need to have interesting
34:10
things. If there's no dynamism in this
34:13
industry, it becomes stale, It becomes stagnant.
34:16
It's the same stuff that just keeps getting more and more and
34:20
more expensive. I already feel like the the the
34:23
price increases now are insane. I don't know, even as someone
34:28
who likes matcha by buying way like significantly less and I'm
34:32
searching for better and better value.
34:34
And like it's, you know, it's quite sad and I think we should
34:37
stop stigmatizing this and I think actually Japanese
34:39
companies or Japanese people should start making investments
34:43
in other places to increase the supply.
34:46
We tried a matcha recently that sells for thirty U.S. dollars a
34:50
kilo wholesale that if you're a matcha brand and you're trying
34:53
to source this, that's how much it costs.
34:55
I tried it in an iced Americano a few days ago and I it's
34:58
something that we had fresh milled on our machine.
35:01
Honestly, it was good. I would buy it and drink it and
35:04
it is better than any a matcha Americano that I could find. 95%
35:09
of the device is in Paris and it costs pennies like.
35:13
That's a good sign. It's a really good sign.
35:15
That's a good sign and it's important, and it's not
35:17
threatening to Japanese matcha because we need new consumers
35:22
and they're not just buying one thing.
35:25
Look at any of these matcha consumers on Instagram, for
35:28
example. They're constantly buying and
35:30
tasting new things. Everyone's in a heavily
35:32
exploratory state. Yeah, this is still very largely
35:35
a blue sea market. Like every day there are are new
35:39
matcha drinkers, you know, start drinking matcha.
35:41
And right now people should really be focusing on how to
35:44
get, you know, more supply versus how to divide the pie,
35:48
you know, for different segments.
35:49
You know, like I feel like the title of this episode should
35:53
should be revised into new cultures creation.
35:57
There's not a single culture being formed right now.
36:00
You have different people caring about different stuff.
36:04
It comes back to the topic of what do you care about episode
36:09
that we did a while ago, right? People care about different
36:12
things and people have different priorities, like people have
36:16
different demands. It's not a single culture being
36:19
created in this new matcha movement.
36:21
Like you have these matcha beverage drinkers, you have
36:24
these, you know, much, you know, single cult of our matcha
36:28
drinkers. You have these, you know, very
36:30
traditional, you know, ceremonial matcha drinkers.
36:33
Like all of these cultures are coexisting and evolving at the
36:36
same time and growing at the same time.
36:38
If you are a, you know like matcha cafe owner that sells 90%
36:45
matcha latte, go like talk to your Chinese supplier, like tell
36:49
them that you know you want higher quality matcha, you
36:52
demand XY and Z from your matcha.
36:54
Like if you are a single cultivar, new matcha brand, you
36:57
know, go explore into the countryside of Japan, go find
37:01
new interesting tawa. Go source more tea from
37:04
different areas. Go talk to farmers.
37:06
Get the farmers a stage to talk and share and be proud of their
37:11
like loop out of the segments, you know, within your community
37:16
and you know, do what you best at and do what you care about.
37:20
I think this is what needs to be happen in this, you know, new
37:23
cultures creation. Yeah, and we're not just saying
37:26
it. We're we're about to go do it
37:28
tomorrow. We leave for Korea to check out
37:30
the matcha scene in South Korea, and then we're headed on to
37:34
Japan to do more tension sourcing.
37:36
It's very fun, but it's also extremely challenging at the
37:40
moment. And, you know, the Japanese tea
37:42
industry also needs to change. Like who can buy tea at auction
37:46
is just, it's crazy. Like basically squeezes out.
37:49
You have to go to a middleman. You have to be a Japanese
37:52
almost. Even if you're in Japan, you
37:54
can't get access to these auctions.
37:56
So that's a huge structural barrier for like creating value
38:00
on top of the system. And then also like tea farmers,
38:04
like I also think need to treat the people that they supply a
38:08
better. And this is not me being
38:10
frustrated. By and large, the people that we
38:12
met are very nice. But I've heard a lot of stories
38:15
from a lot of macho founders from all over the world.
38:19
And I would say it's not an unfair characterization to say
38:23
that at large compared to other industries.
38:26
If you are we want to start a matcha brand tomorrow sourcing
38:30
from anyone in Japan. They are very unreliable
38:33
suppliers that do not treat their customers very well.
38:37
They don't give them predictability.
38:39
There are very large price changes.
38:42
Like everyone is being so cagey. And, and I'm sure it's for
38:46
different reasons. I'm sure it's some people, it's
38:48
greed. I'm sure for some people it's
38:50
confusion. I'm sure for some people, it's
38:53
like there's too much going on. We're just hitting pause and
38:56
waiting to see what happens. Some of it is waiting for other
38:59
people to move first and then see like after one of these big
39:03
blend houses increase their price prices and see, OK, how
39:06
much are they doing. And then we're going to try to
39:08
fit in. Like there's all of these
39:11
dynamics going on. But like it is, if you built
39:15
your business, small business on Macha in the last 10 years, you
39:21
are not being treated very nicely from an objective
39:24
standpoint. And there and thankfully there's
39:26
a lot of mutual respect. So you don't hear these people
39:29
going out and trash talking their vendors, but it is going
39:33
on behind the scenes and it is, it makes us double click.
39:37
Is that the business we want to be in?
39:40
We've had some serious reflections about whether or not
39:42
we want to be in the tensha sourcing business you have, it's
39:46
very capital intensive and it's extremely unpredictable if you
39:51
can even find someone to sell you a good product, right?
39:54
Actually, something very interesting has changed even in
39:56
the past few years. It has moved from let me find a
40:00
good product to let me find anything like who will sell.
40:05
Something to me and that at least is reasonably tasty enough
40:09
and it's, it's not good. It's really hard on all of these
40:12
small businesses that have played into the global success
40:16
of educating their markets and have basically created their own
40:20
failure, collectively at least well.
40:23
I mean we, we are at a very interesting point of history as
40:28
you know like all of these trends and demands and the
40:31
market is evolving and you know we are literally in the sack
40:35
weight of moving into different directions, possible directions
40:39
of a match of future, right like we can, the future can literally
40:44
be thriving or dying depending on the decisions we are making
40:48
right now. Collectively, as an industry is
40:51
the worst thing that could happen is that Japan doesn't
40:55
produce enough. Everyone continues to stigmatize
40:57
matcha coming from other places, creating lower demand for those
41:01
products. With that lower demand for
41:03
Chinese and Korean and other countries matcha, then what
41:08
happens is that everyone's going to flock to Japanese matcha.
41:11
Japanese matcha has tons of structural problems and they're
41:15
not going to keep up with supply.
41:17
This is certain. Even with all of the efforts
41:20
that are going on in Japan right now to make tensha factories and
41:23
convert other fields for tensha production, etcetera, etcetera,
41:28
it's not going to keep up. It's going to get outrageously
41:30
expensive. Then people will stop being able
41:34
to afford it. They will not form the habit of
41:37
drinking it every day and the only people who are left holding
41:41
the ball are extremely wealthy who can continue to afford
41:46
drinking it. We've priced out cost sensitive
41:49
tea ceremony practitioners. We will have effectively it then
41:53
every matcha that you take, every good matcha that you take
41:57
is a bigger bet. If your can of matcha now costs
42:00
$80 versus $25.00, it better be good.
42:05
And let's be honest, a lot of those products are not going to
42:08
live up to people's expectation at that price range, right?
42:11
The cost equality ratio that's in people's minds right now
42:15
about how much money they're willing to part with for a
42:19
certain quality, for a certain flavor.
42:22
That equation needs to change for a lot of people and for a
42:26
lot of this mid tier matcha. It's not going to make the cut
42:30
and then it's going to cause even more churn within this
42:34
industry. Yeah, and you know, in the age
42:37
of Internet, people do move fast.
42:40
You know, if they cannot find the same exact excitement so
42:44
coolness anymore in a product or in a culture, they are going to
42:48
move on. And all of these pessimistic
42:51
people will have been right. It was a passing trend.
42:54
Yeah, that would be a very sad future, Ryan.
42:56
Very sad future. But it's totally possible.
42:59
And on the other side of the equation, we can embrace new
43:02
culture, we can make investments in other places and finding
43:07
fantastic product in other regions like China, like Korea,
43:11
like Thailand, places were people are have the total
43:15
capacity to grow very high quality tea.
43:19
It's just a knowledge barrier. There is fantastic terroir and
43:23
growing conditions and just general deprocessing knowledge
43:27
just within China alone. It can really help solve this
43:31
problem to keep the prices down by increasing supply.
43:36
So there's a future where prices for matcha and supply for matcha
43:40
can go up and prices can go down and all these interesting
43:43
things. We can we can explore the
43:46
different Chinese cultivars that might be very suitable for
43:49
making tensha and then into matcha when they go through some
43:53
form of shaded cultivations back to matcha's original roots.
43:56
We can have all of these specialty products that can
43:59
exist or non specialty products, commodity products, quote, UN
44:03
quote, good enough matcha, that sweet spot that you know these
44:06
businesses survive on right now you have cafes that are
44:10
specialty coffee shops that are doing over 50% of their revenue
44:14
in matcha because their customers demand it.
44:17
It is a stupid business decision as a Cafe not have matcha.
44:23
It's like a self fulfilling prophecy and it can have a real
44:26
doom loop. And we're very, very, very
44:28
concerned, especially with a lot of this judgement.
44:31
And we don't want everyone to be right that it's a passing trend
44:34
for Japan's sake, whether or not you're on like team
44:38
international consumer or team Japan or team China or whatever,
44:43
team tea ceremony, team matcha latte, no matter what, like
44:47
perspective you take on what you care about, right?
44:50
Like it's really important that the price is affordable, that
44:55
there's a large variety of options, and that there's these
44:58
rabbit holes to go down that are new pockets of rich and
45:03
interesting culture. Whether or not it's matcha
45:06
lattes, whether or not it's the specialty matcha movement,
45:08
exploring different cultivars and growing techniques, whether
45:12
or not it's using culinary applications.
45:16
This is all this whole interesting world of communities
45:19
that are forming in all of these pockets of the world that are
45:23
just like you cannot understand what's going on until you've
45:27
been there and you've done that. Yeah, yeah, very true.
45:30
And all of these cultures cannot be sustainable with overpriced
45:35
matcha or shortage of matcha. And this is I think the, the,
45:41
the, the tired and very critical in like cross industry and cross
45:46
community problem that we need to, we need to hold our hands
45:49
and solve it together. Whether or not is the, you know,
45:53
the solution is to loop more people in within Japan to start
45:57
more cultivations or to expand, you know, the production outside
46:01
of Japan. I think like we need to start
46:05
like yelling at each other, criticizing each other of their
46:08
ways of drinking, or treating Mata versus we should solve the
46:13
problem together as a whole. A lot of the people too that are
46:17
like considered industry experts, I think could do a
46:20
better job at not stigmatizing other things.
46:24
I can't tell you, I've told this story about this $30 per kilo
46:28
wholesale price matcha coming from China to a couple of people
46:32
now. And the first thing that so many
46:35
people say be careful, be careful, be skeptical of
46:38
products coming out of China. And they're right, but also
46:42
they're kind of wrong. If you read through some of the
46:44
matcha shortage comments and people are like, oh, we need to
46:48
start growing it in the US, We need to take pressure off the
46:51
system in Japan. It's time we start doing all
46:54
this stuff. And it sounds like these are the
46:56
same people that are also stigmatizing Chinese matcha.
46:59
What if I told you there was a country that had the largest
47:03
population of people in the world and have been cultivating
47:06
tea longer than any other country in the world that
47:09
happens to be have? Second second largest population
47:13
now India. Yeah, India took over like 2
47:17
years ago. It has.
47:18
Millennia of tea processing experience and fantastic terroir
47:23
for tea. Why can't they step in?
47:26
Yeah, I mean like let's. Decide residue report, reject
47:30
that batch and then demand something better.
47:32
Yeah, but the reality. Is like China makes good tea
47:35
like it's just not matcha but they make a lot of good tea like
47:39
woolong tea, red tea, Hong cha, black tea or poor tea.
47:43
Like there are a lot of fantastic and also very like
47:46
expensive or high quality tea the most.
47:49
Expensive tea ever sold was Chinese.
47:51
Yeah, like teachers don't know how to make tancha yet, like the
47:55
largely because people don't really drink matcha in China.
47:58
I think that thank. Goodness, talk about a matcha
48:01
short. Yeah, like you know, if you
48:05
change the drinking culture, tea drinking culture in China into
48:08
matcha like you are going to have next level demand.
48:13
But but yeah, like, good teas are being made in China.
48:17
It's just like, not, not, not tension yet.
48:20
You know, given, given some time, given some, you know,
48:22
knowledge and the right contacts and the right, you know,
48:27
technology and techniques like there will be a good tanja
48:30
coming out from China in the future, that's for sure. 100%
48:34
And it's much needed. And one thing that's very clear
48:37
after doing so many interviews from people all over the world,
48:41
from Australia to the United States to Japan to the
48:45
Philippines and all of the other countries that are represented
48:49
not only in our listenership but in the people that we've
48:52
interviewed, is that it is just getting started.
48:57
This movement is so fresh, it's so new.
49:02
We're, you know, matcha has the chance to become this thing that
49:07
you can get anywhere in the world, like coffee and get a
49:10
good one. Isn't that the world that we
49:12
want? We want to be able to go
49:13
anywhere in the world and get a good matcha.
49:16
It tastes good, we would like or that other people would like.
49:20
And it's healthier. It has a more natural caffeine
49:23
profile. It also happens to be beautiful
49:26
and it also happens to have this really interesting and rich
49:29
culture and history that comes along with it continues to live
49:33
on through new generation of people speaking Arabic or
49:36
speaking Tagalog or speaking Thai or speaking Indonesian,
49:41
right? Like are speaking Chinese or
49:43
speaking Spanish and Portuguese and French and German, right?
49:48
Like this is unthinkable, but it has the opportunity to grow into
49:52
this much more expansive thing, and people want it.
49:56
Yeah, and it's just. The early baby days and we can't
50:00
like kill this what because it has this chance to become this
50:04
type of industry. It's already happening.
50:06
It's already happening. And, you know, like, it's
50:09
really, really right now just foundational problem is the
50:13
supply. Like it's really like what all
50:16
of these cultures can exist into the future.
50:20
Like the only true questions right now is how do we get the
50:24
supply right? And how do we roll the quality
50:28
altogether across different, you know, macho manufacturer
50:32
countries? And how do we expand that into
50:34
other territories? Like, look at wine, look at
50:37
coffee. Like ever after, you know,
50:39
coffee gets out of, you know, Africa and Middle East.
50:42
It's been grown everywhere in the world.
50:45
Like there are a lot of places in the world that are suitable
50:48
for growing tea like, and it has already happened, you know, for
50:52
tea cultivations are the tea cultivations like why not
50:55
matcha? Why not tensha?
50:57
Like it's totally possible. And I think that will really be
51:01
the true globalization one day for matcha is that even the
51:05
cultivation of tensha lays outside of Japan in all these
51:10
matcha consuming countries. Yeah.
51:12
And then you have like the Suji Sons of the World and Farakawa
51:15
Sons of the World, all of these super famous tea farmers that
51:20
have all this international recognition already.
51:22
They're going to become the new Romani Conte or the new Chateau
51:26
Lafitte, right? Like if they're going to be
51:29
considered the top of the top of the top of the top.
51:31
And then anyone that holds this type of status is finally going
51:35
to demand the price that those products deserve, right.
51:39
It does shove it into the, it does move it into the luxury
51:42
realm. But it is arguably then what
51:45
those products are worth. And then it's way beyond just
51:49
the it's all of the intangible cultural value.
51:53
When you're buying a $2000 bottle of Chateau Defeat
51:57
Rothschild, you're not buying the flavor profile, you're
52:00
buying something much, much, much more complex.
52:05
The history, the cultivation techniques.
52:08
You can use the same vocabulary that we're using for these multi
52:12
generational farmers, the source of their oak barrels and where
52:17
that comes from, and their century old cultivation
52:20
techniques and their deep cellar and knowledge of blending.
52:25
All of this applies in the exact same way.
52:28
Maybe a can of Suji San competition.
52:31
Great Asahi, it will go for $2000, maybe it should go for
52:35
$2000. But also on the other side, in
52:39
wine you have places like Argentina and Chile which can
52:42
produce a phenomenal bottle for $10 as well that tastes good.
52:48
It doesn't come with the same type of rich and interesting
52:51
history that is revered of these top domains and chateaus for
52:55
example, but it's something that anyone can enjoy at any price.
52:59
It's matcha for everyone. Or you can have some places like
53:04
the Napa Valley which sets the new price ceiling for new world
53:09
wine. Like like imagine a new wuji
53:13
exists outside of Japan in the future, which is totally
53:16
possible. Totally possible, it's just it.
53:19
We need to break out of this very insular mindset and embrace
53:23
all of this new culture formation.
53:25
This is such a exciting potential future to be something
53:30
so much more than a Japanese are strictly a Japanese product.
53:34
I don't think anyone's debating that that's it's where Matcha
53:38
was born in the form that we know it.
53:40
It obviously has its origins in China, but it could be a very
53:44
interesting future. It should be a interesting and a
53:48
international future. I mean, like China was not a
53:52
unified state for many, many years.
53:54
When Matcha was consumed in China and it got trans, you
53:57
know, ported into Japan, it was already international at the
54:00
time, like. Let's lost along the way, yeah?
54:04
Yeah, yeah. Let's, you know, revive the
54:07
internationalism that lives within Mata for generations.
54:11
So I think that's a perfect place to stop.
54:13
That's where we stand. Our opinions are always
54:16
changing. They're strongly.
54:18
We state them strongly, but they are loosely held as even we
54:22
learn more context every time we visit Japan or talk to new
54:25
people. We're always reforming our
54:27
opinions. And so please don't assume that
54:30
we're too preachy or dogmatic, but I think that's a great
54:33
reflection of everything that we've learned and what we've
54:35
taken away from this past season.
54:37
Season 375 episodes in. Sam Crazy.
54:41
Crazy. Well, see you guys in Season 4.
54:44
We're gonna take one week off and we'll have a fresh new take
54:47
for season 4. Some of it might involve some
54:50
music for the intro and potentially a new logo for the
54:54
specialty. Much podcast in area of changes,
54:57
small changes Kaizen. Kaizen Kaizen.
54:59
Bit by bit, Yep. And it will only get better,
55:03
yeah. We hope.
55:04
Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next.
55:06
See you in the future.