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Notes at Origin: Izumo City and Yame · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan and it's Michael Hosinger.
0:04
Hello and we're the Co founders of Sanko Match products.
0:07
Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey
0:10
in Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:13
And today we are sharing a little mid journey update as we
0:17
just left the beautiful city of Kyoto and the Uchi area behind
0:23
us. And as we are heading towards
0:26
Yame, we did a short stopover in Izumo City.
0:30
Yeah. So this is sort of mid journey
0:33
undigested material that we've learned.
0:35
So we wanted to sort of walk through some of our notes and
0:38
what we learned in our initial impressions.
0:40
And I think, you know, the more you learn about Matcha, the more
0:43
you learn that there's just so many different perspectives to
0:46
take in, whether or not it's from the farm level or the brand
0:48
level or the consumer, or if you're just talking about the
0:51
product itself. So, you know, we are very open
0:55
to changing our minds as we make new discoveries.
0:57
And we realize that on a day-to-day basis, our
1:01
perspective is changing with every new conversation that we
1:04
have. So we're trying to record a bit
1:06
more frequently during our sourcing trip to sort of capture
1:09
our undigested thoughts of what we saw, what we heard, who we
1:13
spoke to, to bring some transparency into what it's like
1:16
trying to source tea and how it was different from our
1:19
expectations. Yeah, so first Izuma Ryan.
1:24
So different, so different, so different from Fuji.
1:28
Yeah. And to put it into context, when
1:30
we went to Fuji, we mostly stayed within Fuji City, but we
1:34
did talk to some people and get to visit and have some meetings
1:38
and learn and listen about some of the more industrial
1:41
agriculture, the larger scale farming that's going on in like
1:45
Bazooka and other areas. But the ones that we actually
1:48
got to physically see and meet the farmers, they were all
1:51
relatively small scale operations from multi
1:54
generational families and where everything is hand picked.
1:57
They do rice straw shading and they're all basically in in Uji
2:01
City. And so we had a very unique
2:03
snapshot. Of probably the Creme de la
2:06
Creme of, you know, matcha production in Japan.
2:10
And we got to have multiple sensory experiences with farmers
2:15
preparing tea that they had made themselves and tasting the water
2:19
that they used to taste it and the materials that they have to
2:23
brew it and got to have it exactly the way that they
2:26
intended it, which is a very unique experience.
2:29
And actually just to share sort of the emotional journey of
2:32
sourcing. You know, when we came in, we
2:34
knew a few people. We had one confirmed meeting and
2:38
everything was a scramble for emailing people.
2:40
We're doing cold emails. We're able to get a couple of
2:43
introductions from people. And there was so much
2:45
unpredictability that it was kind of stressing me out a lot,
2:48
a lot, I think a lot more than it was Zhongjun.
2:51
But the moment we got someone very kindly offered to pick us
2:55
up, and the moment we got in that car and we had the first
2:58
interaction with those producers, I instantly could
3:02
just feel the weight lift off of my shoulders.
3:06
Doing business and meeting people in the Japanese tea
3:10
community is so different than when you're doing business with
3:14
large companies. Every time I had been to Japan
3:18
for work, which was maybe six or seven times in my past role, in
3:22
my past job, it was very formal. You walked in, you needed to be
3:26
wearing a suit. You did a basically what is kind
3:29
of a miniature ceremony, handing your business card to someone
3:33
only with two hands, not with one.
3:36
And they hand you yours. And you look at it and for me, I
3:38
can't read it, but you pretend to study it and say, oh, and you
3:43
do that with everyone in the room.
3:45
And then you have a talk and every, everyone's kind of poker
3:47
face. You don't know what's going on.
3:49
There's very little emotions exchanged.
3:50
And that was just the way that I understood Japanese business
3:53
was. But when you're interacting with
3:56
tea farmers, with people in the tea industry, there are tea
3:59
people. And it's like just the sense of
4:01
like finding your people, like tea people everywhere, whether
4:05
or not it's mainland China, Taiwan, Korea that we've
4:08
interacted with, and now Japan, you just get this warmth.
4:11
They're so warm. Yeah, they all have a very
4:14
similar vibe that you can instantly just sense it, or even
4:17
without having started the conversation, the start to feel
4:21
relaxed. Yeah, it's quite a magical
4:23
moment. So it's really an interesting
4:26
emotional journey too, as things got slowly confirmed and very
4:30
grateful for a lot of industry friends that were able to open
4:34
some doors for us and to meet some people.
4:36
And it's been an unexpectedly delightful journey so far, where
4:41
everyone's been so open with their knowledge and letting us
4:44
look at the tea, ask nearly any question we had the opportunity
4:48
to ask for advice. And it's been very helpful in
4:52
our journey of trying to bring matcha milling closer to the
4:56
edges, closer to the consumer, so that people can have a
4:58
radically fresh product. And the most surprising part to
5:01
me is that no one has told us that they think it's a bad idea.
5:07
At least from a tea farmer's perspective, everyone seems to
5:09
be very happy about the idea of selling tensha versus matcha.
5:14
Yeah, that's very true. You don't like penta production
5:17
and matcha production in Japan has this really strange, like
5:23
almost weird ecosystem. You know, these farmers, these
5:27
craftsmans that we have met, they are not necessarily the
5:31
creator of a lot of the matcha out there.
5:34
Yeah, completely separate. They're suppliers.
5:36
They're they're suppliers and they're actually in a lot of
5:40
times deeply exploited suppliers.
5:44
They have very little leverage in pricing negotiation with
5:47
these larger firms that you know that actually produce Macha or
5:51
you know have the retail distribution resources to to
5:56
essentially, you know, clean the market.
5:58
They are very much in a very sub position into reacting with all
6:03
these big firms. So as we are talking about our
6:06
idea of pushing Macha production to, you know, the closest level
6:11
to consumers. By being able to mill it fresh
6:13
anywhere and everywhere. Everywhere and anywhere and
6:16
everywhere, you know, like, this is really giving them a chance
6:19
to be able to, you know, stand in the stage and having a
6:22
spotlight and shine, you know, instead of getting blends
6:25
straight into those poetic named plants made by big bigger firms.
6:31
Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting too, right,
6:35
Because the reason why one, these large buyers and as we're
6:38
learning are regular consumers. So it's a great form of
6:41
predictable revenue for these farmers.
6:43
But you know, on the other hand, these farmers are naturally
6:46
bandwidth constraint, and some farmers have more resources than
6:50
others, and some farmers have more education than others, more
6:53
global experience, more language skills, and the ability to bring
6:57
a product to market is its own unique value creation.
7:01
But what's interesting is if matcha as a product is no longer
7:05
a powder you buy in a can, but something closer like coffee
7:09
beans, which then you prepare to yourself.
7:12
It really changes the sense of what a matcha product is in the
7:16
way it's manufactured and the the types of relationships and
7:20
the supply chain that matcha currently is dependent on.
7:24
Which, by the way, we give it a hard time all the time.
7:26
People don't like mill dates and by the time most matcha gets to
7:30
to the end consumer, it's three months, six months, one year
7:32
old. But actually it's more
7:35
accessible than it has ever been.
7:37
Back in the past, you know, matcha was not totally
7:39
accessible, right? You had to have your own ECU
7:41
suit and it wasn't until industrial milling and better
7:44
packaging technology and the ability to nitrogen flush and
7:47
put in these little oxygen absorbers was it possible that
7:50
you could get decent tasting matcha anywhere in the world.
7:53
So like the state that we're in now is actually a very good
7:56
thing, but it could be even better like fresh milling by
8:00
preserving the taste and nutrition and having the product
8:03
be more of the tensha than the ground can of matcha itself.
8:09
And Tensha is really a very interesting product in a sense
8:13
that it's almost the last of the process that these farmers are
8:19
able to get to. Anything after that frequently
8:22
requires a larger organization to allocate the resources to
8:26
mill the Tancha into Macha and package them into finished
8:30
product. Yeah, and that's not even all
8:31
farmers. I mean, some don't even have the
8:33
ability to make 10 shots. It stops at Aracha for the more
8:37
unrefined tea because they don't have the ability or the
8:39
equipment. Yeah, to do.
8:41
Stemming and deveining. Yeah, to do the shiaga process.
8:43
Usually you know that gets allocated into to locally larger
8:48
farm or larger firm and then people will kind of consolidate
8:52
all of their unfinished tea into that one place and it will get
8:55
finished into the final product now as potential.
8:59
So really excited by the fact that no one's given us any major
9:02
pushback on this idea and we've shown them photos of our
9:04
prototype and our progress so far and how fine we're able to
9:08
mill it and everyone seems very excited.
9:10
So that's that's very positive. It's very my, if you would have
9:15
asked me two weeks ago what my best case scenario would have
9:18
been, I would have said that everyone didn't communicate any
9:22
emotion in their face or in their words.
9:25
So which is absolutely has not been the case.
9:27
People have been quite explicit, not implicit in their support
9:32
for this idea. And we've also visited much
9:34
larger industrial firms that have the ability to go from leaf
9:38
to the end canned of matcha including all the fancy
9:41
packaging equipment. And so we really the story has
9:43
been quite consistent from these incredibly artisanal multi
9:48
generational Tezumi hand picked Tonzu shaded farms all the way
9:53
through places that have much larger degrees of automation and
9:56
the capital equipment to do many tons or hundreds of tons of tea
10:02
a year to be processed to their facilities.
10:06
Yeah, that was very interesting to see the contrast between very
10:10
industrialized production and very artisanal production.
10:13
Oh, absolutely. They're almost two different
10:16
products you like don't even think you can compare them,
10:19
right. It's the difference between like
10:21
agriculture to feed the world or like your locals farmers market
10:24
like a really very like or like a family run donut shop versus
10:29
Krispy Kreme like just the levels of capital investment in
10:32
this equipment and the sheer scale is almost unfathomably
10:37
large in in terms of its difference.
10:40
Yeah. And that was just, you know,
10:43
actually in comparison probably a medium to smaller size farm.
10:48
If you are comparing them to Kagoshima, we have heard that
10:51
you know these harvesters in Kagoshima are equipped with
10:55
automatic GPS navigators that that they can harvest by
10:59
themselves. Autonomous tea harvesting.
11:01
It's almost like a scene from Interstella.
11:05
Yeah. And I mean, just to give another
11:06
sense of like when they know how to fertilize the tea, for
11:09
example, or where and to apply either natural or chemical
11:12
fertilizer right on one, they actually have someone measure
11:16
the amino acid content of the leaves to know how much
11:20
fertilizer to add right on a large scale.
11:23
No one's doing that at these smaller plantations.
11:26
They smell the Bush. They look they're really
11:29
intimately connected to their gardens and what's going on in
11:32
the garden management. Every season before harvest, we
11:36
learned that the owner would frequently fly in experts from
11:40
Shizuoka and do all sorts of testings on the tea leaves to
11:44
really like, study and engineer the maturity of the leaves and
11:50
decide which day is the best harvest.
11:51
Look at chlorophyll content and they're quite sophisticated.
11:55
Operations, class measurement, modern technology, modern
11:58
analytical chemistry techniques. It's very interesting to see
12:02
because if you view it from a food science perspective, the
12:04
replicability from year to year, from season to season and their
12:07
ability to make very precision adjustments based on science and
12:11
based on measurement, right? If it's going to happen at
12:15
scale, I'm very happy it's happening at scale this way.
12:19
There's no other way to manage it when you have 50 times like
12:24
the land area to manage. It's a.
12:27
It actually makes a lot of sense.
12:29
People there are by there, I mean is mostly very like
12:33
flexible or flex minded. They they're not really attached
12:38
to any of the multi generation. I mean like one of the farmer we
12:42
met right there is also a multi generation T farm inheritor, but
12:47
they're not necessarily very attached to the generational
12:52
heritage or guideline. Unlike people in Wuji, they,
12:55
well, they don't have the. Traditional background.
12:58
Some people might call it baggage, but they don't have all
13:00
these traditionals. Yeah.
13:02
Things very, Yeah, production very general.
13:05
Progressive and innovative minded and, and they're not shy
13:10
about, you know, like you know, their, their teas are not only
13:13
coming from Mizuma City, but also elsewhere too.
13:15
People sending tea to them to get processed.
13:18
Yeah, that was very interesting too, because they clearly made a
13:21
very large investment in capital equipment.
13:24
And when you're buying all this capital equipment, it's just
13:26
sitting there. It's a huge asset on your on
13:28
your balance sheet, so you use it.
13:31
It's actually a big thing in the food industry around innovations
13:34
that get made for anything from a potato chip to a soda factory
13:37
to a beer brewery. You use your capital equipment,
13:41
whether or not you're doing white label for a different
13:43
product like that is an asset that needs to be used as
13:46
frequently as possible. Otherwise it's just sitting
13:48
there depreciating, losing money.
13:50
In this, you have revenue potential loss.
13:52
So it's very interesting having aricha or the unrefined tea
13:56
getting imported from other prefectures and then finished on
13:59
that equipment, which makes a lot of sense.
14:02
And what's really cool and what we got to see first hand are
14:04
these refrigeration units. My word, they're gigantic.
14:09
It's really literally a warehouse inside a giant
14:11
refrigerator to keep all of this RHR fresh so it can be basically
14:16
finished whenever it needs to be.
14:18
And it's not only a warehouse, it's also a milling center.
14:22
They have Millers inside the refrigerator.
14:24
That was very interesting. Very interesting.
14:27
In that case it was a ball mill. So it's also our first time
14:29
seeing what a ball mill look like.
14:31
So apparently for most ten shot when it's run through a ball
14:34
mill takes about 24 hours. But I mean, you're getting many,
14:38
many, many kilos depending on the size of the ball mill.
14:41
But for Hoji Cha or a very stemi hoji cha that gets run through a
14:45
ball mill to make Kodji Cha powder, that was not from Tensha
14:50
it it was I think he said 40 hours. 40 hours, yeah. 40 hours
14:53
of continuous milling. I mean, it's basically a bunch
14:56
of. It's a big Tumblr.
14:58
Basically a big Tumblr, yeah. And with a lot of bees inside to
15:03
to to kind of it's, it's basically creating powder from
15:06
collision. Yeah, basically.
15:08
And then in the end, it results in results in a very spherical
15:12
particle shape. And apparently some of them are
15:14
much better than others at reducing the heat.
15:17
And I think that was one reason why we saw the refrigerator as
15:20
well. It was very interesting.
15:22
And so Zhongjun, if you were to compare and contrast these two
15:26
producers, what were some of the big highlights in their
15:29
mentality for the things that they talked and worry about or
15:33
in the things that they told us? I mean, so far you have been
15:37
saying a lot of the difference between these two regions.
15:40
But what I have seen that I would say similarity is the mind
15:46
of pursuing natural farming. So although this is such a large
15:51
farm, but it's farms, really. They have a lot of farms
15:55
scattering around Izumo City, and they are into natural
15:58
farming. Yeah, we see spiders.
16:00
All kinds of spiders. Everywhere.
16:02
They are big spiders. They're not like spiders just,
16:05
you know, pop out in spring this year.
16:07
Very completely lived there for a long time.
16:10
And, you know, and they are very proud of it.
16:12
And they said that this, this is good for the environment.
16:15
This is good for the tea and for some of the gardens.
16:18
They were not natural farming before.
16:21
And they are slowly facing everything out and moving to
16:24
natural farming well. It's not exactly natural
16:27
farming. It's no not known intervention
16:29
as even under Ajas organic certification rules, you get to
16:33
keep your pesticide residue super low, but you're still
16:36
allowed to use some pesticides. And in that case, I don't think
16:39
they're using natural fertilizers, but still, I mean,
16:42
they're still in a very similar spirit.
16:44
And I think that is the only way you can make that kind of tea at
16:47
this kind of scale, right? It's really probably the best
16:50
time to be doing this type of more ecological farming
16:53
practices and the technology finally exists where we can do
16:57
this, where it can end up being at a price that most people can
17:00
actually afford. Yeah, although it's my suspicion
17:03
is, is that, you know, like it's far easier to get a, you know,
17:07
certification from Japan. But, you know, I think a large,
17:11
a very large reason for them to convert to, you know, less
17:15
synthetic fertilizer, less pesticides practice is to pass
17:19
the FDA approved. I wonder if the foreign market
17:23
actually has anything to do with this transition.
17:26
Yeah, that's what we keep hearings that the EU and the US
17:29
restrictions for pesticide residue are really strict.
17:32
But I've also heard that the JS certifications also really
17:35
strict and slow process too with really good enforcement from
17:39
everything I've heard. I think Ian from you know me, I
17:41
mentioned that too, but it definitely seems like that the
17:43
acceptable and pesticide residue requirements far less stringent
17:50
in Japan for normal matcha, but I don't know about labeled as
17:53
organic. It'd be interesting to double
17:55
click on so Zhongjun in matcha marketing and in tea marketing
18:00
in general, especially when talking about Japanese tea.
18:03
You can have several different ways of framing marketing to get
18:09
someone to appreciate to buy something.
18:11
On the race to the top, you can have people talking about panzu
18:16
shading, traditional farming practices, everything being hand
18:21
picked tazumi, and all of these great and wonderful things that
18:24
result in a product that is mind blowing.
18:27
And it's easy to demonize these very large, more industrialized
18:32
agriculture matcha producers. But on the other hand, these
18:36
large industrial matcha producers are capable of
18:39
producing enough tea for the entire world to drink.
18:41
Like the reason that we can go to any vending machine nearly
18:45
anywhere in Japan and get what is actually a pretty well
18:49
crafted, pretty well formulated, very tasty bottle or green tea,
18:53
hot or cold 24 hours a day for less than $1.00 or sometimes
18:59
about $1.00 is because of this type of pharma, right?
19:03
So, you know, we're consumers of both of both of those things.
19:07
But how can we hold that in our head?
19:09
And how can other companies sourcing the best of the best
19:13
frame why this is special in a way that doesn't completely hate
19:19
on this mass industrial agriculture?
19:21
People like to make that contrast all the time and it
19:24
doesn't sit with me very well. And I've been trying to digest
19:28
how some different ways people can highlight these differences.
19:32
That is a very interesting question, Ryan.
19:34
I don't think I have a really good answer to that.
19:38
It's like you can enjoy a multi barreled 30 year aged whiskey
19:45
and also really enjoy a highball made by Gaku.
19:50
A simple, nice, consistent product and you know, a very
19:55
complex, unpredictable artisanal product.
19:59
They coexist and they don't necessarily contradict each
20:03
other. It's almost like two kinds of
20:05
product. That gets enjoyed in two
20:07
different scenarios. Yeah, all context dependent.
20:11
Yeah. So I don't know like, do you?
20:14
Do you cast judgement on anyone that makes this contrast?
20:17
Yeah, a little bit like by the end, by the end of the day,
20:21
after seeing the industry from both sides, I would say, you
20:26
know, like probably similar amount of technology and effort
20:31
both went into two sides of these industry, just in
20:35
different ways. That's interesting.
20:37
Similar amount of effort got put into the development of homes or
20:42
shading the practice of homes shading.
20:45
The creation of all of these artisanal matcha takes shine and
20:50
sweat. And probably it took similar
20:53
amount of time and sweat for a bunch of scientists sitting the
20:58
office, pounding their hats on computer screen trying to figure
21:02
out all of these automatic harvester machines and all of
21:06
these technology to streamline how to create a consistent
21:10
product with so many different materials coming from different
21:14
gardens and different areas. Yeah, absolutely.
21:17
And they have two very different buyers too, right?
21:20
Especially when it comes to something like the artisanal
21:23
side, hand picked, etc. The expectations for consistency
21:27
are very different than when someone like the large beverage
21:33
group in Japan. Asahi is your buyer or Santori
21:36
is your buyer or Coca-Cola is your buyer.
21:39
You have very different quality requirements when you have these
21:43
type of wholesale accounts or wholesale accounts for like that
21:46
are that are moving hundreds or thousands of kilos and per
21:49
order. Yeah, they are worried about a
21:52
very different problem space than, you know, like these
21:55
artisanal small scale family farmers, which.
21:59
Yeah. It's interesting too that you
22:01
say it's a similar amount of work.
22:02
I had that feeling too. When we met them, all they
22:06
talked about was quality. Everything they talked when they
22:09
talked about their harvesting machines, the sorting machines,
22:12
the roasting machines, all the analytical measurements that
22:15
they have done, the fact that it's refrigerated, it's all
22:18
quality minded and it's clearly getting better and better and
22:22
better and better. And they said, yeah, we stopped
22:24
doing this process because this piece of equipment was invented.
22:28
Like it was really, really interesting.
22:30
You're right. It's they're both two things
22:33
that should be done. And when it comes to two, you
22:35
know, a vendor comparing and contrasting these things, I
22:38
think it you're right. It's just two completely
22:40
different things. And I I don't know if that
22:42
comparison should be made. Yeah, it's not fair.
22:44
It's helpful to make the comparison, to teach someone why
22:48
something is special in that sense, like it's closer to a
22:53
specialty product, but it's not so helpful in punching down.
22:58
Like I I don't like promoting something by punching down onto
23:01
something else and that being the industrial product.
23:04
Unless it's objectively bad. Unless it's objectively that's
23:08
fair or subjectively disliked by enough people, it's just like,
23:12
or it's just not good and no one can understand it.
23:15
Yeah, but yeah, I don't. I don't know if there's a good
23:17
answer to my question or if there's better alternatives.
23:20
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, importing tea powder or like
23:24
materials outside of Japan and gets processed, you know, doing
23:28
all these tea laundry, I would say it's objectively bad.
23:31
But you know, like, like if you compare a standardized process
23:35
versus a artisanal process, I think that's just unfair.
23:39
You know, people in two different processes, They're
23:42
they care about different things.
23:44
Yeah. And they're solving very
23:45
different problems. Yeah, absolutely.
23:47
And actually this led to a very interesting realization when we
23:50
were taking a train yesterday coming to Yamai.
23:53
And you know, the way we define when someone pressures us to
23:57
say, what do you consider to be specialty matcha?
23:59
And I need to give a very quick answer.
24:01
My first answer is wow, single origin, single cult, far right,
24:05
just stuff that's not blended and you know where it is and
24:07
where it came from. Now this has caused me to
24:09
rethink that a little bit. I don't know if that's you can
24:12
literally call matcha from anywhere, single origin or
24:16
single cultivar, so long as you've intercepted it at the
24:20
right point in its production, it was able to stay that way.
24:24
And that is like what is like if you just pull off some really
24:28
industrial Oku Midori from Kagoshima where they're doing a
24:33
ton and ton a ton and you compare that to hand picked
24:36
Azumi Oku Midori very carefully and expertly crafted, right.
24:41
We're talking about the difference between like boxed
24:44
wine and very small producer in Jira doing something
24:48
interesting. Yeah, they can both beat single
24:50
cultivar. Single origin.
24:53
And single origin. So this whole definition I think
24:55
is a little bit reevaluated. Yeah.
24:58
And also like it's very messy. It's I would say it's as messy
25:02
as Chinese tea that all of these regions are so poorly defined.
25:07
You can, like we, we were talking about Wuji tea and tea
25:11
from Wuji. Like wuji tea is really just a
25:15
nonsensical word. Like people can import tea
25:19
leaves from all the other regions, not just, you know,
25:23
regions nearby. As Aracha.
25:25
As Aracha, but like regions far away from like Kagoshima and
25:30
gets imported into Uji and gets laundry there and it's all of a
25:34
sudden Wuji tea. And you can have tea in Wuji,
25:38
which is actually a tiny teeny portion of what made-up Wuji tea
25:42
today. So it's a very, very interesting
25:45
and sad reality that we are facing right now is that all of
25:48
these regions are very poorly defined.
25:50
And I'm not saying that other regions doesn't necessarily
25:53
produce high quality tea. They do.
25:55
I think one of the sheer reason that why this is happening is
25:59
because you can sell the tea for a higher price tag, that's all.
26:03
And people recognize the quality of Wuji as they got advertised
26:09
throughout all kinds of, you know, resources online.
26:12
And this is probably why the reason that, you know, this
26:15
phenomenon is happening. But like other places like
26:19
Yamai, even in Kagoshima, they can produce very good quality
26:23
tea. And what we need to do is that
26:26
to let transparent label happening in all levels and tell
26:29
people exactly as fine as possible where their tea is
26:33
coming from. Yeah.
26:34
And the harvest method and, you know, some sense of place and
26:38
production and the people behind it.
26:40
So without that, you don't really know what you're
26:42
drinking. Yeah.
26:43
Or or you can just simply say it, which I think this is what
26:47
we have encountered in these most cities that totally
26:50
transparent about how your tea is getting blended from
26:53
different regions and getting processed through ball mill.
26:57
And you know, if it's still you think it still tastes good, it
27:00
tastes good. It's lower price tag and is
27:03
friendly for your wallet and it's still a good quality.
27:07
Tea. The beauty of this system, which
27:09
is also has a bunch of negative consequences is that the very
27:13
industrial tea, very industrial in the semi industrial tea macha
27:18
tencha that's being produced in Japan is actually very suitable
27:22
for being mixed with milk or sugar or some process where
27:26
you're losing some subtlety and nuance.
27:28
So they're basically able to meet people where consumers are
27:32
at. Once you go above a certain
27:33
quality level, you know, it's the subtlety in nuance is going
27:39
to be lost and you might as well have used something a little
27:42
cheaper, whether or not it'd be a later harvest or a different
27:45
cultivar, slightly older, etcetera.
27:47
And so in that sense, it's incredibly good.
27:51
The bad part is that there's not much space left in the foreign
27:56
demand export market for the really high end stuff because
28:00
the culture of drinking usacha or koicha, thin or thick tea is
28:05
much less. Or having it as a what MTCH
28:08
would call a light brew, more sort of a more Americano style
28:12
where you're really getting to taste the place.
28:15
And in in 3rd wave coffee or in specialty coffee, you know, you
28:19
see them get around this problem a little bit because the
28:21
blenders and the roasters have so much skill around the terroir
28:26
and identifying different lots of green coffee and blend it
28:29
together to create unique blends that are can be for milk, but
28:32
they're the ones doing that optimization.
28:34
But here, you know, in the in the case of Matcha, that
28:37
knowledge of what these different places taste like just
28:40
doesn't exist. Even now, if you wanted to go
28:43
through and really learn the taste of Kagushima versus Yame
28:47
versus Shizuoka versus is Kyoto Prefecture.
28:50
And even within Kyoto Prefecture, there's a bunch of
28:53
little micro regions which we're learning more and more about
28:56
that are super interesting. Yeah, we mentioned the Bell,
28:59
Wazooka, but also places like eBay.
29:01
Yeah, they all produce very different tea.
29:03
Yeah. And Uji Tawara, different levels
29:06
of automation, pretty interesting and as complex as
29:09
wine. The only way you could do that
29:10
is you have to apply all of these teas.
29:12
You don't know when they're milled on.
29:13
And the problem is there's too many variables that aren't
29:16
controlled for. You need to have controlled
29:18
variables to learn these things. And this stuff has been so
29:21
abstracted up the supply chain before it even gets due.
29:25
And that's why we make the case for transparent milling.
29:27
So it's interesting to see how this will evolve because my
29:30
suspicion is, is that a large number of these really good,
29:34
very reputable magic companies in the States or in other
29:38
countries, non Japanese countries that are sourcing from
29:42
some of these best farms and who are really Trail Blazers in the
29:45
industry of finding, writing about and telling the story of
29:48
these farmers. I would wager that the majority
29:51
of their volume is through more industrialty or slightly more
29:55
industrial tea because that's just where the bulk of the
29:58
consumption's at. When you're a cool new matcha
30:01
brown that everyone likes and a super hip, right?
30:04
That's great, right? The, the fanatics and the really
30:07
true tea lovers that are really into this stuff that are willing
30:10
to pay 304050607080 dollars a can or a jar, right, are going
30:18
to tell everyone else about it. And then you need something for
30:21
everyone else. You need something for people
30:23
who want to mix it with milk and sugar.
30:25
So another way, a way of putting that or another way of viewing
30:28
it is that these artisanal farmers are really marketing for
30:32
what is probably the cash cow of these businesses selling these
30:36
more industrial products. So it's an interesting situation
30:40
that we're in and the a place that I've been the most inspired
30:44
by, at least as a consumer that I've experienced many times
30:47
repeatedly, and we talk about them all the time on this
30:50
podcast, is MTCH really embraces the flavor variation, both as a
30:56
light group and when mixed with milk or even in a frappe, some
31:00
of their frappes that they have. You close your eyes, you swear
31:03
it's dark chocolate. Like you would have no idea that
31:06
that product was green and exploring the flavor variation
31:09
that way. And they tell you it's a blend
31:10
and we created it to taste like this or no, this is this is Oku
31:14
Midori from Yame. And then if you really want to
31:17
have a conversation about that, they'll tell you about what's
31:20
special about Yame and what's special about that cultivar and
31:23
why they chose it in this particular context.
31:26
They say, they say that the future is already here, but the
31:29
future is unequally distributed where some people are don't even
31:33
have a cell phone. And some people I'm like, who is
31:35
it? The CEO of Huawei was spotted
31:37
with a Tri folding phone. Commercially available now, but
31:42
he just launched it. They just launched it, they
31:44
leaked it. So they had a, they had a
31:45
customer of 1. He was really living in the
31:48
future, in the present, but before it was launched,
31:51
apparently that was a big marketing stunt.
31:52
We don't know. But the same is true in the case
31:54
of Matcha and I think very true. As industry people, we need to
31:58
look to see where this is being done, where people are
32:00
celebrating the variance of flavors and from very high
32:03
quality producers and showing that and presenting it that to
32:08
people who want to learn about it and get to taste it.
32:11
But this whole thing of race to the top and race to the bottom
32:16
really creates a interesting precision for a lot of the
32:19
middle tier farmers, as we learned from multiple farmers in
32:23
different regions are telling us similar stories.
32:26
Is that you know where do they go you becoming a very good
32:32
farmer is risky you need to. Very expensive.
32:36
Very expensive. You need to risk a lot of these
32:39
capitals into develop new technology like develop homes or
32:43
shading, acquiring new farming skill and you know, can really
32:48
screwed up even just one factor of these new process and your
32:54
entire, you know, yearly yield is basically damaged or not good
32:58
quality. And you know, that's just gone.
33:01
If you want to try, you have to try it next year.
33:03
How many years do you have ahead of you?
33:05
Like for a lot of these farmers, they don't necessarily have a
33:08
very large cash repository to sustain them to do more
33:12
innovations. Or the other way is that you can
33:15
really just go down. You can really adopt the way to
33:19
manufacture more industrial, you know, matcha and really just
33:22
wholesale them at a very cheap price to these large wholesalers
33:26
for lower grade matcha. And if you are in the middle,
33:31
like, it's a very like, sad decision sometimes for you to
33:35
make, like your garden probably lasts for generations and
33:38
generations now for today. And, you know, you are carrying
33:43
this weight from generations to make a decision for the future.
33:47
And the future is very unclear. And the future is very much
33:52
lying outside of Japan. And a lot of these farmers don't
33:57
even, you know, like, have a smartphone or speak English.
34:01
Yeah, is a huge awareness problem.
34:03
And they're really stuck with very limited buyers and probably
34:07
stuck to around fluctuations in the commodities market.
34:10
But my girlfriend has a cousin whose husband is a farmer in
34:15
Normandy in north of France, and he cultivates a lot of wheat
34:19
along with a couple other cereals.
34:21
And this farm is pretty well capitalized.
34:22
And they have a very large barn where they store all of this
34:26
wheat. And he actually won't sell it
34:28
until the commodity price is good.
34:30
A lot his friends in a similar area don't have that choice to
34:35
just sit on all of that grain waiting for a better price and
34:39
they're stuck with like one or two buyers right now.
34:43
Imagine you don't have the capital resources to even store
34:47
your product, but very well may even just be something as simple
34:50
as a storage issue, right? Or refrigeration.
34:54
Let's say you can process it to RHR.
34:56
If you don't have enough refrigeration, you can't, it's
34:59
going to start to go bad. No one's going to want it.
35:01
There's all these capital equipments involved.
35:04
I mean these types of businesses and it really apparently is
35:06
squeezing up people in the middle and we really need to
35:09
find some people like this. But it's even very hard.
35:11
Every single person that we've met was either completely dumb
35:15
luck because we walked in somewhere, started chatting with
35:19
someone, the president and 4th generation of this tea company
35:23
just walked in the door, or it was a direct introduction or a
35:26
cold outreach. It was just all people that
35:29
we're able to discover through Instagram or through their
35:31
website or through Google Maps or through other people.
35:35
But I mean, there's still 12,000 tea farmers in Japan.
35:39
And a lot of them. Part of them, and it's a
35:41
discovery issue, and not that they should be dependent on us
35:44
coming to knock on their door, but the people that know that
35:47
they exist and that buy from them already have no incentive
35:50
at all to give them more choices.
35:52
I mean, these are not people. These are farmers.
35:54
They have very limited bandwidth.
35:56
Yeah, that's what we keep hearing over and over and over
35:59
and over. I mean, there are real value in
36:01
these buyers taking this tea and turning it into a finished
36:04
product and selling it to a customer.
36:06
Yeah, very real value add. But, you know, it's, it's
36:10
interesting that a lot of people, I guess in agriculture
36:13
just don't have a lot of control over their own faith.
36:15
Yeah, it's very, very sad. I mean, like matcha is really
36:20
not that scarce. And, you know, Japanese tea is
36:23
not that scarce. It's, you know, like Mark from
36:28
Oika at at some point was talking about this is that, you
36:31
know, like all of these tea that you see in the tea field like
36:34
sencha, Gokul, they can at some point all be converted to making
36:39
sencha. It's really not a resources
36:42
constraint problem is a it's a people constraint problem.
36:45
It's a market constraint problem.
36:47
And a lot of these people they don't necessarily have the
36:50
choice to climb up the ladder and make better and you know,
36:55
more tasty product. They are stuck into this already
37:00
exist revenue string that they have to attach on.
37:03
Otherwise, you know, they might get tossed away and they're
37:06
really just losing their business.
37:08
So that's that's all very interesting problem space that
37:11
we are seeing here. And we're hoping that the
37:13
ability to mill Macho fresh and have these systems distributed
37:17
where Tenshaw is going to be the end product might be able to
37:20
start to help change this. We don't know.
37:23
We don't think that we're the golden parachute to come in and
37:25
save anything. We are just merely players and
37:28
would love it when incentives are aligned.
37:30
I would say as a company, we're a very consumer focused company.
37:35
We care a lot about the end consumer and that's basically
37:38
the main filter that everything goes through.
37:42
But without great suppliers and all of these hard work of all of
37:46
these farmers in blood, sweat and tears, there is no such
37:49
thing as a good product. And a good product makes happy
37:52
customers. Everything upstream matters so
37:55
much too. So it's we're hoping that this
37:59
tech might be able to help and we, I think our next big mission
38:03
in our next sourcing trip and the sourcing trip after might
38:07
take us a little while. We want to meet some of these
38:09
people and find them and see if we can set up something where we
38:15
can become a good and reliable buyer of what is probably great
38:20
product and then allowing them to, in the fact that we're a
38:23
reliable buyer, make infrastructure investments to
38:27
improve quality of their product.
38:29
Yeah. Well, what I have learned from
38:32
this trip so far that's very important, is that we definitely
38:35
going to need a car for the next trip.
38:38
Yes, a lot of these places are just not really accessible
38:42
through public transportation. Yeah, you can get close.
38:45
You can get yeah close. You get off the bus and then you
38:49
walk under the sun for like another half or one hour to the
38:53
garden. We're doing this on a very
38:54
shoestring budget, so anyone listening that's ever interested
38:57
in sourcing their own tea? No, Japan is a amazing
38:59
infrastructure to get to point A to point B, but I guess this is
39:03
kind of obvious. These farms are not exactly in
39:06
the city center. But if you do come to Japan to
39:09
do any sourcing, especially if you're in yon Mei rent a car or
39:13
if you don't want to rent a car, I don't know how expensive it
39:15
was probably expensive to hire a driver.
39:17
So come with a large wallet. And interpreters and translators
39:21
are very expensive. And I guess that's one other
39:22
thing that we should mention. This is a piece of very
39:25
practical advice to anyone wanting to source tea in the
39:27
future in Japan. Language skills are very, very
39:30
important. Mine are almost don't exist.
39:36
The Japanese Zongjun had one year in college.
39:39
Yeah. And I know kanji, so that has
39:42
been incredibly helpful. Some of the pronunciation in
39:47
Japanese for certain. Kanjis are kind of similar to
39:49
Chinese so I can do some guessing, but without those
39:53
skills it will be very difficult to get around.
39:56
Yeah, some places you'll get lucky when people speak English,
39:59
and between Sam's Japan or Zhongjun's Japan, Sam Zhongjun's
40:03
Japanese and their English, communication does happen.
40:07
Not great communication. Decently efficient.
40:12
Decently efficient, but when you have an interpreter.
40:15
So back when we did consumer testing in all these different
40:19
countries, I think I've had translators for probably 20
40:22
different languages and dialects.
40:24
We have a frustrating amount of experience working with.
40:29
Translators. Some are absolutely incredible.
40:33
One of the best ones was in Dubai.
40:35
It was a lady from Syria. She was so nice and she did such
40:41
a great job encompassing what I wanted to say.
40:43
We kind of became friends over the course of a few days and at
40:46
the end she had a friend who had a camel milk farm and she had it
40:51
brought in of camel milk milked that day.
40:56
Same day. It was driven into Dubai and she
40:59
had it delivered to my hotel. I got to try fresh unpasteurized
41:03
raw camel. That was amazing.
41:05
Very incredibly kind of her. So you work with people like
41:08
that and sometimes you work. I think a lot of the people
41:11
we've worked with in India, really you would say one
41:13
sentence and they would just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
41:16
And then you were like, I don't think I said that.
41:18
I know, I know, I know. I'm explaining this other thing.
41:20
I'm like, no. What kind of things are you
41:23
explaining? I have a flow or.
41:25
Translators we end up getting in Portugal, it's.
41:28
Just my God, Alfredo, that was his name.
41:31
That was his name. Just like he doesn't translate.
41:35
That guy was very arrogant. Yeah.
41:39
He was more interested in flirting with the respondents.
41:42
That was painful. Yeah, yeah.
41:44
Well, so you you'll get all sorts of color through
41:47
translators, but. The most important thing is that
41:50
translators are not translators. Really.
41:52
Yeah, interpreters. It's a really, really
41:55
interpretation. Happens both ways.
41:58
Yes, it's a good translator or interpreter is actively trying
42:03
to understand exactly what you mean and actively understand the
42:08
confusions between, you know, different words because
42:12
especially, you know, in a conversation that's more
42:15
technological, the correct definition of words really,
42:19
really matter. Yeah.
42:20
And also there's explicit communication, and there's
42:24
implicit communication. And a bad translator can be like
42:28
a blunt trying to do surgery with the blunt or a doll
42:31
instrument, right? They're just crudely like, hey,
42:34
what did you say? Tell me.
42:35
Tell me what? And then he said this.
42:37
It's really a crude instrument, and there's really very little
42:40
interpretation being done there. What you really need to
42:43
understand is the context and the semantics and also when to
42:47
not translate and let the conversation flow and just let
42:52
some threads drop. And that's totally fine.
42:54
Yeah. That really needs some serious
42:57
skill. Yes, sometimes one dialogue can
43:00
become law and a good translator will at this time would probably
43:05
start, you know, taking notes and writing a lot of things on
43:08
on the notebook. But you know, really like not to
43:12
maintain a float of the translation.
43:14
I mean, a dialogue really matters.
43:16
Yes, absolutely. And being able to communicate
43:19
intentions and emotions. And this is especially important
43:24
to Japan, where people are not really willing to show their
43:27
emotion, at least not before they've had a couple of drinks,
43:31
right? You need to really communicate
43:33
in tension. And that, like, what we mean.
43:35
And that we're very passionate about tea and that we really
43:38
care about this industry and we really want to learn.
43:41
And that cannot be expressed through just words.
43:44
And then the opposite's true. We want to know the intention of
43:47
the person that we are talking to.
43:49
Yeah, Japanese people can be very, very implicit, like for
43:54
them to tell you a decision has been made in their mind can go
44:00
like a large loop. At some point we were getting
44:06
confirmation of be able to receive 10 jobs for one of the
44:10
farmers that went really, really implicit.
44:15
Yes, it was framed as a question and then hypothetical.
44:18
Hypothetical said. We started by talking about
44:22
traditional Tentra or cases in the past, packaging, packaging
44:28
that, you know, how Tentra was historically being exported and
44:32
how he was protected. And then the conversation start
44:34
drift into, you know, how is being done nowadays.
44:38
And then there was fault offended by a hypothetical
44:42
scenario of how exactly do we want to receive tensha and what
44:47
services, you know, do we prefer and what's the time frame and
44:51
all that. It's a long way of saying that
44:53
they are willing to sell tensha to us.
44:55
Probably. Probably.
44:57
We're both like our Everyone's ears perked up when they heard
45:00
that. But imagine you have a
45:01
translator or an interpreter that like just not really
45:05
exactly communicate that or makes their own interpretation
45:08
and just gives it to you like being able.
45:10
The art of the way that that was delivered was so impressive.
45:14
Anyway, long way of saying we had the world's greatest
45:16
translator and. Thank you, Ryan.
45:20
Thank you. Ryan, thank you.
45:22
I'm sorry, who gave us the introduction, but thank you very
45:26
much to one of our dear industry friends for, for giving, giving
45:31
us her contact. That was beyond helpful.
45:34
And I don't think that meeting would have even become remotely
45:37
successful had like we just hired some random person to
45:41
interpret for the day. So that's very important when
45:44
you're in Japan. So definitely if you're going to
45:47
work with an interpreter, that's them, take them to lunch, get a
45:51
sense of what they're like, really explain what your
45:54
intentions are, then you'll probably much more successful
45:58
sourcing team or. Start learning Japanese today.
46:02
Duolingo Yeah, start download, you can see our affiliate link
46:06
for so many three months. No kidding.
46:09
Anyway. A lot of learnings, a lot of
46:11
adventures along the way. It's been a fun trip so far.
46:14
Very fun trip so far, very stressful at first, but now
46:17
everything's planned and we can just enjoy the ride.
46:20
And we're probably gonna record tomorrow.
46:23
We have a whole new fresh perspective.
46:25
Yeah, every day is so different. So different, so much learning.
46:30
This is the highest density of recording that we've ever done
46:33
recently. Yeah, and also a very inspired
46:35
recordings not being forced by Ryan in the middle of the night
46:40
trying to push another new recording to the world.
46:43
Well, usually it's because I'm in the states that are in China.
46:46
But yeah, I gotta wake up. Wow, good thing you're a night
46:48
owl. But yeah, we're gonna share more
46:51
along the way and our perspectives will change.
46:54
So please don't expect any conclusive anything from us as
46:59
we're mid trip. And then probably maybe a week
47:02
or two after, we'll do a big session where we have some more
47:05
digestive thoughts and some conclusions that we've come to.
47:08
Or if you have some questions along the way that you feel
47:11
unclear or we just didn't touch upon, DM us or comment under our
47:17
our recordings and we can ask for you and we can do some more
47:21
contents upon your. Capacity, absolutely.
47:24
And if anyone is interested in sourcing Matcha or sourcing
47:27
Tensha, we would be happy to hop on a call with you to give some
47:31
basic mechanics of what we did, how we did it.
47:35
Or what not to do what? To do what not to do.
47:38
And you know, not that we're exactly the experts yet, but
47:40
we're more than happy to share our knowledge.
47:42
If you reach out, we can do that over a call.
47:45
We want to see more matcha companies.
47:47
We want to see more transparency, cooler sourcing,
47:50
all of this stuff. There's such a huge world to
47:52
explore. Honestly, even within Kyoto
47:54
Prefecture in the Uji area and all of these sub regions just
47:57
South of Kyoto, you could probably start a whole match of
48:01
company just focused on one of those regions and one of those
48:04
producers, right? Like if there's such a huge
48:07
world and all we hear about are just a couple names, which is
48:11
the perfect way to start. But there's so much more as this
48:14
industry is going to grow. So thank you so much for bearing
48:18
with us on this long episode. And if you enjoyed this podcast,
48:24
please consider sharing it with a friend or giving us a rating.
48:28
And we won't read the rest of the script.
48:32
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.