Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / 2025 Harvest Season with Marc from Ooika Part 2

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2025 Harvest Season with Marc from Ooika Part 2 · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hi, hello and welcome to the Specialty Much Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan. This is my Co Hosenjung, who
0:05
also goes by Sam. Hello, hello.
0:07
And we're the cofounders of Sanko Much Products.
0:09
Yeah. We launched this podcast to
0:11
discuss our learning journey and much share startup stories and
0:14
interview experts. And today we have Mark again
0:18
back to our podcast. Hello, Mark.
0:19
Hi guys. Welcome to talk with you again.
0:22
Welcome. Where does this podcast find you
0:24
today? Right now I'm in Shizuoka.
0:28
Cool. And I, I visited one of the T
0:30
fields that is where you can see Mount Fuji.
0:33
It's like kind of a kind of a tourist feel, you know, it's
0:36
real, but it's so cloudy today that you can't see Mount Fuji.
0:40
And it's kind of sad, but it's OK.
0:43
It's so beautiful. I've seen that photo, I really
0:45
like it. It's seems like the most iconic
0:48
Matcha Japan photo there is. It is, yeah.
0:53
It kind of looks like a Windows wallpaper.
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I have it on my computer right now and I open it up.
0:57
It's like paper, overly blue, saturated, green saturated.
1:02
But it is, it is very beautiful. In person it was great too, but
1:05
again, so cloudy you you couldn't actually see Mount
1:07
Fuji, which is just, I don't know, maybe 30 kilometers away.
1:11
Wow, so close. Yeah, maybe I'm wrong about
1:13
that, but that's what I I remember reading when I was
1:16
looking up some information about it.
1:17
But it is pretty close to here, like the base of it.
1:20
So you're like a few weeks off the OECA trip and we did like a
1:25
before the scenes or before the trip and we thought it'd be cool
1:29
to do an after the trip. So thank you for agreeing to
1:31
come on and kind of love to hear like, how'd it go?
1:35
Yeah, it was amazing. It was such a great trip.
1:38
I learned a lot, First off in terms of the business side of
1:41
running a tour, because I had never done something like that.
1:44
And the feedback from the students or the participants
1:47
and, and how to structure the tour and for the future.
1:50
So I kind of learned all that. That's like 1 camp of stuff,
1:53
which is the business side of operationally and logistically
1:57
getting people together and setting expectations and pricing
2:00
in the business model of it. And the other side of it is the
2:02
producer. And to paint some context,
2:04
obviously during the spring, the farmers are quite busy and
2:07
they're busy harvesting the tea, especially the higher level ones
2:10
are, are hand harvesting it, getting the material picked.
2:15
They go in their truck, they pick up the material, they bring
2:17
it to the tea factory and they process it.
2:19
And then that cycle kind of repeats every day, multiple
2:22
times a day. And then you stretch, stretch
2:25
that over 3-4 weeks and it's exhausting.
2:29
So it is, it is. And during this harvest I really
2:33
got to participate in in a lot of that.
2:35
Your bones hurt and you don't sleep and then it rains.
2:39
And if it rains, you have to go out the next morning before the
2:42
sunrise and blow all the bushes, try and then repeat, right?
2:46
So this is the life of the tea farmer this time of year.
2:50
So bringing guests to the tea field is obviously an additional
2:54
thing that they have to worry. Now, even if they're only
2:58
spending an hour with you, that's still a pretty
3:00
considerable amount of their time.
3:02
So there is a sense of like, is this something that is a burden
3:06
to them or is it something that they would really enjoy?
3:10
And that's not something I I would know necessarily ahead of
3:12
time, even if they invite me to come.
3:14
But what I realized is that the experience from the farmers was
3:20
overwhelmingly positive. They really genuinely loved the
3:25
the these participants coming. And I know that in two ways.
3:30
One, the feedback in the conversations after a lot of the
3:33
farmers I'm, I'm quite close with even, you know, take care
3:36
of their kids. But the other way is just these
3:40
moments, these beautiful moments where the student, the students
3:43
are there with them. They make a bowl of tea and you
3:47
watch the reactions as the participants drink the tea and
3:53
you see the faces of the flowers like absolutely light up.
3:57
And it is not choreographed. It is not exaggerated.
4:01
You, you, you see these like candid reactions and you kind of
4:05
get the sense like they're thinking and I, this part I'm
4:08
projecting, but man, all this work is worth it because they're
4:12
seeing people really enjoy it. Not just, you know, a few
4:17
business people who are coming to buy tea from them, but these
4:20
are people from Czech Republic, Thailand, Hong Kong, where else,
4:25
Mexico, US like all around the world coming Philippines and,
4:29
and just really connecting and, and drinking this tea together
4:32
and seeing those reactions was really, really quite, quite
4:35
beautiful. So I, I really enjoyed that
4:37
aspect. It was probably my favorite
4:38
part. Must be, I mean like in the past
4:40
those experience have been all abstracted away, right, by all
4:44
these big companies buying their TS procures.
4:47
Like these farmers don't really get to see, you know, the
4:50
consumer feedback, you know, not necessarily.
4:54
And this is something really wonderful, I guess, for them.
4:56
For sure. Yeah, that's that's very true.
4:59
And you had a really unique group because they were like,
5:02
they weren't beginners. Like everyone was so primed to
5:06
appreciate and like ready and had all the context.
5:10
Yeah. And what was interesting too is
5:12
we had a few people that were, let's say, I guess, newbies in a
5:15
sense. Like, for example, we had one
5:17
girl who was from Russia and no real knowledge or experience of
5:22
of tea. Your name was Petra.
5:23
And she got into it. And right after the tour, on her
5:26
social media, I'm seeing all these posts of like matcha bowls
5:29
that she bought and like, drinking matcha.
5:32
Before then, she wasn't doing that.
5:33
So it's kind of amazing what a great experience for her that
5:37
she has to carry with her now. Like the ultimate beginner's
5:40
journey. It's like, yeah, probably
5:42
doesn't get any better. Right.
5:45
It's sort of like when you're starting a new, yeah, you're
5:48
starting a new habit or pursuit or sport, and you go out and buy
5:52
like the best stuff and like everything that's unnecessary
5:56
and you just go all out. Sometimes that backfires, but
5:58
sometimes it actually commits you into the thing.
6:01
It's like too late to back out of it now.
6:02
Yeah, but it's also too like the weird thing about the Internet
6:05
is you have these like tea hermit cultures.
6:08
People like usually don't like learn from each other in person.
6:13
But being with, I don't know what 15 other people who can
6:16
give you the context to appreciate early on.
6:18
Like I'm sure it's a very special type of inoculation
6:21
because you can probably ask 1000 questions.
6:24
You understand what they like about it, which is really hard
6:27
to get in a pure way on the Internet.
6:29
Yeah, very true, very true. People, the, the Internet brings
6:34
out the worst and the best of people sometimes, but it also is
6:37
kind of isolating. And if you think about the
6:39
context of tea, it wasn't really something that was done in
6:42
isolation ever. At least in Japan, if you were
6:45
to have matcha, it was always done in the context of, for most
6:48
normal people, some kind of event, some kind of social
6:51
event. So for example, there's Tamai
6:53
and tea ceremony that's performed for two young people
6:58
to matchmake and actually kind of like start dating.
7:01
So that's one to my and there's other to my that are done for
7:04
weddings and for business meetings and holidays.
7:08
So in that way, tea has always been communal in, in, you know,
7:12
matcha. And now you have this new
7:13
culture where people are at home alone making a bowl and it it's
7:18
almost more meditative. And I wonder if that's how it
7:21
would have been when some of the early monks were drinking it or
7:25
if that would have been communal too.
7:27
I actually don't know the history well enough, but it it
7:30
is pretty, pretty cool. We're kind of returning to, at
7:33
least with this trip, the communal part of of sharing
7:35
matcha together in a group. Awesome.
7:37
Not that Shano you doesn't exist, but you know what I mean.
7:42
Very different context though than most people like.
7:44
Enjoy Matcha. For sure.
7:48
Yeah. So we, we started in Fuji and
7:51
then we went down to Takayama where the cha center made.
7:55
And then we went to Okiyama where bees and yaki pottery is
7:59
from. And we also went to Wazuka and
8:02
then to Yame and visited a larger refinery and then to
8:06
Hoshi Nomura. So the kind of cool, the
8:09
philosophy of or the, yeah, it was great.
8:12
It's kind of wide. And it was to give them a taste
8:16
of the breath of matcha, right? So not just the top producers,
8:20
not just the hand picked Hanzu in Uji at Yamasaki's farm,
8:25
right? But also let's let's go to
8:27
Wasuka, let's get some more commercial or daily lot tea.
8:30
Let's check out the tools. Let's go to the larger
8:33
refineries instead of these like in Kuruzumi's case in
8:37
Hoshinomura, the second oldest Tensha factory in Japan and then
8:41
was kind of a modern refinery in Yame.
8:44
So I feel like everyone got a pretty wide view of the industry
8:48
and that was really exciting. It's awesome.
8:51
Do you see a divergent of people liking Uji versus Yame or
8:56
certain producers versus the other?
8:58
My sense and I, I don't know why I necessarily think this.
9:02
Maybe it's just from working at Oheka and seeing people's
9:05
reaction to different teas, but I think Americans tend to prefer
9:12
the taste of yame when it comes to daily lot tea.
9:17
They like having a little bit more hika and of course with the
9:20
more specialty matcha, Uji's preferred because of the name
9:24
and the history. But I do think that people do
9:27
really like at least Americans, Westerners, I should say that
9:31
I've that I've interacted with, tend to like the more hika notes
9:35
that you get from yame producers.
9:37
I don't know, producers in a way I I kind of feel like are in
9:40
matcha because matcha is getting so popular and cool are are
9:43
becoming maybe to a small degree, like mini celebrities,
9:48
right? So the sort of like at least
9:49
with Suji, you definitely have this like following around him,
9:52
right? So I think you'll maybe see more
9:54
of that in the future. I don't know, I think it's kind
9:57
of exciting, but even with a lot of these producers, you only get
10:02
to see, you don't get to experience them.
10:05
They're just kind of like this archetype of T farmer from Uji.
10:10
You know, you read about the awards, but you don't get to
10:12
meet their personalities. And I think that was a really
10:14
great part of the tour. Is it humanize some of these
10:16
producers? Makes sense.
10:18
What would you say are some of like the highs and lows of the
10:20
trip, like some like cool anecdotes to sort of give some
10:24
color, especially from like the experience of both the farmers
10:27
and the participants and and their expectations?
10:31
Yeah, yeah, OK. I can tell you kind of a funny
10:33
one just to make me look stupid, but I think it's kind of cute.
10:37
So on the first day of the tour, you know, we did have a lot of
10:41
people. So there are about 20 people and
10:44
of course I'm always late to everything because that's
10:46
Western culture. But actually in Japan and with
10:49
the tea farmers, that's not something we really want to do.
10:52
So the first day was a little bit more flexible and we had
10:55
some people come late, not by much, but it came a little late
10:58
for the meeting time we're supposed to meet at which
11:01
probably my fault. I probably should have done a
11:02
better job making the meeting point a little easier to, to
11:04
find, but that's another topic. Anyway, we decided as a group,
11:09
we, we talked about this and said, you know, from today on,
11:11
just to protect the producers time, we need to make sure that
11:15
we're on time. And if, if you know, on the dot
11:18
when we're supposed to leave, we leave and then you have to find
11:21
a way to get to us basically. And we all agreed.
11:25
And that was that was that. And then when we went down to
11:29
Hoshino Mora, we had to rent a like a private bus basically.
11:34
And I remember so busy, we all went to sleep.
11:39
The bus was leaving 8:00 in the morning.
11:41
And of course, I wake up at 8 O 5 the next morning and 5 minutes
11:47
late, not even out of bed and this is going to see Curtis me
11:51
and we it takes a couple hours to get out there and he was only
11:55
available in the morning during a specific window.
11:57
So if we miss it, that's it. There's no like, staying late.
12:00
So that was traumatic. And I remember like, jumping out
12:03
of bed and running like a madman as fast as I could to the bus.
12:08
And like, all the participants saw me like, screaming up.
12:11
And of course, I was thinking to myself in the moment, like, just
12:14
go without me. And then I'll pay like $300.00
12:17
of taxi fees to get there. But I can't do that because I
12:20
have to be there with the farmer and into like, you know, spur
12:25
some of the conversations. And also, so yeah, I felt
12:28
horrible about that. I felt so bad about that.
12:31
But anyway, lesson learned. Make sure you set multiple
12:33
alarms with multiple phones. So that's that's one anecdote,
12:37
but there's also positive stuff too.
12:40
And one of the things that I found really charming that I
12:43
don't know why it stuck out my my brain.
12:45
But when we went to visit Kuma, who's a tea farmer in Joey
12:48
Amachi and Nyame near Hoshinomura, we went up to visit
12:53
one of his fields, and we were talking about the difference
12:58
between Western tasting notes and the Japanese method of
13:04
discussing the flavor of tea. And this is a whole topic that
13:09
I'm really interested in and something that I talked with a
13:12
lot of producers on this trip about.
13:14
Because in the West, when you drink a fine matcha, you write
13:18
notes like everyone does this. Every competitor, every tea
13:22
matcha company, we always write like, what does this taste like?
13:26
What other things does this taste like?
13:28
For example, chestnuts. And in Kuma's field, all of his
13:31
tea tastes like chestnut. And I, it's not just me, our
13:35
staff at Oyka, I have taste our single origin matcha.
13:39
And I also asked them like, what is your tasting notes?
13:42
And some teas, it's kind of like vague, like people have
13:45
different guesses. But in some cases, like Kuma's
13:48
tea, every staff, not every, but the majority of them have taste.
13:52
They say, oh, this tastes like chestnut.
13:54
So there's obviously something happening there.
13:56
But when we're as a group with Kuma in his field, which has
14:00
chestnut trees above it, that's constantly dropping chestnut
14:04
trees into the field. And every person and customers
14:08
write in to tell me that the tasting notes for this are spot
14:10
on. Chestnut, He says.
14:12
What doesn't taste like chestnut.
14:15
He was so adamant that it doesn't taste like chestnut.
14:17
So that kind of led into bigger discussions later, which is the
14:21
Japanese tea blenders than chashi don't think about matcha
14:27
or tea in that way. They're not.
14:32
They're not taking a sip of matcha or tea and thinking what
14:37
other foods it tastes like. They don't do it like that.
14:40
And that was shocking because. That is shocking.
14:45
Do that. What is the reference for them
14:48
to make decision or describe the taste of the tea?
14:53
Yeah, that was the that was the big question.
14:55
And that's what I kind of wanted to figure out on this truth
14:58
because I couldn't understand it.
14:59
And finally, Macho Who's who's a member of Oika staff and I were
15:03
at Kuruzumi's Tea Field after the tour had ended.
15:06
We went back and we had a conversation with a fifth Don
15:12
Chashi. So he's a tea blender and
15:14
there's like different ranks. 5th on is an important one
15:18
because 5th on is where you get to.
15:20
That's like a normal person where if you want to go 6th,
15:22
7th, 8th, 9th, you have to kind of commit your entire life to
15:25
only tea blending and like you kind of lose any other thing you
15:28
want to do. But I asked him this question
15:31
and he said two things. Well, three things.
15:34
So 1, he said that the way his brain works, in his opinion, is
15:38
it's like a library filled with hundreds or thousands of little
15:41
drawers, and each drawer is a tea, a taste that he's
15:46
experienced. So when he's doing blending,
15:48
he's referencing his memory of all the different matchas and
15:52
teas that he's tasted before, and that's how he comes up with
15:55
the blend. But the other thing is two other
16:00
things. The second thing is they're
16:02
comparing the taste not to other foods like we do in the West,
16:06
Like, oh, this is chocolatey, this is nutty.
16:08
This is that. They instead compare it to the
16:12
cultivar, like the archetype cultivar, like this tea I'm
16:18
drinking. How close is it to that
16:21
archetype? I thought that was pretty
16:22
fascinating. Yeah.
16:25
Well, one thing in the previous company that Ryan and I was
16:28
working on, you know, we use AI to kind of assess, you know,
16:32
different flavors. And one thing that's universally
16:36
very difficult and complicated is, you know, the understanding,
16:39
the sheer understanding of let's say strawberry or chocolate is
16:43
different from, you know, groups of, you know, different cohorts
16:45
of people with different, you know, background.
16:48
So using that as a kind of reference notes that's not
16:55
directly related to a product is sometimes can be, you know,
16:58
confusing. So it's understandable that
17:01
they're not using, you know, vocabularies from non tea
17:05
products to describe, you know, the tea.
17:07
The last thing that they do is they they have kind of a grid in
17:11
their head and I've seen a lot of Japanese companies do this
17:15
and I didn't really understand why actually a lot do this.
17:19
And not just macho, but in tea and coffee too.
17:23
You ever see in like trading card games, they have like that
17:25
little grid. It's like Japanese media uses
17:28
all the time where it's like a 5.*.
17:30
Yeah, 2 byte. It's bigger.
17:33
There's that one and there's also like the pentagram where
17:34
like the the hexagon shape or whatever gets larger inside.
17:38
Oh yeah, it's like a radar chart, Yeah.
17:40
Yeah, radar chart, yeah. So they they do it like that
17:43
where they're thinking about OK, this tea what is the bitterness
17:45
level? What is the astringency?
17:47
What is the sweetness? What is?
17:49
So they kind of divide it into those experiences and then plot
17:53
it out. So that's how the chashi, the
17:57
multiple chashi that we spoke with kind of think about tea and
18:02
also some of the farmers I spoke with, because it really dawned
18:06
on me how different the experience of writing about tea
18:12
is to consumers. Because I can't.
18:15
I'm pretty. I have low confidence that I can
18:18
sell a matcha, for example, without providing a customer
18:23
with some kind of reference to experiences that they already
18:27
have, be it strawberry or chocolate or chestnut or yuzu or
18:30
whatever. Makes sense.
18:31
And I mean, it's really complex, right?
18:32
Because there is no universal flavor profile.
18:35
Everyone has their own perception like Chashi's have
18:38
what is almost certainly the strangest incomprehensible
18:43
flavor, primary sensory experience with those products
18:48
that is just literally inconceivable to everyone else
18:52
because they've had those formative tasting experience of
18:57
thousands of references and like they are so distanced from
19:01
perceptual space from the consumer.
19:04
That and the language part doesn't help.
19:07
What's really interesting is we did a lot of work in Japan at
19:10
our last company in flavor work and Japanese language is a mess
19:16
to map back to English because a lot of flavor and texture
19:20
characteristics are relative. Like there's like, I think
19:23
there's like 6 different types of crunchy and like they're all
19:27
self referential. It's not like we say crunchy or
19:30
more crunchy or even more crunchy.
19:32
And it is really difficult mapping.
19:35
Yeah, they have like different types of crunch describe like
19:38
cartilage and like certain like crunchy Jelly type consistencies
19:43
and all these like really interesting things.
19:45
But what's so fascinating about the Joshy specifically is you
19:49
think it's just like almost, I don't want to use the word like
19:53
Eastern medicine, but it almost is poetic and subjective and it
19:59
just kind of happens that they kind of acquire skill and they
20:05
talk about it in a way that might not.
20:06
I'm kind of talking around the Bush here, but I've always
20:09
thought there's a level of mysticism with the chashi
20:11
blending. But actually it's more objective
20:13
than I thought. And what I mean by that is these
20:16
chashi, the high level ones, can taste the tea and actually tell
20:20
you. With a high degree of accuracy,
20:23
like what city in Japan it comes from and like how long it was
20:28
steam. Now that that might be a little
20:29
easier to kind of tell deep steam from light steam.
20:32
But like what cultivar, what city, what region, like how
20:36
approximately long it's been shaded like that stuff is
20:39
objective. You, you can get a response and
20:42
then check it against something And when you see how accurate it
20:46
is with some of these chashi, I don't know how they're driving
20:50
it, but it's being derived, derived, derived, derived from.
20:55
I don't know what the the correct English is, but that to
20:58
me is so fascinating that there's something real to it
21:01
beyond just intuition and luck and poet poetic poetics, I
21:07
guess. That skill so badly.
21:10
I want the references, the ground truth references to know
21:14
OK this this city steamed for 30 seconds and shaded for 39 days.
21:21
It's it's amazing. And they have to know it because
21:23
they go to auction and they have to bid on the stuff and they
21:26
have to make blends. Yeah, it's.
21:28
Wow, that's very. It's good news and bad news
21:31
though. Like good news is that, you
21:33
know, the art really exists. Bad news is that it's a self
21:37
referencing architecture. You know, you can't really let
21:41
them or make them to articulate what exactly they're tasting.
21:45
They will be just telling you. Yeah, it's that tea.
21:48
I've tried it before. Yeah, sure.
21:51
Right. And yeah, that's why Oheka, like
21:53
I I'm never going to make a blend, right.
21:55
And it's because of that you need to have skills, you need to
21:58
have certifications and leave it to the experts, I guess.
22:02
But it is, it is pretty amazing that they have that ability.
22:05
But anyway, that's something that I learned on the tour, I
22:07
guess. Very cool.
22:10
I, I'm very curious and I'm sure you've had like discussions with
22:13
farmers recently. We keep hearing that there's
22:15
quite a bit of hesitation to reinvest into creating more
22:20
tensha or the ability to create more tensha supply because they
22:24
don't know, like, is this a hype and how much is this going to
22:27
grow? What's your like best argument
22:30
for or against trying to encourage reinvestment in
22:36
producing and getting more tension supply?
22:39
Like what are the really bullish people in Japan saying and what
22:42
are the really bearish people saying like that are more
22:45
hesitant? I don't know what other people
22:47
are saying, but I can definitely give my own thoughts on what
22:50
maybe the future looks like and what some of the farmers have
22:52
said as far as why they are or are not creating more tea.
22:56
So it's so regional and there's so many answers, but I can tell
22:59
you one, one place was a refinery in Yamai that we work
23:03
with and they are very hesitant. They have the capacity, the
23:07
potential, I should say, not capacity.
23:08
They have the potential to really invest in a lot of
23:12
expansion and greatly increase their production.
23:17
But it's going to be a sizable financial investment, one that
23:20
will take maybe a decade, maybe more to recover from.
23:24
So if matcha is a passing trend to them, they've expressed this
23:28
to me, if matcha is a passing trend, then that's that's a
23:32
problem, right? Because there's a potential that
23:35
they don't get to re, they don't return on their investment.
23:37
Another example is I can't remember, I think this was in
23:41
Wasaka, one of the factories there, but I think it was, I
23:44
believe I was talking with Morisaki San and he was telling
23:47
me that by the way, I'm sorry if I got the farmer wrong.
23:50
This might be someone else. It's all blur.
23:52
I don't have my notes in front of me, but one of them was
23:54
telling me that even if they were to create more tea bushes,
23:58
if they were to get more land and create more tea bushes,
24:00
there's actually not enough capacity for the factory to
24:03
process it. Because you have farmers that
24:05
come together and Co-op and put material through a factory.
24:08
And you can't just have tea leaves, pick tea leaves sitting
24:12
there for days as you clear out the queue.
24:14
So there's sort of like a maximum capacity that your
24:17
factory can run through and that's already met in some
24:20
regions. So you would actually need to
24:23
expand the factory or create another factory, and that's
24:25
expensive and that's challenging.
24:27
So there are big hesitations about doing this because it's
24:31
not as simple as going outside and planting more tea bushes,
24:36
especially if you're in a place like Uji where yes, there are
24:39
abandoned tea fields in Uji. There there is an ability to a
24:43
degree to expand production or let's say cultivation.
24:49
But as a whole, there maybe isn't a lot.
24:51
Nuji in other regions that the investment is quite big.
24:53
And yes, there are government grants and there is money in
24:56
the, in the government that's going to these purposes and some
24:59
farmers are taking up on it. But again, it still kind of
25:02
comes down to we're talking about an industry that's been
25:06
around for a very long time that has gone through wars, world
25:12
wars, it's gone through everything you can think of in
25:15
history and it stayed consistent.
25:17
And I would argue that this industry is one of the most risk
25:21
adverse industries. The traditional crafts in Japan
25:25
are are very risk adverse. I'd argue that there are
25:28
examples of people that are doing interesting things.
25:31
For example, Furakawa Secha in Fuji is doing very interesting
25:34
things with organic matcha, probably producing the only good
25:38
organic matcha. Let me let me be careful how I
25:41
phrase this. The only high quality
25:44
exceptional organic matcha in Japan is coming from them
25:47
possibly. And so you do have people
25:49
innovating, but the industry as a whole is, is not geared
25:54
towards risk and reacting to an immediate shortage, an immediate
26:01
boom is pretty risky. Now, if, if this continues like
26:05
this for 5-10 years and there's still shortages, maybe people
26:08
start investing more and more. And I think people are going to
26:10
start investing more and more now anyway.
26:13
But this is The thing is macho just going to fall off in the
26:17
next few years? And I guess the best argument
26:20
against this is even if macho is a great example, right?
26:24
So we have, we are growing and even if Macho declines, we're
26:32
still growing and we'll still have needs of tensha.
26:34
And if one particular refinery we work with has higher amounts
26:38
of tensha that they invest in, we're probably going to buy from
26:42
them in the future more and more and more.
26:44
Even if the industry slopes, we're still going to be buying.
26:48
So that's sort of what I tell them without telling them too
26:51
hard because I don't want to take responsibility if it
26:52
doesn't work out that way. But yeah, I feel like things
26:56
will grow, although this is maybe a secondary topic here,
27:00
but I personally think there's going to be a a crash, a matcha
27:03
crash in the coming years. So whether it's a crash that
27:07
like kind of dips down and goes up again and goes down and up
27:11
again or whether it just kind of like stabilizes, I I don't know.
27:14
I think it'll probably continue going up, but I think there will
27:16
be a a correction do. You think that's going to happen
27:18
soon or do you think that? I mean, I, I actually personally
27:21
hold the opposite view. I think we're just getting
27:23
started. Like I think that these like,
27:25
movements are slow and take time and like, we are now in a stage
27:28
where you can find it in every major city and people are just
27:32
going to want a better and better and better thing.
27:34
So here I agree and that's what I personally think that we will
27:38
keep growing. But I do think there'll be a
27:40
correction. How severe that correction is, I
27:41
don't know. So let me give let me be
27:43
specific. OK.
27:44
So one of the people on the tour is a now a friend of mine who've
27:47
been hanging out. His name is Kevin.
27:49
And what Kevin was saying and we were talking about this is it's
27:52
macho prices are going to go up. I can't guarantee that and I
27:56
can't go too big in the details, but I believe in the next year
28:00
and the next few months, you're going to see pretty significant
28:02
price increases in the entire industry.
28:04
And according to Kevin, who knows business a lot better than
28:08
me, there are what are considered transient consumers.
28:11
I think that's the term you use. And these are consumers that buy
28:14
matcha, but once it exceeds a certain price, they'll just go
28:17
to whatever else is within the price that they expect.
28:20
So the price of matcha double s. Maybe not going to buy matcha.
28:23
Maybe start buying hojicha, maybe start buying coffee, maybe
28:26
start buying yuzu lemonade refreshers.
28:28
We're talking about like your typical matcha cafe.
28:30
So I think that if the price increases continue the way that
28:33
I think they're increasing, then there's going to be a percentage
28:37
of consumers that pull back. And you'll still have consumers
28:43
that want to pay the expensive stuff, especially for, you know,
28:47
home use and people that are really into it that can't get
28:50
any matcha now. But I think you're going to have
28:53
these cafes that lose customers buying matcha, even if they have
28:56
it for a period of time. And I think more importantly,
28:59
what will happen is if the prices continue going up, you're
29:03
going to see a lot of these matcha companies or tea
29:06
companies that only sell matcha and think these matcha cafes, I
29:10
think they're going to be in a lot of trouble even right now.
29:12
For example, one of the, I don't know how much I'm allowed to say
29:15
about this, but one of the big key companies that services the
29:19
West sent an e-mail out that they're cancelling all sales,
29:24
domestic and international, indefinitely.
29:27
And they supply a lot of companies.
29:29
Wow. Yeah, including us.
29:31
Crazy. So that's why we got the e-mail.
29:35
And then I can, I can send you, just so you know, I'm telling
29:39
the truth, right? But I can send you personally
29:41
post from a tea company that basically said, yeah, we're,
29:45
we're there's no more matcha. So that's it, you know, goodbye.
29:50
We're going to start selling coffee anyway.
29:51
I'm just saying that there's a lot of movement right now.
29:55
And I think you're going to see a lot of price increases.
29:56
You're going to see a lot of cafes pull back from matcha as
29:59
much as they want it. Or what you're going to see is
30:01
maybe more Ho Chi Cha being sold or more matcha from not Japan.
30:06
And I think that there's going to be consequences to this in
30:08
the short term, which could be a little dip, a little crash, but
30:12
maybe not. I don't know.
30:13
I hope not. Yeah, wow.
30:15
Complicated. Good points though.
30:19
Yeah, could be. I mean it continues to, they can
30:22
still consume a lot of matcha from coming from Japan and then
30:26
really slowly turning into a luxury product that will be
30:30
remained or confined A. Lot of, I think there's a lot of
30:34
consumers that are just very price and sensitive.
30:37
And a really sad future would be that like the people that buy
30:42
like Hermes and Louis Vuitton indiscriminately end up like
30:47
becoming the market for Uji Macha where the Tensha was
30:50
actually grown in Uji, which would be a pretty sad future
30:54
where basically like normal people are priced out.
30:57
Yeah, but what I'm kind of thinking too is I'm not Even so
31:02
much talking about Macha going from $60.00 a jar Indy or even
31:08
60 to 80. I'm I'm talking about like your
31:10
typical cafe or matcha house that wants to sell Japanese
31:14
matcha in a latte format. And right now to make a matcha
31:18
latte with 4 grams of matcha, you can sell it for like 7667
31:25
dollars. But if the price of matcha goes
31:27
up 50%, sixty percent, 70%, the cost of goods, the the cost of
31:35
your ingredients to make a matcha latte, all of a sudden
31:38
we're talking about an 8A9, a $10 matcha latte.
31:42
And the issue there is, are consumers willing to pay $6 for
31:48
Ho Chi Cha latte, $6 for a coffee latte, and then $10.00
31:52
for matcha latte? That's sort of what I mean is I
31:56
don't think consumers are going to be super into that if that
32:00
happens. It might not.
32:01
I mean, Oika slightly raised our price, I think $0.50, but you
32:08
know, there's a place that open near us and they sell matcha
32:11
that's not from me even Japan, and they're charging $8 for
32:15
matcha latte. So I think consumers have more
32:18
wiggle room on how much wiggle to pay.
32:20
Yeah, it's yeah, it's amazing, right.
32:21
So I think there is more wiggle room, but like what is that
32:24
level? And once it crosses that,
32:25
crosses that threshold, that's where you're going to have that
32:28
consumer base that kind of steps away and says, all right, well,
32:32
maybe this isn't for me. And if that happens, that makes
32:35
sense. When that happens, I don't know.
32:37
But I think you're right. I think there's going to be more
32:38
and more and more demand, which makes the price higher and
32:41
higher and higher. And at some point, people are
32:43
going to step away and the price will correct, I think.
32:46
But I don't know. So where do you see that money
32:48
going? Right?
32:48
That's a lot of money that's basically should be going to the
32:52
bottom line of the producers and the farmers.
32:56
So like, how is that? How do you see that getting
32:58
reinvested? How?
32:59
How have you heard that conversation?
33:01
Yeah. So what I'm going to say might
33:03
be a little controversial, so please kind of understand that.
33:07
But my understanding is a lot of this money goes to farmers.
33:13
However, it's it's not going to the farmers that are doing the
33:17
hand picking. It's not going to the farmers
33:19
that are doing like the highest level of Japanese tea.
33:24
It's going to, it's basically rewarding the farmers that are
33:28
selling at auction houses that are producing high volume, low
33:32
quality, mass produced machine cut, you know, single conratia
33:40
shaded tea because that's where the money is.
33:42
You need volume of material. These farmers produce it.
33:46
It goes to the auction houses. At the auction houses, I can
33:48
only talk about Kyoto. I don't know other prefectures,
33:50
but at the auction houses some of the machine cut tea grown
33:54
outside of Uji, this is a fact, has sold more for more than some
33:59
tea sold at the auction house in Kyoto that is handpicked,
34:03
handpicked hanzu shaded, which is bizarre like that.
34:08
That world doesn't make sense, and yet here we are.
34:11
So. It's because it lives in the
34:13
wholesale system because like buyers are directly purchasing
34:18
it from the farmers versus auction.
34:20
No, no, I'm saying that this is just the auction.
34:22
There's there's Tazumi, hand picked.
34:24
Material. Just the auction.
34:25
In uji grown in uji, hand picked material grown in uji in the
34:30
auction house that has sold for less money than machine cut tea
34:36
grown outside of uji in the auction house.
34:38
Now that could just be a timing thing.
34:40
Is that just because the is or the smaller the smaller
34:45
quantities? That's what I thought.
34:48
I thought maybe it's because right now what you need is high
34:51
volume of material that can be the base of your blends and you
34:56
really need that. You need high, high volume that
34:58
you could, you know, blend with and have good quality.
35:02
I think it's probably like high quality, nice, consistent, super
35:06
high volume machine cut tee and this more high end small lot.
35:11
It's it's, I don't want to say more trouble than it's worth,
35:13
but it doesn't give you the flexibility that these giant
35:17
lots do. So maybe that's why it might
35:20
also just be a freak thing where stuff at auction at the earlier
35:24
parts of auction goes for more because they have more money and
35:27
they're desperate and they need the tea.
35:28
So the bid goes up high. I don't know.
35:31
But this the fact that it has happened and we're not even
35:34
talking about direct sales because it's a whole other
35:36
topic, but one farmer, 1 farmer put this in a funny way.
35:40
He said farmers in this one. I'm not going to say the name of
35:43
the region, but in this one region where they're known for
35:46
growing more daily lot economy teas and those farmers are now
35:50
buying themselves really nice cars right now.
35:53
And the farmers that are, you know, growing like the Super
35:56
high end material, they're they're scared.
36:00
They're worried that because of doing direct sales, their, their
36:04
material is going to not be so different than previous years.
36:08
And it's incentivizing more daily lot tea, which I don't
36:12
want to give that a judgement. It's not necessarily good or
36:13
bad. I definitely prefer that over
36:16
tea coming from like Indonesia for Macha, but but it is a fact
36:20
of life, I guess here now that who knows what will happen.
36:23
I don't know, Yeah. Do you know what the hurdles are
36:26
to purchase at auction? Like it's it's My naive thought
36:31
is that it's very unfortunate that for most foreigners cannot
36:35
buy tea at auction, because then they could sell it as single
36:39
origin single cultivar with all the specifics instead of it
36:43
getting blended. But like, what are the merits
36:46
and demerits of having that be a closed access system?
36:50
Yeah, it definitely is. And not even.
36:53
It would give Westerners access to the commodity market, right?
36:56
And it's every other industry. Yeah.
36:59
Anyone could get. Yeah, it's not just Westerners,
37:02
it's also not all Japanese can get access.
37:06
Yeah, to be fair, I don't know what the qualifications are to
37:09
get access to it, but I know that even just being a Japanese
37:13
company or like Japanese farmer, you can't go to the tea
37:17
auctions. Like there's, there's certain.
37:20
I think you have to be a member of the association and then
37:24
that's like a whole process that you apply.
37:26
I I don't know exactly how it works, but yeah, it's definitely
37:30
not something that's open to foreigners, foreign companies in
37:34
at least in a direct or easy way that I know of.
37:36
Maybe I'm wrong, but it is pretty closed down and it has
37:40
pros and cons, right? So maybe one of the pros is that
37:44
it allows the UGI tea companies and also other tea.
37:48
I'm just talking about UGI because that's where kind of I
37:50
have more experience, but across any other prefecture maybe has
37:53
different rules or access, but it allows these UGI companies to
37:58
get dips to get the material to continue the craft, right?
38:02
So imagine they open the gates and all of a sudden all these
38:06
other companies come in with a lot more money.
38:10
Think about places in New York or places in Beijing or Shanghai
38:15
or anywhere. Come in and just run the bids up
38:19
to crazy high levels. Buy all this material.
38:22
What is left for the tea companies to make their blends?
38:25
Makes sense. I think that's, I mean if we had
38:27
access, we would come in and like bid up like because it's
38:31
like it's so expensive. And if we had access to close to
38:34
commodity pricing or like plus 20% or plus 30%, right, like
38:39
that's massive. Like that's what you can build a
38:42
business on top of. Yeah, for sure.
38:46
It's. Actually very frustrating from a
38:47
western perspective that we're just so stuck.
38:51
There's just so few people you can buy from.
38:53
If you want to start a match company you can go direct to the
38:56
source, which is super hard. Or you have to pay crazy prices
38:59
and it's still hard like finding someone that will sell to you.
39:03
It is. It definitely, definitely is.
39:05
It's a very closed system. And yeah, I don't know, I have
39:08
mixed feelings about it. Obviously, I would love to go to
39:10
the auction house and place bids and get material, but I
39:13
understand that if I did, then tea companies and other
39:19
producers would not be able to get the material that they need
39:23
to do what they're doing. I see that.
39:25
And I also recognize that the tea companies are as important
39:28
to Uji as the farmers, even if the Western market doesn't see
39:33
that. The Western market is also not
39:36
like the primary market now, but that may change.
39:40
I mean, it's a shame for like the traditional players doing
39:44
the very intensive agriculture to produce an insanely good
39:49
product because you let capitalism do it's work and like
39:53
every Western company would come in and bid up that Hanzu, shaded
39:56
Asahi, whatever. Yeah.
39:59
And have it go for the price that it's actually worth.
40:03
Yeah. And I agree with you.
40:07
Yeah. Because I can understand both
40:09
sides of the argument. Well, here's one.
40:11
One thing I would say, I agree with you that Matcha is
40:14
dramatically underpriced. I've talked about this before.
40:16
I think that Matcha should be much more expensive.
40:19
Now, of course, I'm happy that it's not in a sense because I
40:22
don't know how many, what percentage of my customers would
40:25
would buy it at 300% higher or whatever.
40:28
But I will say that some farmers do sell to the West and they
40:33
choose like they, they do have the option to sell a lot more to
40:37
the West, right? So that's an option, but they
40:41
choose to sell. Oh, I need to be specific.
40:44
The farmers that I'm talking about in Uji who are like the
40:46
top level farmers, they do some of them, not all, but some of
40:49
them do sell to Western companies, but in limited
40:51
amounts. And they could choose to sell to
40:54
the West a lot more and get a lot more money and even maybe
40:58
auction and price bid between the Western companies.
41:02
That could happen. However, here's the thing, the
41:04
tea companies, I've been with them for hundreds of years.
41:08
Nuku Koran is what 300 year old company, Taishi's farm, Shimizu
41:12
son's farm, 300 year old farm. So there's a long history that
41:15
these people share. And the way it works, for better
41:18
or for worse, if you are one of these tea farmers and you decide
41:23
to not work with these tea companies, to step away, to not
41:25
like you go to them, you give them their tea, they give you up
41:28
to months later how much they're going to pay for it.
41:31
And you can say yes or no, but you don't say no.
41:34
And if you say no, you're probably never going to work
41:37
with that company, ever. So here's what it means.
41:39
No one knows what's going to happen with the West.
41:42
If a tea farmer like, just goes completely Western and sells
41:44
only to the West and cuts the tea companies out and doesn't
41:48
help them and doesn't, you know, whatever, that's fine.
41:52
But if the West's interest in tea vanishes or drops or
41:55
whatever. Yeah, they will be screwed.
41:57
Right. And, and you can think about it
41:58
like this. There's one year of track
42:00
record, maybe 2 years of track record of the West being
42:03
involved in matcha, and there's 1000 years of track record of
42:07
Japan and Japan. Even if all the matcha craze
42:11
dies out, there's still gonna be for the next 1000 years coming,
42:15
Japanese Chano Yu still doing their tea ceremony, still buying
42:20
matcha, the tea farmers still getting by.
42:24
So you are sacrificing a lot of security for potentially a short
42:29
term increase in profit. So right now they have a pretty
42:32
good balance where a lot of these farmers will sell material
42:36
to Oika, but the most of it's going to the TT blenders and the
42:39
stuff at auction for the like daily lot farmers.
42:45
Now that's a question. I don't know.
42:46
That might be interesting. I don't think they have any
42:48
allegiance to anything because all their tea goes to the
42:51
market. They the auction houses.
42:53
So I don't see why they wouldn't make it more accessible other
42:56
than maybe they can't or don't have it's too early.
42:59
And maybe some entrepreneurial person will make an
43:01
international auction houses that that local farms, let's say
43:05
in in Wazuka all submit on. I, I don't know, but it makes
43:09
sense that the, the more traditional heritage producers
43:13
are not doing that. But again, everything I should
43:15
mention, everything I'm saying in this whole podcast is just my
43:18
intuition or feeling from what I've seen or talked to the
43:21
farmers about. And it may not be
43:23
representational of the market in general or, you know, anyone
43:26
else's opinion. Yeah, especially more than the
43:29
more mass market, you know, mass produced regions, they probably
43:33
operate on a very different mentality than places like Uchi
43:38
and Yami. Yeah, yeah, So interesting.
43:41
Some really strange dynamics. It's such a weird industry.
43:45
I met someone recently who is trying to introduce matcha to a
43:50
country where there's not that many specialty vendors and he
43:54
has literally the world's greatest go to market plan.
43:57
He's doing a bunch of consumer testing.
43:59
He realizes preferences might be different.
44:01
He wants to work with Tchashi and all of this, this whole very
44:04
detailed plan, which I don't won't share publicly, but it's
44:07
like the best go to market plan I've ever seen.
44:09
I am trying to make like, like connect this guy with the right
44:14
people to, to like find a tchashi and like kind of help
44:18
make this come to life just because it's such a good plan
44:22
and no one will take him. Fuck, it's I can't think of a
44:25
single industry where you have someone who's this motivated and
44:29
has such a good plan that's consumer centric.
44:32
No one will like most people won't even answer the answers
44:36
that we are getting are no, no, no, no, no.
44:40
Like no one cares. Like, it's so bizarre how like
44:45
there's all this care for the product and for history and for
44:47
culture, which I appreciate, and they're slamming the door on
44:51
everyone else. Nope.
44:53
We don't want, we're not dealing with this country.
44:55
We're not dealing with you. We're sold.
44:57
We're at capacity. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
44:59
And it's just, it's a weird environment and it's makes it
45:03
really hard. One for new players, but two,
45:05
like for the spread of matcha and the culture itself.
45:09
It's I don't know. Well, I mean, there's a very
45:12
inherent power dynamic or discrepancy between these people
45:18
that want to sell matcha and those people who produce in
45:20
matcha. It's not balanced.
45:23
It's a very, you know, the, the, the power shifts towards the
45:28
producer, not towards the the vendor or the cells, which is
45:33
not very common in other industries.
45:36
It's the situation we're seeing here in Matcha.
45:38
I'll tell you a quick anecdote from the tour.
45:41
We went to visit Kodazumi and we asked him what he thought about
45:47
the the matcha boom. And his response was kawhi, like
45:52
it's scary. And we asked, well, what do you
45:55
mean? Why?
45:55
What do you mean? He said, the answer to your game
45:58
is not, not what I expected. The answer was because the
46:03
shortages are such that consumers are going to be pushed
46:07
away from authentic Japanese matcha into non authentic matcha
46:12
and won't know or care about the difference.
46:14
That was so interesting. And I think that's the real
46:17
problem here is yes, it's great, shortage is great.
46:21
Oheka has material we can sell, we'll do great.
46:24
We have less competitors to worry about.
46:26
But actually that's a bad way to think about it because consumers
46:30
will want their matcha. And if it's coming from Kenya
46:33
and it's in a matcha latte and it's half the price and it looks
46:38
green on social media, then I think a lot of consumers are
46:42
going to be fine with that. And I think that's sort of the
46:45
issue is I want more production. I want more affordable Japanese
46:51
matcha and I want it in the hands of entrepreneurs that are
46:54
going to compete with me because at least it's going to be
46:57
authentic Japanese matcha. And I think so many people want
47:00
to do interesting things in matcha and start their cafes.
47:02
And of course there's money in this.
47:04
There's there's sexiness in this.
47:06
It's an exciting industry. It's one that's trendy and cool,
47:10
right? You can look at that new place
47:11
in New York that just opened. It's so trendy and like not in a
47:14
bad way either. This is something that people
47:16
find aesthetic resonance in. And I think that's resonance in
47:21
and I think that that's fantastic.
47:23
But if there's no material out there and it's so gate kept that
47:27
you can't get it and it forces you either to give up or to go
47:31
to auxiliaries, I think that's a missed opportunity.
47:34
And it's, it's short term, probably right in the next few
47:38
years. It's going to take at least 5 to
47:40
10 years to solve because it takes about 5 to 10 years to
47:44
plant new bushes and new fields and new infrastructure.
47:46
I think this will be OK in the future.
47:48
One of the T fields here, for example, in Chizoka just
47:51
supplied something like less than 100 tons to a matcha
47:56
company in New York of material for this year coming up.
47:58
And they're going to be greatly increasing their production.
48:01
They got new fields, so these problems will go away, but
48:06
probably. But maybe the damage is done by
48:08
then. That was what I think Kuruzumi
48:11
was hinting at when he said Kawhi and also he explained it
48:15
after. But yeah, maybe more interesting
48:17
if I just say that. And ambiguous whispers are
48:22
sometimes louder than directly shouting.
48:25
Yeah. You know the market finds a way,
48:28
and that's both good and bad. Yeah.
48:33
It's the really weird dynamic that we're seeing.
48:36
No easy answers. Yeah, and it's also worth noting
48:40
2 things. One is that it's it's really
48:42
easy to dramatize this and people love the, the, the
48:45
mystery and the drama and the excitement of like shortages and
48:48
like, it's, it's morbid and fun, like watching a train wreck.
48:51
But I think is it that big of a problem?
48:55
Is it actually even bad? Think about it like this.
48:58
I I had this conversation with Shimizu yesterday with a
49:03
reporter who was interviewing his company in mind and they
49:06
came in with these judgements, which makes sense.
49:11
Companies are going to be in trouble.
49:13
All the stuff is going on. It's so dramatic, blah blah blah
49:15
headlines. Look at Reddit people posting
49:18
about how terrible the shortage is and how bad but, but, but it
49:23
reminds me of that old anecdote of the farmer whose horse ran
49:27
away. Did you ever hear that?
49:29
OK, so I'll make it really quick.
49:31
Farmer had a horse. Horse runs away.
49:33
Neighbor comes over and says, oh, that's a shame, it's too
49:35
bad. And the farmer said we'll see.
49:38
The next day the horse comes back and it brought a mare.
49:41
OK, yeah. So I'm not going to say the
49:43
whole thing, but you guys can Google it and you'll get the the
49:46
whole, you know. That's right.
49:50
Right. Yeah, great too.
49:54
So the point of the anecdote is that things may look bad but may
49:58
be beneficial in the long run. You just don't know, so don't
50:01
apply so much judgement on it. And the best example of this is
50:04
like, yeah, but actually, is it that terrible that matcha for 10
50:10
goes up a few dollars? Is it that bad that your matcha
50:15
latte costs $0.50 more? Is it that dramatic?
50:18
Actually? Like, if you want matcha, you
50:20
can still get it. Maybe Mercury Clay Man, for
50:22
example, your favorite blend is sold out and has a restocking in
50:25
a week. OK, You know what I mean?
50:27
Like is it that big of a deal? Think about this.
50:30
The sencha farmers and Kyokura farmers and cut, the curly tea
50:36
farmers and the cabocha farmers. Like these people that are
50:40
producing the high level Kyokura for example, the NAFF is coming
50:44
to them and saying yeah, just give up and just grow tensha.
50:46
Like, come on, like it's done, you know, not that dramatic and
50:49
not that like dismissive, but they're encouraging farmers to
50:53
switch over to Tentra production.
50:54
And like, if you're a producer who's made Yokoro and it's like
50:57
your father and his grand and your grandfather and going back
51:00
all the way, like, you know, no one cares.
51:04
The West doesn't care about Kyokoro.
51:07
The West doesn't. I mean, there, there are of
51:09
course some people who do, but as a generalization, there's no
51:13
Kyokoro boom and there probably never will be.
51:15
So I have reasons that I think that, but maybe there will be.
51:18
I don't know. But the point is like, if you
51:20
are a matcha producer, you know intrinsically that your farm is
51:24
going to last another generation without any concern.
51:28
But that's not a luxury that a go Co producer has.
51:30
So it's also worth kind of reflecting on this and
51:33
recognizing that, hey, there's there's beauty in this.
51:37
There's beauty in the fact that people around the world found
51:40
this niche material, this niche craft that no one cared about.
51:45
And now everyone cares. And that's wonderful and that's
51:49
beautiful. And that may mean in the short
51:52
term that there are some growing pains.
51:54
But really, you know, do you cut off your legs when you're
51:57
growing cuz you have growing pains in them as a kid?
51:59
Like, yeah, it sucks, but it's towards something bigger and
52:02
better. It's an optimistic way to think
52:04
about about it maybe. But I think there there is truth
52:07
to it. For sure.
52:08
Yeah, that's true. Hard to predict what the future
52:10
will actually be, and it's very easy to think that it's easy to
52:13
catastrophize everything. It's a good word.
52:18
One thing could be interesting is that, you know, for, you
52:21
know, people outside of Japan, vendors outside of Japan kind
52:25
of, you know, share the risk of expanding potential production
52:30
like through investment or, you know, I think that that will be
52:33
something very beneficial, you know, you offloading the risk
52:36
from the farmer's shoulder. But also it's also a statement
52:41
of, you know, we are going to be here, you know, with you for for
52:44
the future. Yeah.
52:45
Yeah, for sure. It's hard though, like so
52:48
without getting into too much detail, Oheka has had interest
52:52
in putting in some infrastructure in Japan.
52:55
Obviously Oheka has a go to Gaisha.
52:57
So Oheka is a Japanese corporation, to my knowledge is
53:00
only one other American company that has Japanese incorporation
53:04
that that's from America. And we're we're going to put
53:06
infrastructure here. But what I will tell you is the
53:11
for better or for worse, the governmental policies in this
53:14
country do a very effective job in preventing investment, at
53:20
least in agriculture. So.
53:23
The exact opposite of the rest of the world.
53:26
So that's crazy and I'm not trying to put too much judgement
53:28
on that, but try to make a go to gaisha like a Japanese
53:31
corporation. Unless you're married to a
53:32
Japanese woman or man, it's pretty challenging.
53:36
Now, maybe it's not as bad as China where you have to give 50%
53:39
of your, you know, 51%, but there's all these best way to
53:42
put it for at least this is my perspective having gone through
53:45
the process. There's many catch 20 twos and
53:48
even little things like getting an apartment.
53:50
If you're a foreigner, getting an apartment in Japan is is a
53:54
nightmare. So if you want to put
53:57
infrastructure here and invest here and spend time here,
53:59
there's basic day-to-day stuff you have to solve, such as
54:02
getting an apartment or opening a bank account or getting a
54:05
phone number that every aspect of the culture kind of sets up
54:09
to prevent you from doing from government to company, you know,
54:13
at every level. And you know, on a, on a certain
54:15
level, like that's good because the more barriers there are, the
54:19
harder it is for competitors to do it.
54:21
This is just not related to Matcha so much.
54:23
But my personal feeling is the Japanese economy could be
54:28
improved with more innovation and investment from from foreign
54:31
markets. And it's something that, at
54:33
least from my perspective, is not something that is welcomed
54:35
with encouragement. And again, that might be good or
54:38
bad for Japanese society. I don't know.
54:40
I'm not Japanese, so I don't know.
54:42
It's their house. They can do it what they want
54:44
with it. But I just feel like the matcha
54:46
industry, it's like there's so much room to grow, but there's
54:50
no furniture to put in the house.
54:54
It was interesting because we were you were hosting that live
54:57
stream the other day and I was just like struck the number of
55:02
people that want to import Ishi Usus to their country.
55:06
And like you've become a subject matter expert on doing that.
55:09
And there's just there's not going to be enough.
55:13
There's never going to be enough.
55:15
And like everyone wants to contribute to the value creation
55:19
of matcha in some way in their country.
55:22
And like we all know that grinding fresh really changes
55:26
the game from a quality perspective.
55:30
And, like, people want some agency over that, and it's
55:33
weightless or long. Like finding a stone Mason to
55:36
resharpen your stones can take years.
55:40
Yeah, if you're even. Prioritizing all almost a bigger
55:43
problem than getting the mills to begin with.
55:45
And people don't that's the thing.
55:46
People who want the mills don't realize that if you get a, if
55:49
you're lucky enough, you have enough money and you're willing
55:52
to wait potentially years to get a mill, as soon as you get that
55:55
thing, it's going to have to be resharpened.
55:57
And that's a whole other world of pain.
56:00
But you're right, people want to give value creation to Matcha
56:04
and not just be a reseller. Yeah.
56:06
I mean, that's what the backbone of what Oyka is or they're
56:10
taking the greatest agency over that quote UN quote, last
56:13
manufacturing step to produce a product that literally no one
56:16
else can at any form of scale, at least on the East Coast.
56:23
But I wonder if one day someone will try to take even more
56:26
agency because I was thinking the coffee model, you know,
56:29
people bringing in unroasted green coffee, roasting it,
56:32
blending it and then doing the preparation work to serve it.
56:37
But I wonder if someone could import shiage equipment, so have
56:42
access to Oricha on the commodities market and do even
56:46
more value creation by doing the shiage processing country and
56:51
then having an ability to mill it, whether or not it's ish usus
56:55
or you know, we're working on infrastructure to help solve
56:57
that problem and then doing the serving of the customer because
57:01
like matcha's made three times like on the farm during
57:05
processing and the preparation. So going even further back could
57:09
be interesting. Curious to hear it could be what
57:12
you think this. Is my my feeling.
57:14
I think that in the next couple of years we're gonna see an
57:19
explosion of specialty Hoji Cha. I think that's going to happen
57:25
because Hoji cha is affordable. So you can produce it cheap for
57:30
cafes, you can powder it, which means you can make lattes and
57:34
mixed drinks and foods and etcetera out of it and you can
57:37
roast it. So I think what will happen is
57:40
you'll have people contacting farmers and it doesn't have to
57:43
be tencha farmers. It can be gokoro sencha anything
57:46
and have single origin single origin tea that's affordable
57:51
from Japan and then roast it like you roast coffee with skill
57:57
with you know, Kung Fu in America and have different
58:01
places have their own because everyone wants to add value
58:05
right? You you the the reason matcha
58:07
lattes sell well. There's a few reasons, but one,
58:10
cafes can add value by making a matcha latte look beautiful.
58:14
So the more value you can add as a company or producer, the more
58:17
attractive that product is. So I think Hojicha is going to
58:20
be like that next thing where people are going to get Hojicha
58:23
roasters and roast it have their own skill and like, oh, I
58:26
roasted it. You know, this green bean, this
58:30
green tea, I, I roasted at this level versus this level from
58:33
this region, from this producer. This is a blend.
58:35
This is and the thing about blending hojicha is no one
58:38
cares. Like you're not going to offend
58:39
a chashi. Blending hojicha matcha is
58:42
different but hojicha is just like a MO Tai nai product, a
58:46
product that is just a waste product.
58:48
Like for example one of the the tea factories that we could get
58:51
some of our yami cha from has almost infinite but free cookie
58:57
cha free stems. So I can get infinite hojicha
59:01
basically. No one once said.
59:04
Right. Yeah, yeah.
59:05
So the point is like, that's kind of cool.
59:08
And I think that this is where people totally untapped.
59:11
But yeah, it's so true. the IT has no cultural baggage.
59:15
Like we can really do a lot of things with more, you know,
59:19
offending anyone. Yeah, and the volume is is huge.
59:23
There's no shortage and they'll probably never be a shortage of
59:26
of Japanese material for Ho Chi Cha.
59:29
So this is actually something that Oika is going to be
59:31
pursuing pretty aggressively. But what's cool about this is
59:36
this can be open to anyone. Anyone can get a hoji cha
59:38
roaster. Anyone can work with any of the
59:41
farms in Japan. It doesn't have to be macho
59:43
tencho specific. And you can roast hoji cha and
59:47
do your own. You know, I think there are some
59:49
companies in America that do small scale hoji cha, but kind
59:53
of approaching it like a coffee shop, I think is kind of
59:55
interesting. But with Hoji, I think that will
59:57
be something that substitutes the matcha.
1:00:00
And matcha gets more and more difficult to get access to.
1:00:03
Makes sense, So if you're a little.
1:00:05
I know you thought that'd be super cool.
1:00:09
From tensha, definitely from stems.
1:00:13
It's possible. I don't know, we haven't tested
1:00:16
it. It's possible.
1:00:18
We might be able to adjust the pressure or the gap between the
1:00:21
plates too, or we might need to grind it a few times, but it's
1:00:25
possible. Yeah, or release like a special
1:00:28
edition. Or we just.
1:00:29
Changed grinding like different plates or something?
1:00:31
I would buy that. Would be a cool future.
1:00:33
Yeah, Hojichai needs a specialty moment too.
1:00:36
It's a we're. Not there, but I think it could
1:00:38
be now. Very few people make any quality
1:00:41
distinctions. Right.
1:00:44
Yeah, I think it could be. And you can add value again by
1:00:46
doing your own blends and roasts.
1:00:50
Cool. I think it's a great place to
1:00:51
stop. Thank you so much, Mark for
1:00:53
coming on again, 1/3 time guest. I really appreciate it.
1:00:57
As always, if you enjoyed this podcast, please consider sharing
1:01:01
with a friend and we'll see you on the next one.
1:01:03
Thanks. See you in.
1:01:05
The future bye bye bye.