Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Interview with Haru Matcha, Nicha and Francis

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Interview with Haru Matcha, Nicha and Francis · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the Specialty Much Podcast.
• 0:02
  My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Sungjun, who
• 0:04
  also goes by Sam. Hello, hello.
• 0:06
  And we're the cofounders of Sanko Much Products.
• 0:08
  Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
• 0:11
  Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
• 0:14
  And today we have Nicha and Francis from Hado Macha joining
• 0:18
  us. Welcome guys.
• 0:19
  Hi, Hi. So nice to be on the podcast.
• 0:21
  Yeah, we're. So excited to be here.
• 0:24
  Great to have you on. We'd love to learn a little bit
• 0:27
  about more about you guys, like where you're based, what your
• 0:30
  your background is and your matcha journey.
• 0:33
  Yes, I'll, I guess I'll start. So we're especially, especially
• 0:37
  Matcha brand based out of London in the UK.
• 0:40
  We started really because we wanted to showcase the different
• 0:44
  cultivars of matcha and different tasting notes that you
• 0:47
  can get with matcha. So we noticed that Matcha is
• 0:51
  starting to become a little bit popular, people starting to
• 0:54
  drink it a few years ago, but it's still like a very like
• 0:58
  generic product. Whereas actually we, we know
• 1:02
  that it can be like a lot more kind of complex showing
• 1:05
  different cultivars and different varieties from
• 1:09
  different parts of Japan. And so we really want to bring
• 1:11
  that to, to the UK and kind of like show the UK market how, how
• 1:16
  great match can be, how complex it can be, how nuanced it can be
• 1:19
  as well. So, so, so we launched recently
• 1:22
  in December and that was like our our first, first match of
• 1:27
  pouch match of product and which was like a Hana blend.
• 1:30
  And but before that, we were doing lots of match of tasting
• 1:32
  experiences, which we'll be doing in the in the year before
• 1:35
  that, which really inspired by, by Nisha's kind of knowledge of
• 1:39
  match in who like really kick started it and had done match of
• 1:42
  tasting experiences a lot in in Thailand as well.
• 1:45
  Yeah, so I grow up and I'm from Thailand.
• 1:49
  I work and study in Bangkok. You might have known Ryan
• 1:52
  because you've been there. And that's there's a lot of
• 1:54
  matcha, specialty matcha bar, I would say.
• 1:57
  And so that I'm get familiar with the high quality of matcha
• 2:02
  and I'm really fascinated by food culture in general.
• 2:06
  And then to get to see like there's so much nuances and a
• 2:09
  lot of knowledge behind matcha. I think it's so fascinating.
• 2:12
  And I also like go to Japan quite a few times since I was a
• 2:16
  kid because my mom, she studied there.
• 2:19
  So I'm familiar with kind of Japanese cultures.
• 2:23
  And I really like, like the philosophy behind almost
• 2:27
  everything, especially matcha. I went to the tea ceremony and
• 2:31
  to learn how to like make, make matcha in the tea ceremony.
• 2:35
  And I think it's such a beautiful kind of angles of
• 2:38
  matcha that we not we don't really see a lot in the Western
• 2:41
  world. And when I moved to the UK, when
• 2:44
  I come to my my masters in 2021, I was just quite disappointed
• 2:50
  that I cannot find actually a great difference.
• 2:55
  Like I wasn't that many cafe that do good matcha.
• 3:00
  They probably use like a really bad quality one.
• 3:03
  I literally cannot drink that. Yeah.
• 3:07
  And I was like, I'm sure you guys probably know on the
• 3:10
  Arabica coffee the day of Matcha, and that's the first
• 3:14
  time that I introduced Matcha to Francis was actually our first
• 3:19
  date. Wow.
• 3:22
  Beautiful. And he was saying like, oh, it
• 3:24
  tastes just like seaweed. And I just say like, Oh, yeah, I
• 3:27
  mean, this is quite good quality already, but like, I mean, not
• 3:30
  as good as the one that I've tried in back home in Japan.
• 3:35
  So I'll just like, OK, like I need to bring you like the good
• 3:38
  quality matcha. And so when I, he sits at home
• 3:42
  and then I bring some Macha powder back to the UK, he was
• 3:45
  like, Oh my God, this is like, this is really, really nice.
• 3:49
  Quite naughty. If I remember correctly, that
• 3:52
  was the one from yame. Yeah.
• 3:55
  It just really changed his perspective on the matcha.
• 3:58
  And I think that's how we sort of OK, Let's there's still a lot
• 4:02
  of gaps in the UK. And we also don't see a lot of
• 4:05
  Masha appreciations. A lot of Masha here.
• 4:08
  Not that it's a bad quality, but it's full of syrup or a lot of
• 4:12
  milk in it. And when I had it, I cannot
• 4:16
  really test any Masha tests in it.
• 4:18
  It's just milk or syrup. And it's quite like disturbing.
• 4:25
  Yeah. I'm sorry to be cynical here.
• 4:27
  Totally agree. Like it's it's not not
• 4:30
  comparable much. It seems like Bangkok is like
• 4:32
  several generations in front of maybe even like the rest of the
• 4:36
  world and definitely a step forward than Japan even.
• 4:40
  And the way it presents it to a consumer because in Japan it's
• 4:43
  all like. In the very contemporary
• 4:46
  consumption scenario. Yeah.
• 4:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've been blown away by
• 4:52
  everything that we've seen and tasted in Bangkok and learned.
• 4:56
  It's easier to learn. Actually, I think there's no
• 4:58
  better place to learn as a consumer about matcha than like
• 5:01
  going to like an MTCH and just chatting with the person behind
• 5:05
  the bar. Like everyone's so
• 5:07
  knowledgeable. It's.
• 5:10
  It's. It's better than our experience
• 5:12
  in Uji and in the Main St. Yeah, cuz the founder of MTCH,
• 5:19
  he knows a lot and a part of our brand.
• 5:22
  I feel like I've been inspired a lot by what he is doing as well.
• 5:26
  Just like man, like the way that we can educate people a little
• 5:31
  bit more about matcha and so that people can test and
• 5:35
  understand like or at least differentiate between good and
• 5:39
  bad matcha. I think it's really interesting
• 5:42
  and yeah. Yeah.
• 5:45
  I think it just really gives you like that perspective on what
• 5:48
  the UK is missing out on. Yeah, having like seen it over
• 5:52
  and like experienced it like growing up in Thailand as well.
• 5:55
  How do you see like UK and English tea culture clashing
• 6:00
  with this idea of matcha? Like I imagine that like the old
• 6:04
  grandma and grandpas don't even wouldn't even think of matcha as
• 6:07
  tea necessarily. Like it's something so and what
• 6:11
  they know. Like how do you see those two
• 6:13
  cultures clashing? Yeah, that's such a good, like,
• 6:16
  such a good question, I think. Yeah.
• 6:19
  I mean, well, tea is like a big thing in the UK, but also people
• 6:24
  might be quite like, protective over exactly how the tea should
• 6:28
  be done or they're used to it like a particular way.
• 6:30
  We have seen like this place in London kind of doing because you
• 6:34
  know, like afternoon tea is like that big thing for how we like
• 6:37
  consume tea in the in the UK. So there's people trying to be
• 6:40
  doing like a match afternoon tea where it's like combining like
• 6:43
  matcha and we did go and we feel like if we did that, we could
• 6:48
  like maybe do it better. But but we have we have found as
• 6:53
  well like because we've done we do match a pop ups in different
• 6:57
  places and we've done it like to different like different places
• 7:00
  in London and in places in the UK have like obviously different
• 7:03
  markets. So like some people obviously
• 7:05
  like younger demographics, some older demographics.
• 7:08
  And we've seen like people who are more kind of like maybe
• 7:12
  older, more like entrenched in how T should be a bit are a bit
• 7:16
  like represent like reluctant to.
• 7:19
  Kind of. Try match.
• 7:21
  But but yeah, I mean, I think I think like the more it kind of
• 7:28
  gets embedded, I think the more people will be accepting of it
• 7:31
  as a part of tea culture in the UK because that's like where tea
• 7:34
  culture came from is like bringing tea from unknown tea
• 7:38
  from like the, you know, E over to here.
• 7:40
  And it's kind of like the same thing.
• 7:42
  But but also I think that match, like the way match is drunk
• 7:46
  sometimes here, it's almost not presented as if it's like tea
• 7:52
  because it's like presented in a way if it's coffee or is it or
• 7:55
  is it or with like lots of syrup, like in a similar way to
• 7:58
  where they sell Starbucks doesn't really emphasize that
• 8:01
  the element all the time. Like I've even known some people
• 8:04
  not even actually who are like very unfamiliar with match and
• 8:07
  not even know it's it's tea. Yeah.
• 8:10
  Yeah, I've experienced similar things.
• 8:12
  It's like shocking sometimes. Yeah, Yeah.
• 8:15
  But I think when when we do the sampling, so because now we are
• 8:18
  stopping at Japan Center and when we go there to do the
• 8:21
  sampling to introduce people to the matcha and we start to see
• 8:26
  older generations, they are more interested, but they focus a lot
• 8:29
  on the health benefits. They usually come last and ask
• 8:32
  like I heard that this tea has a lot of antioxidants or like I
• 8:37
  heard that this tea helps me thinner and those things like
• 8:41
  they focus quite a lot on the health benefits, which is quite
• 8:44
  interesting because I think in Thailand it's a little bit
• 8:46
  different. So we focus a lot on the test.
• 8:49
  And I think I drink a lot of mush and I wasn't really focused
• 8:53
  too much on what's in it. Like, yeah, I just know, yeah,
• 8:56
  it's drainage should be. I didn't lie back in the day, I
• 9:00
  didn't know that it actually has a lot of antioxidants, for
• 9:02
  example. It's interesting something
• 9:06
  Zhongjin and I've talked about is that like an Asian coffee and
• 9:10
  tea culture that's not traditional like this more
• 9:13
  modern concepts like these bubble teas, all the coffee
• 9:16
  programs and and matcha. It's like it's a indulgent
• 9:20
  thing. It's like it's like a it's I
• 9:23
  don't want to call it a dessert alternative, but the consumer
• 9:27
  needs state like is very different like mindset the.
• 9:32
  Way you think about. They call it the
• 9:34
  dessertification of the beverage, so.
• 9:37
  All of these. Beverages are turning into a
• 9:39
  small dessert. Almost.
• 9:41
  Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that because like every after meal, I
• 9:45
  feel like I need something sweet.
• 9:46
  I would just probably go for matcha because it seems to be a
• 9:50
  little bit better than getting Thai tea because it's green.
• 9:55
  Yeah. And also I just add a little bit
• 9:57
  on the UK culture thing on the health benefits.
• 10:01
  We see a lot of product development that they mix much
• 10:04
  up with like Lion Mane's or kind of like other substance to help
• 10:10
  you focus or like increase productivity because like I
• 10:14
  think a lot of trend here focus on health conscious, on health
• 10:19
  aware. Yeah, we saw a lot of that
• 10:21
  coming. Like these mushroom matchas?
• 10:24
  And yeah. I wonder from a flavor
• 10:27
  perspective, like do you see a pattern of, you know, preference
• 10:32
  towards different flavor of matcha in the UK versus like
• 10:35
  other places in like for example, Bangkok or of your own
• 10:38
  preference? Like do you see there's a
• 10:41
  difference or more like similarities?
• 10:42
  Because I would imagine like, you know, people in the UK drink
• 10:45
  like English breakfast or you know, or great, like these are
• 10:49
  more oxidized kind of flavor profile, which you don't
• 10:52
  necessarily find them in matcha most of the time.
• 10:54
  Maybe in Hojita a little bit. Yeah.
• 10:56
  So what do people usually like in in the UK?
• 10:59
  Yeah, I think it's quite mixed. So we have Matcha from Oji,
• 11:04
  which is more like umami and quite refreshing and related
• 11:09
  kind of floral or seaweed tones. And then we have the other one
• 11:12
  from Yami, which is more like nati tones.
• 11:14
  And we see that there's some mix between like people, when we do
• 11:18
  sampling, see if we make it like without milk, we see that people
• 11:22
  actually quite like the Bourgy one quite a lot.
• 11:26
  OK. Mixed with meal, they do really
• 11:28
  like the the Yami one because they do feel like it can relate
• 11:32
  to like kind of roasty, which is quite similar to coffee.
• 11:36
  And I think for people who love coffee, they really like the
• 11:39
  Yami flavour profile more. And yeah, I remember you say
• 11:43
  like so first time the Francis test, the Yami 1.
• 11:46
  He really likes it. And he also really like
• 11:48
  Hottiesha, you say? It's really similar to goodness.
• 11:53
  Yeah, I can totally see that. Yeah, exactly.
• 11:56
  Yeah. I mean, I would say like, I mean
• 11:59
  speaking to me like my like my parents and stuff like showing
• 12:02
  them mature and they just like always have tea in there.
• 12:05
  Like there's other people who just they have to have tea every
• 12:08
  day. Like if they go on holiday, they
• 12:09
  have to bring English breakfast tea to have like every day.
• 12:12
  Like we can't not have. So I guess like when they try
• 12:17
  it's a bit, I think she, my mom said like, oh, it takes a bit of
• 12:22
  getting used to. Like she's like quite a
• 12:23
  different flavour like that you're not used to with the kind
• 12:26
  of freshness. The matcha tea, I think, yeah,
• 12:30
  it's, I think it's something which for a lot of people that
• 12:34
  are used to like English breakfast tea, that takes a bit
• 12:36
  of getting used to when you drink it, like as a suture.
• 12:40
  Yeah, I would say, yeah, yeah. I think it's when we introduce
• 12:43
  ASU susha, it's more difficult to get people into it, I would
• 12:47
  say, because they are not used to it.
• 12:49
  And sometimes they say that it's like too bitter for them because
• 12:53
  it's a susha is without milk or any syrup.
• 12:56
  And when we sell in the pop up market, we also don't add any
• 12:59
  syrup. If we do latte, we just add
• 13:01
  quite a lot of matcha shots on and without syrup.
• 13:04
  So some people would ask for syrup, but we're trying to
• 13:08
  introduce like no syrup and just focus on matcha.
• 13:12
  It's been quite an interesting journey.
• 13:14
  Well, because people are ladder too.
• 13:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people find it quite
• 13:18
  similar to green tea, but we're trying to to explain like what's
• 13:22
  the difference between the matcha and green tea?
• 13:25
  Yeah. How, how does the flavour
• 13:26
  profile go down like the US? Because we don't really know
• 13:29
  much of, well, I don't really know much about the perception
• 13:32
  of it there. Yeah, I think it depends on
• 13:35
  where you are. Yeah.
• 13:37
  Like the coasts usually, like get everything first, like New
• 13:42
  York, LA, San Francisco. I lived in New York for 6-7
• 13:46
  years, so I have the most consumer experience there.
• 13:49
  And, you know, the concept of origin in New York is very, very
• 13:55
  new. I, I moved out in 2022.
• 13:58
  And even then there was one place that kind of generally had
• 14:01
  a lot of Yamai. There's some place, the few
• 14:03
  places that had Uji. And then like everywhere else,
• 14:05
  like didn't specify like matcha was matcha.
• 14:08
  Maybe like if you talk to a barista, they'd be like, yeah,
• 14:10
  we have ceremonial grade. It's a, it was a very different
• 14:14
  conversation. I think that's changing.
• 14:16
  I've only observed it remotely, but of the much of founders that
• 14:20
  I've talked to that are US based, the general consensus is
• 14:24
  that there's a leaning towards a lot of the Yami flavor profiles
• 14:29
  when presented the option and they've compared the two.
• 14:33
  But that said, too, you have all the explosion of these
• 14:36
  traditional Uji vendors that have a very Uji flavor profile
• 14:40
  that, you know, people are also really enjoying too.
• 14:43
  So it's a big mix. Yeah, yeah, creators and I think
• 14:48
  a lot of people here, they focus a lot on Uji because they know
• 14:52
  that Uji is the birth place or like the way social media is
• 14:57
  presented, Matcha is that Uji is probably the best place to get
• 15:01
  matcha. So that's why they always like,
• 15:04
  oh, is this from Uji? They focus on the origin.
• 15:09
  Yeah, when people start to. Know.
• 15:11
  Yeah, when? Yeah, when they know.
• 15:12
  Yeah, there's still a lot of people who just don't know a
• 15:14
  lot, a lot about it. Yeah, well, even within the Ooji
• 15:17
  once, like once you've known it that it gets really complex
• 15:20
  because I think we're going to record a podcast episode.
• 15:23
  We don't know what we're going to title it yet.
• 15:25
  We need to find the right narrative to frame this because,
• 15:29
  you know, it's quite sensitive. Yeah, because, like, what is it
• 15:33
  Like less than 1% of Uji matcha's grown in Uji.
• 15:36
  It's pretty deceptive. It's just unfair.
• 15:40
  Like they're like within the Japanese government.
• 15:42
  Like I have a definition of like a various, like where your
• 15:45
  tension comes from. And it can come from neighboring
• 15:48
  prefectures or from up, you know, in Mazuka and within Kyoto
• 15:51
  Prefecture. But like, you know, most of it's
• 15:54
  coming from Kagoshima and processed in Uji.
• 15:58
  And I'm beginning to think that it's like a lot more like Swiss
• 16:01
  chocolate, right? There's no chocolate or cocoa
• 16:05
  production being done in Switzerland, but that's where a
• 16:07
  lot of value is being added to create profiles that people
• 16:10
  think of as as chocolate. But also, on the other hand,
• 16:13
  it's really not, you know, something that it's inevitable
• 16:18
  by the end of the day because there's just not enough tea
• 16:21
  being ground in Fuji. And in order for all these
• 16:23
  matcha brands and matcha manufacturers and the whole
• 16:25
  matcha community to survive, they kind of have to import tea
• 16:29
  from elsewhere and get it to processing too much.
• 16:32
  So it's quite complicated as we learn more about it.
• 16:35
  There's no black and white in this whole situation.
• 16:37
  Yeah, it you can really argue both sides on the consumer
• 16:41
  perspective. The more I think about it, if
• 16:44
  you call a tea a Yami tea, like it comes from Yame, if you call
• 16:48
  a teeth from Kagushima or Shizuoka, or even like more
• 16:51
  specific like Chiran within Kagoshima, it is a statement of
• 16:55
  origin. And you have all of these
• 16:57
  statements of origin, and they're all true except one,
• 17:00
  which is really bizarre. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:03
  We can really relate because when we went to Uji, I was
• 17:06
  actually surprised it was, it was our first time in Uji.
• 17:10
  And then we would expect like, you know, when we go to France,
• 17:13
  you see a lot of vineyard in Bordeaux.
• 17:15
  Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:17
  And then when we were in Uji, it's like, oh.
• 17:19
  It's. Small.
• 17:19
  It's very small and every brand in the UK say that the tea is
• 17:24
  from Uji. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:27
  Yeah, it's very surprising. And we also visited a couple of
• 17:30
  farm that it's a little bit like outside of the Uji centre, but
• 17:34
  like Ujiwara, for example, or Goku show, yeah, which is like
• 17:38
  also like. Oh Goku show.
• 17:40
  Yeah, that's a bit bigger than in the central Uji, but yeah,
• 17:44
  still not that much. And when we drive on the road,
• 17:48
  we just thought, like, where? Where are the tea farms?
• 17:54
  It's just like snow. It's like it's we'd we'd visited
• 17:56
  like vineyards in France. Yeah.
• 17:59
  And yeah, it was like very like wide expanse of just everywhere.
• 18:03
  Yeah, we were doing the same thing in Uchi on one day too.
• 18:07
  And it's actually quite sad because like if we look around
• 18:11
  like all of these landscape, all these like buildings and
• 18:14
  highways, they're used to all be like tea farms, tea gardens and
• 18:18
  Urban Development just slowly eating into the tea production
• 18:22
  and the farmer has very little control over it.
• 18:24
  Like there's one homes of shaded garden that we have visited, you
• 18:29
  know, 1 ginormous like highway bridge just cut straight through
• 18:33
  it. It's it's very sad to see that.
• 18:37
  Yeah, yeah. That's really sad because it's
• 18:39
  already low supply as well. Yeah, already low and there's
• 18:44
  like abandoned tea fields all over.
• 18:46
  You don't have to walk very far to find like clearly abandoned
• 18:49
  tea fields within Uji proper. It's it's, it's really weird,
• 18:55
  like some of the best terroir arguably in the world.
• 18:57
  It's just sitting vacant. It hurts the soul.
• 19:01
  Yeah, Yeah, honestly. And also like with the aging
• 19:04
  society, like it's quite concerning in terms of like
• 19:08
  interesting generational, like kind of knowledge, like who will
• 19:12
  take care of the farm in the next 40-50 years.
• 19:16
  Yeah, just like really like nice too, because we like met some of
• 19:19
  some of the farmers and when it's like a really into
• 19:22
  generational thing, like one of the more farmers we spoke to, I
• 19:26
  think he had like his grandfather was like still
• 19:28
  picking tea leaves and he's like how old he was, like late 80s.
• 19:32
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's something that they
• 19:37
  well, in this particular. So it's like very like long
• 19:40
  tradition and their family is like very cherished as part of
• 19:42
  that kind of family tradition. Yeah.
• 19:45
  It's just. I want to see.
• 19:46
  Keep going. Yeah.
• 19:47
  Yeah. Absolutely.
• 19:49
  So how did you guys find like your trip in your sourcing trip
• 19:53
  and like how it met your expectations and what you
• 19:55
  learned on the ground and talking to farmers?
• 19:57
  Yeah, it was so fascinating. And all of that just basically
• 20:02
  show us that it just requires a lot of work, a lot of
• 20:05
  dedications, a lot of care, knowledge and expertise.
• 20:09
  More than. We actually thought it would be.
• 20:12
  It's like when you once you see it with your own eyes, it's just
• 20:15
  like wow. This all add up to why matcha is
• 20:18
  like more expensive than a green tea.
• 20:20
  And I still feel that much like the that they sell is still not
• 20:25
  that expensive considering like when you when you get from the
• 20:28
  brand, a lot of the brand here, they add quite a lot of profit
• 20:31
  margin on that. And that's like surprise that oh
• 20:34
  wow, like the farmers didn't sell it at that higher price
• 20:38
  comparing to what the middleman get.
• 20:40
  And it's really interesting. So when the farms we visited in
• 20:44
  Goku show is the farm of the husband and the wife and wife,
• 20:50
  she walked us through like and guide us through the farms.
• 20:53
  So luckily we were there before the busy times.
• 20:56
  So we were there around like late February, early March and
• 21:01
  they were not covering the shade just yet because they will
• 21:05
  usually cover at the end of March.
• 21:07
  And that also means that and interact a lot with them because
• 21:11
  they, so they, they have like Sai Midori, Utah Hikari, Sai
• 21:16
  Midori Asahi and Honsu Asahi in the farms.
• 21:20
  And so like we are like, so what's the difference between
• 21:23
  all of them? Like from like Uchi Curry has
• 21:26
  like curly leaf or like cyber has to like more straight kind
• 21:31
  of like stem so that it's easier to, to pick, for example.
• 21:35
  And I think like the really tricky thing is that they can
• 21:38
  only like, so the first harvest like once in a year is only
• 21:42
  three weeks. So that's really, really crunch
• 21:45
  time for them to finish everything in three weeks.
• 21:49
  So we were like saying, wow, that's really short period of
• 21:51
  time. Like how do you manage that?
• 21:53
  So they would have to hire like the more tea pickers and they
• 21:58
  will start working from AM until the end of the day, which is
• 22:03
  really overworking. I would say.
• 22:05
  Like I feel like they deserve a lot of more compensation for
• 22:09
  that. And like all of this really add
• 22:11
  up. Like they hand pick and
• 22:13
  everything is done by hand. And also like like different
• 22:17
  cultivars have different like kind of picking period, which I
• 22:21
  think is really interesting kind of anecdote.
• 22:24
  For example, like Asahi, you can only do it like within maybe one
• 22:29
  to two days and or to hit Curry as well.
• 22:31
  That's why it's really expensive.
• 22:33
  But with Sammy Dory, they say it's around like 10 days.
• 22:37
  And for us, like we would say to her that it's very short and
• 22:41
  then she's like, first, this is already very long.
• 22:46
  It's like, wow, it's a really stressful time.
• 22:50
  Like when you buy the Masha powder, like you wouldn't really
• 22:53
  know all about this until really go there.
• 22:58
  Yeah, yeah. It's amazing to see like the
• 22:59
  care and the precision. Like we asked like, how do you
• 23:02
  decide what day and what time to pick?
• 23:04
  And she's like. And she said, Oh, my husband
• 23:06
  decides this, This is very, very serious decision.
• 23:09
  Yeah. Just like the care and like,
• 23:12
  yeah, attention they paid to it. It's just, yeah, it's quite
• 23:15
  amazing to see. Yeah, and varies day by day,
• 23:18
  like you cannot really like pick the day, but it depends on like
• 23:22
  the weather as well. And especially like this year, I
• 23:26
  think the weather is changing quite a lot.
• 23:29
  It varies quite a lot. So the harvest times really like
• 23:33
  moved a little bit. Yeah, we just work so hard.
• 23:38
  And she also have like the the plantation with just the
• 23:41
  organic, but it also costs a lot to get the certified fertilizer
• 23:47
  for that and the umami flavours also like affected by like the
• 23:53
  fertilizer. I think that's.
• 23:54
  Yeah, because another farm when we visited, we were asking like
• 23:57
  how the the flavour profile isn't like how the flavour
• 24:00
  profile is affected by different things like the tawar and the
• 24:02
  Cheney. And he said like a lot of it's
• 24:05
  affected by the fertilizer. Yeah.
• 24:09
  Yeah, yeah, because we thought it just like a lot on like the
• 24:13
  Toroa and like the cultivars and but Ashley a lot of.
• 24:17
  Yeah, which does have an impact, but like, yeah, he was saying
• 24:20
  that fertilizer has like a big impact on them.
• 24:23
  Yeah, fertilizer is almost like part of the processing of the
• 24:27
  tea. I feel like a lot of the flavor
• 24:30
  is driven by the different recipes of different gardens,
• 24:33
  different farmers that they end up creating, which is quite
• 24:36
  fascinating. Like different farmers, they
• 24:39
  will use different proportion of, you know, the fish or the
• 24:41
  rice or they sometimes add like, you know, oyster shells or not
• 24:46
  sesame extracts and different things together to blend into
• 24:49
  the the fertilizer. So that's, you know, their own
• 24:53
  recipes, recipes and it's kind of their own trade secrets.
• 24:55
  That's one thing that they do not talked about actually doing
• 24:59
  all of these, you know, community gathering because like
• 25:03
  they they all kind of shared the same tension oven Corp, you
• 25:06
  know, in different regions. And they would like all talk to
• 25:08
  each other and, you know, kind of share the processing
• 25:11
  optimization that they each end up doing and, you know, kind of
• 25:14
  teach or, you know, just learn from each other.
• 25:17
  But one thing that they do not share is their fertilizer
• 25:19
  recipe. Yeah.
• 25:20
  We didn't get the fertilizer recipe information.
• 25:24
  Like trade secret yeah and also the shape days is also varies
• 25:30
  from farm to farms. I think that's also play a role
• 25:33
  in the in the flavour as well. The soil in Uji is quite like a
• 25:39
  sandy soil. I'm not sure about Yami because
• 25:43
  I haven't been there just yet, but yeah, it's interesting to
• 25:46
  see how all of these like all add up into the matcha powder
• 25:51
  and just so fascinating. And then in the other farm that
• 25:55
  we went in Ujiwara, I would say because he's in the quite a
• 25:59
  young generation, he's around our age.
• 26:02
  And so his perspective on much that seems to be a little bit
• 26:05
  different from the one in Coco show, for example, like in
• 26:09
  Google show, they still do a lot of traditional method like Honsu
• 26:13
  Asahi where they use a rice draw to to cover the matcha, but here
• 26:17
  and so that do the handpick there.
• 26:20
  But then in Ujiwara 1, he was like, it doesn't matter if you
• 26:24
  use handpick or you use the machine pick.
• 26:27
  For him, it's not just about the traditional, which is quite
• 26:31
  interesting take. And also for player a lot of
• 26:34
  role, I think it's really interesting that kind of
• 26:37
  different perspective. Yeah.
• 26:40
  It's it because it doesn't, not everyone shares the same kind of
• 26:43
  opinions. It's like pretty interesting
• 26:45
  talking to different like levels of industrialization within this
• 26:49
  industry and scale because and then you realize you really
• 26:53
  can't like it's perspective. It's not truth and there is no
• 26:56
  truth. And like everyone has their own
• 26:58
  opinion. And then like, it turns into a
• 27:00
  very complex story actually. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 27:03
  I would say like using machine pick in his farm.
• 27:06
  That's some really to me, Masha is still so, so good.
• 27:11
  Like it doesn't really matters. I know that in the Western world
• 27:14
  we use a lot of like, oh, this is hand picked, you know, but
• 27:18
  for it doesn't. And like the first indicator to
• 27:21
  say that, oh, this Masha is bad or low quality because at the
• 27:24
  end of the day, it's still like everything combined.
• 27:27
  And yeah. Yeah, I think some of the
• 27:30
  concepts that they use to like evaluate food and drink products
• 27:34
  in the West don't necessarily apply in the same way in Japan.
• 27:39
  Like a lot of people want to see it being organic, but the this
• 27:43
  is the sort of barrier to being organic in Japan is like places
• 27:49
  have like organic, are organic. And yeah, it being organic
• 27:54
  doesn't necessarily mean it's like, it not being organic
• 27:56
  doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, especially given the role
• 27:59
  that fertilizer can play in the flavor profile as well.
• 28:03
  We were gifted some 2 reference samples that were processed by
• 28:06
  the same farm in the same tensile processing factory,
• 28:11
  harvested at the same time, both Oklahomidori on standard like
• 28:16
  fertilize and you know normal like healthy use of pesticides
• 28:20
  like conventional agriculture and 10 pesticide, 0 fertilizer.
• 28:26
  The difference between those teas was insane.
• 28:30
  The bitterness level, the astringency, the complexity, the
• 28:33
  nuance, the body, the umami, they were two completely
• 28:36
  different things. Like the fertilizer is so
• 28:39
  important. We were blown away.
• 28:42
  Yeah. We really changed our mental
• 28:43
  model of what's driving flavour in matcha cultivation.
• 28:48
  Which one is Umami? Oh the the convention.
• 28:52
  Surprise, surprise. Turns out that all of these
• 28:55
  agricultural agricultural innovations have improved the
• 28:58
  taste over time. There's some like really weird
• 29:01
  Internet commentary I've been reading on Reddit recently of
• 29:04
  some people that are really into old school farming and they're
• 29:07
  like, oh, we should go back to the way the samurai used to
• 29:10
  drink it. Like ditch all of this modern
• 29:13
  stuff. We should just do the natural
• 29:15
  thing. And I'm in full support of this
• 29:18
  type of agriculture in general. I think that people should, you
• 29:22
  know, limit the use of pesticides and, and it's like
• 29:25
  some things, but like the reality is it's really, really,
• 29:29
  really hard to get it to taste good.
• 29:31
  And actually outside of Doka Shell, there are very few
• 29:33
  producers that can make a good tasting organic product that is
• 29:37
  even comparable to the sensory experience of some of the
• 29:40
  others, at least in our experience.
• 29:43
  Yeah, yeah. We also got the sample from from
• 29:47
  Lasooka and so he's like the Thai farmer that also grow rice
• 29:55
  and also matcha in his farm. This was really interesting.
• 29:59
  And in Masuka, yeah, in Masuka and OK pesticide, yeah, I can
• 30:06
  say that like the matcha test like quite different from from
• 30:10
  Uji, Yeah. But I think it also depends on
• 30:13
  like different like palette, you know, like some people might
• 30:16
  prefer umami and things. So there's no right over.
• 30:21
  Yeah, yeah. And how would you prepare it as
• 30:23
  well? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like.
• 30:24
  To. And the processing obviously
• 30:27
  also makes a big difference. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:30
  The one that we went to Ojibwara, we really feel so warm
• 30:34
  welcome because he invited us into his all tea house that is
• 30:38
  has been there for like 100 years and he was doing like the
• 30:42
  machine testing for us, which we really, really appreciate.
• 30:45
  It feels so like, so intimate. Yeah, that was really cool.
• 30:48
  That was the highlight of our trip because we were like in his
• 30:51
  house and has like very traditional house drink, like
• 30:54
  matcha that yeah, the farm's really cool.
• 30:57
  Yeah, like the tea House of the farmer and his house is just
• 31:00
  like so close to where they firstly invented the matcha
• 31:05
  branding process. So he said that this area is
• 31:09
  actually the true origin of matcha.
• 31:14
  Yeah, which is really nice. And we also went to visit like a
• 31:18
  couple of matcha, like the mall, like famous brand that a lot of
• 31:23
  more global, like Hori each man. And yeah, so we went there and
• 31:29
  obviously we asked a lot of questions because we just so
• 31:32
  like like a nerd in mature. We want to sort of like learn
• 31:36
  almost everything, and we asked like they're like he's chop
• 31:39
  assistant. And then Hori sang probably see
• 31:42
  that we really, really into this that he was just basically come
• 31:46
  to help explain and he also like make like doing a master testing
• 31:51
  for us and we was like, Oh my God.
• 31:53
  Like. That's special.
• 31:55
  Oh my God, this is like a celebrity.
• 31:58
  Yeah, like that's, I think that's also another memory that
• 32:02
  I really like from the trip. Yeah.
• 32:05
  Because actually in the Uji Museum, I have a bit of
• 32:08
  information about him. Yeah, Yeah.
• 32:10
  And we'd just done the tasting with him and then we saw him in
• 32:12
  the. Yeah.
• 32:15
  Very lucky you guys had Narino cultivar from them.
• 32:19
  Yeah, my that like totally changed my perception of matcha
• 32:25
  the first time I tasted it a couple of years ago.
• 32:28
  It's really. It was magical.
• 32:29
  Yeah, sometimes, like once you try a really, really good
• 32:33
  matcha, you just feel like you cannot go back to the average
• 32:36
  one. That's the.
• 32:39
  Part. Yeah.
• 32:40
  And that's going to cost you a lot of money.
• 32:43
  Ask them about like, because in the West, like a lot of people
• 32:47
  typically drink match with milk and like Lata and stuff.
• 32:49
  Ask them about like what they think about if, if people are
• 32:52
  drinking match about drinking match with milk and they were
• 32:54
  like, you can't drink that milk. You cannot drink that milk.
• 32:58
  You have to drink it. Like if you're going to buy
• 32:59
  this, you've got to drink. It yeah straight yeah.
• 33:02
  Because he I can't understand he's point of view though,
• 33:06
  because like he put a lot of work and he just want people to
• 33:09
  really test what he produced, which is totally fair.
• 33:13
  Oh yeah totally understandable. We got the experience like tea
• 33:17
  picking and saw some tea processing over the course of
• 33:20
  time in different areas. Oh my God, it's back breaking
• 33:24
  works. It's really hard to make matcha
• 33:29
  and very difficult. Got to spend a lot of effort and
• 33:32
  dumping that into like a cup of milk.
• 33:35
  It's criminal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:38
  Because especially when it's like, I don't know, some people
• 33:41
  will be like hyperbar matcha. And it's like, I think what you
• 33:44
  like is actually not matcha. It's just like a lot of milk and
• 33:47
  a lot of syrup together, which I mean, yeah, you.
• 33:51
  Could say the same thing about a lot of the coffee consumption,
• 33:54
  too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:55
  But then like there, the axis of appreciation is a little
• 33:58
  different. Like you have the indulgent
• 33:59
  tastes of the you know, the syrups and the milk, but also
• 34:03
  like a what could be arguably considered a healthier
• 34:06
  relationship with caffeine too. Like if it's a nice caffeinated
• 34:09
  beverage and you're very caffeine sensitive.
• 34:12
  So it's like if if if you perspective shift a little bit.
• 34:15
  It's interesting watching people cast judgement on the Internet
• 34:19
  about this matcha and milk debate.
• 34:21
  It's endlessly because like I really agree with like horizon,
• 34:25
  like for especially for the Norino and the Okonoyama.
• 34:28
  I admit that I actually have done some experiments tasting
• 34:32
  what does this taste like with milk, just out of my own
• 34:35
  curiosity, and did some side by sides.
• 34:38
  Like it objectively actually still tastes good.
• 34:41
  So like can it be crafted into an incredibly tasting product?
• 34:46
  Undeniably, the answer is yes. And actually, I think that
• 34:50
  Thailand is on the bleeding edge of that area of taking the best
• 34:56
  ingredients, insanely meticulous, perfect, well
• 35:00
  crafted preparation. There's a guy, I forget his
• 35:03
  name, but his Instagram handles, minimal meal and he's very good
• 35:07
  friend. He's in Secuvit, but he's very
• 35:09
  good friends with the Koto tea people in Southon.
• 35:13
  But he's doing these insane things with like handpicked
• 35:17
  Asahi cultivar from Suji San in like Gee Shirakawa and like
• 35:22
  mixing it with various things. But it's so elevated.
• 35:25
  Like it feels like it's fine cuisine mixed with this.
• 35:28
  And like, you see, like Suji san reposting his stuff like.
• 35:34
  So he must be OK with the fact that it's being used as an
• 35:37
  ingredient and really interesting things going on in
• 35:41
  the edges of that. Like, I argue both sides all the
• 35:44
  time. Oh, you're going to ruin the
• 35:46
  subtlety and nuance. But then on the other side,
• 35:48
  like, well, if I got to try a competition Asahi cultivar
• 35:52
  Gelato that someone spent a whole lot of time, energy and
• 35:55
  effort making taste amazing, yeah, I'd buy it.
• 35:58
  Yeah, yeah, I think it's fair. Like mixed with milk.
• 36:02
  Then you got to also present the test of the mushroom very well.
• 36:07
  I think probably like in Thailand when I, I also went to
• 36:11
  the workshop, matcha workshop in Thailand and like I got this
• 36:14
  recipe and I think they used like 5 grams of matcha.
• 36:18
  I think that's why it can also still introduce the the test of
• 36:22
  matcha really well. I think versus here in the Cafe
• 36:25
  generally, I think they use probably like 1 to 2 grams.
• 36:28
  Yeah, they're not using enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:33
  We'll, we'll do matcha tasting experiences.
• 36:36
  Typically we try and like show everyone like the pure matcher
• 36:39
  from different cults of ours and like talk, I talk about the
• 36:42
  origin about it and like try and get people to think about the
• 36:45
  tasting notes and, and tell them about the origin.
• 36:48
  And then the then at the end we get the chance to like have like
• 36:52
  match alloted. Yeah.
• 36:54
  And we're kind of like because we know that I guess there's
• 36:56
  some, there's like different audiences to like cater for as
• 37:00
  well. And we're sometimes trying to
• 37:02
  shut, well, trying to show people who may only had it as a
• 37:05
  matcha latte to appreciate it. They're kind of different
• 37:08
  cultures first before they have it as a matcha latte.
• 37:10
  So that's kind of a way of, yeah, like boosting on the
• 37:13
  hearts and dare experience of matcha.
• 37:15
  Yeah. But we've found that's like an
• 37:17
  interesting way of doing that. Yeah, yeah.
• 37:19
  What what when you're doing workshops and stuff or or like
• 37:23
  markets, what is predictive of someone liking matcha and really
• 37:29
  probably is then going to become a repeat consumer.
• 37:32
  Like if you're watching people walk by or someone's walking up
• 37:35
  and you're probably in the back of your mind have some sense,
• 37:38
  OK, I think this person's going to like it or I think this
• 37:40
  person isn't going to like it. How do you form that profile of
• 37:44
  person? Yeah.
• 37:47
  Yeah, I feel like we have gone on snap.
• 37:49
  I don't want to be like. I don't want to be like.
• 37:52
  Difficult question, Ryan. They like loads of stereotypes
• 37:56
  and stuff like that. But yeah, we definitely have got
• 37:58
  perceptions. I mean, I guess well with with
• 38:02
  like some older generation, I would say we would come up.
• 38:05
  They do sometimes try it. And I think especially at first
• 38:08
  when we're doing it like when we're first doing like markets
• 38:11
  and experiences, it was quite difficult to like sell to them.
• 38:14
  And we had some like market like pop up markets where we were in
• 38:18
  an area where it's pretty much just like all older generation
• 38:21
  people. And it was like very difficult
• 38:23
  to sell match up. And we were getting like, what
• 38:26
  is this like? And it was like a very like
• 38:30
  foreign flavour to them. But yeah.
• 38:32
  And I guess there is, it's probably like people who I'd say
• 38:36
  about like around 30. I mean, obviously people who are
• 38:41
  from kind of like East Asian culture, like from Thailand are
• 38:47
  more you know, or, or from sort of countries around there are
• 38:51
  more used to more used to match a different bride as a matcha.
• 38:56
  And so they know what to expect. I think with we, we sometimes
• 38:59
  find it hard to like in a pop up like tasting to convert someone
• 39:02
  who's like hasn't heard it before, convert them straight
• 39:06
  away when giving them a taste of like Usucha and then convert
• 39:10
  them on the spot to them buy like most of the people who are
• 39:12
  buying are people who like have had nothing before and.
• 39:15
  This is a better product. For that and then, yeah.
• 39:18
  And then they're looking at it like, so especially because of
• 39:21
  the what we sell as well, because we're selling some,
• 39:23
  we're selling somewhere, which is like, oh, different
• 39:26
  cultivars, like different tasting notes and like different
• 39:29
  types of matcha. So if they come up and they
• 39:31
  haven't even heard of matcha, it's quite hard to then like
• 39:34
  sell them like, oh, this is from Yana, this is from media.
• 39:37
  And I don't even know what matcha is.
• 39:39
  Is it tea? And it's like, yeah, quite hard,
• 39:42
  so. Yeah, that.
• 39:43
  Makes a lot of sense. Like they're already consumers
• 39:47
  and then it's first taste of a like, which probably their first
• 39:50
  taste of like a good product. Like if they're just used to
• 39:53
  getting matcha randomly from, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:56
  Like any random place. Yeah, It's really nice to see
• 40:00
  when people are like, oh, this is so good.
• 40:02
  And sometimes you try to like, call people who already just got
• 40:05
  like, the Blank Street coffee matcha.
• 40:08
  Yeah. And they were like, oh, like,
• 40:09
  this is really nice. We I think we want to push a
• 40:12
  little bit more on, like, we want people to choose their own
• 40:15
  matcha origins and cultivars based on a taste of notes they
• 40:18
  like. But most of the time don't
• 40:20
  really care at that moment. I think they just like OK I just
• 40:25
  want much latte. Like that would be like around
• 40:28
  80 or 90% of people who buy to just straight away matcha latte.
• 40:33
  So we actually, because we, we put on, we do like the market.
• 40:36
  We, we put on the menu at different cultures from
• 40:38
  different regions. So they just like choose the
• 40:40
  region rather than just, yeah, rather than like actually just
• 40:44
  choose matcha latte. We tried to get them like to
• 40:46
  choose the region or the cultivar.
• 40:48
  So that the choice architecture prompts the right thinking.
• 40:53
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're.
• 40:55
  Doing a pop up, we need to do this.
• 40:56
  Yeah. Have you guys paralyzed it?
• 41:02
  We we we want to eventually have our own space and hopefully it
• 41:06
  will be like a better experience and prompt people better to to
• 41:10
  choose like different regions, just like kind of wine, because
• 41:14
  people like family with the wine concept that you can oh, choose
• 41:18
  the wine from botto or from prolongs, but much people still
• 41:22
  not familiar with that. Yeah.
• 41:24
  And that's one, Yeah. One of the things that kind of
• 41:26
  like areas kind of we try to look to different areas like
• 41:29
  different products to see like the way they're doing it with
• 41:32
  maybe in a different product, like different type of drink and
• 41:35
  to see like how that could be with match.
• 41:36
  And obviously wine is something's very embedded as
• 41:39
  like a such as like fine product and people are very accustomed,
• 41:44
  especially people who like know wine to it being to picking from
• 41:46
  different regions and different types of grapes and the blends
• 41:49
  of different grapes as well. And yeah, and we feel like,
• 41:52
  yeah, that there could be a lot more of that with matcha,
• 41:56
  especially in the UK. So we want to try, we want to
• 41:59
  try and bring that in. But but with even even look to
• 42:01
  like in the UK that probably doesn't exist in like the US,
• 42:05
  but like the hot chocolate brand Newts, they have like they the
• 42:10
  way they show like chocolate. It's like if you go into there
• 42:14
  more of their shops, it's like, and they just sell like, and
• 42:17
  they'll have on the board like, like you're choosing chocolate
• 42:20
  from different regions, different places.
• 42:23
  And they have like the percentage, I think they have
• 42:26
  the percentage cocoa on the wall.
• 42:28
  And yeah, you can choose it from different countries and that's
• 42:30
  how you choose the chocolate. And I think that's like a really
• 42:32
  cool experience as well. So we're trying to look to those
• 42:35
  different experiences and I think it's something that.
• 42:38
  There is a chocolate mousse specialty place that looks like
• 42:42
  an ice cream store format, but it's just chocolate mousse.
• 42:45
  And it's the same concept in Paris, where it's different
• 42:48
  percentages and the origins of chocolate.
• 42:51
  It makes me, it reminded me of that.
• 42:54
  I think there's so much potential for it.
• 42:56
  And like I've, I've been to London twice now in the past,
• 42:59
  like, I don't know, 3-4 months for like to meet with friends
• 43:03
  and but we had some free time so we checked out the matcha scene
• 43:06
  and you know, the bar is pretty low.
• 43:08
  So I think, like, you guys have like, huge white space to fill
• 43:12
  and it's much needed, I think, within London, yeah.
• 43:16
  But the pain will be, you know, educating the consumer along the
• 43:19
  way. We feel like it.
• 43:20
  But that's also the fun of it, too.
• 43:22
  Yeah. Yeah, I feel like if you tried
• 43:24
  to check out the match scene 3 years ago, you wouldn't have
• 43:26
  even been able to do that. There would have been no scene.
• 43:30
  You guys have great time. Seriously.
• 43:32
  Like it's. Yeah, it's really exciting.
• 43:36
  You guys should expand to Paris too.
• 43:37
  We need it here. I think the only issue is like
• 43:41
  the matcha supply that sort of kind of limit as we go there
• 43:46
  just yet. How is the shortage affect you
• 43:48
  guys so far it's. Really hard to get matcha.
• 43:52
  Yeah, because we're it's hard to like get the right, right
• 43:56
  quantities. I mean, I guess a lot of it
• 43:57
  depends on what relationships you have.
• 43:59
  Like people might have like relationships.
• 44:02
  Well, we're trying to like source directly from farms and
• 44:06
  like love them alike. And yeah, we, we can't, we can't
• 44:10
  deliver that much to you with the amounts we're asking for.
• 44:13
  They yeah, they just, they just can't deliver it like as fast as
• 44:17
  kind of what we want, even though like we really like them,
• 44:20
  their matcha. And so, yeah, it's difficult to
• 44:24
  kind of grow when if you can't get the quantities.
• 44:27
  But I mean. I think for example, like from
• 44:31
  the Yami one, they usually will grind the Masha fresh when we
• 44:35
  place the order, which is a really good thing because then a
• 44:39
  really fresh matcha and we really like that concept.
• 44:42
  But the only thing is there's a lot of bottleneck at the
• 44:46
  grinding facilities because they use they share.
• 44:49
  I think that's like a kind of nationwide problems in Japan
• 44:53
  that there's a lot of bottlenecks there.
• 44:55
  So we would have to like place like a really large orders just
• 44:59
  to make sure that we will get that.
• 45:01
  And like the lead time now is probably like 2 months or so.
• 45:04
  And because we are still quite new, I would say like we are
• 45:08
  still like estimating demand lower than it's actually come
• 45:12
  in. Like we are still not sure like
• 45:14
  how much we can sell every month.
• 45:17
  It's really varied so and because we are small, so we
• 45:20
  cannot also place like way too much, much up because of the
• 45:24
  cash flow. So it's a lot of kind of
• 45:27
  operational challenges. I would say like what is the
• 45:30
  best for us to do and that's why it's a part of that.
• 45:35
  It's also difficult to get matcha because once you have
• 45:38
  like the cash to place new orders like it's going to come
• 45:41
  quite late, then you wouldn't have powder to deliver.
• 45:44
  That was really, really tough. Like we, we could have like, for
• 45:48
  example, boost more sales like with while like doing more
• 45:51
  marketing, for example. But now we sort of have to slow,
• 45:54
  slow down a little bit on our marketing strategy because even
• 45:58
  though we do it, then we might not have enough matcha to sell.
• 46:01
  So it's probably not worth like snowballing.
• 46:04
  Yeah, yeah. It's a lot to juggle.
• 46:07
  Have you tried to maybe source matcha from other regions beyond
• 46:12
  all these famous or traditional areas?
• 46:15
  Yeah, we are like trying a lot of matcha arts from other region
• 46:19
  as well, like Chisuoka and like small Farm that they don't have
• 46:23
  a lot of order internationally just yet.
• 46:26
  But we still like look for the match that we feel like it's a
• 46:29
  good quality that meets our standard, which I think that's
• 46:33
  so explained why it's hard because the group obviously like
• 46:37
  they might have no order coming in.
• 46:39
  That's why like the lower quality one, they might not have
• 46:42
  a lot of order because the quality doesn't meet the
• 46:44
  standard. It's a really hard problem.
• 46:47
  Yeah. Like we also planning to launch
• 46:50
  the new one suit from the Ujiwara one because we really
• 46:53
  like the farm and we really like supporting small farms that
• 46:56
  produce good quality. Again like because of the small
• 47:00
  facility. Then there is like the the
• 47:03
  maximum order that we can order every month.
• 47:06
  Yeah, excellent. Yeah, I think.
• 47:07
  But one of the things we want to do is show much from different
• 47:10
  regions. So it's something that we want
• 47:13
  to do to expand and to showcase from different places.
• 47:16
  Yeah, yeah. I think that's the cool thing is
• 47:18
  we both work full time. Wow.
• 47:22
  A lot even more to juggle, yeah. Yeah, like is in behavioral
• 47:26
  science. So we're both like working in a
• 47:29
  consulting industry and yeah, we juggling between 2:00.
• 47:34
  Yeah, we actually met studying behavioral science.
• 47:36
  Yeah, Yeah. Wow.
• 47:38
  OK. Behavioral science.
• 47:39
  So like do you guys like work on like consumer behavioral science
• 47:42
  or is it like other application? Yeah, yeah.
• 47:45
  Consumer, yeah. Yeah, like, wow, you guys have
• 47:47
  the perfect background for this. Very cool.
• 47:50
  Yeah. So we like, yeah, I mean, we're
• 47:53
  trying to like apply that kind of thinking into how we market
• 47:56
  as well. Yeah, Have you actually test any
• 48:00
  theories or set up any experiment yet, but.
• 48:03
  Not the experiment, but I would say because we have the rare
• 48:06
  matcha, which is actually like the Uji Hikaru one, it has come
• 48:11
  as a very like lower quantity. So we use like this is the rare
• 48:15
  matcha and it's more expensive. So we have to to add a bit
• 48:19
  extra. Like if you want extra, you need
• 48:20
  to pay a little bit more. And when we say rare is works
• 48:24
  really well because of that scarcity effect that people say,
• 48:27
  oh, this is like a limited edition thing, like scarce
• 48:30
  thing. So that works really well, Yeah.
• 48:35
  It's not intentional though. It's like, it's really rare.
• 48:38
  It's not like. Yeah.
• 48:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:41
  But it's just, yeah, no. What kind of things to highlight
• 48:44
  which are going to like resonate with people?
• 48:47
  Obviously always sticking to like what is authentic and what
• 48:50
  is actually true? Yeah.
• 48:51
  So you guys like your day-to-day, are you guys like
• 48:54
  working with like CPG companies, FMCG and like their marketing
• 48:57
  teams and like understanding consumer behavior?
• 49:00
  Is that like? In our full time job.
• 49:02
  Your full time job. Have worked a bit, yeah.
• 49:04
  Have done CG companies a little bit and understanding kind of,
• 49:07
  yeah, their behavior and how they would choose and what kind
• 49:10
  of things would affect the choices they make.
• 49:11
  Like how communication is framed to them, how marketing framed
• 49:16
  things that can change the perception of the types of words
• 49:19
  that are used. Or you know, the way the way
• 49:21
  things are framed to them. Yeah, awesome.
• 49:23
  Wow, that's cool. Yeah.
• 49:25
  Fascinating. Really good frameworks that you
• 49:28
  have learned from from that background that you're like
• 49:31
  thinking about applying to kind of spread the idea of matcha as
• 49:35
  a specialty product. Kind of like how you were
• 49:37
  talking about like with wine, how like there's all of these
• 49:40
  varieties and cultivars and like using these knowledge structures
• 49:44
  like promoting them in matcha so that like people don't think of
• 49:47
  it as a commodity. Like what?
• 49:48
  What like framework could you take from behavioral science or
• 49:51
  have you taken to try to like shift the mindset that it's like
• 49:54
  a specialty food or a fine food? Yeah.
• 49:57
  So there's this concept on like reciprocity almost like if you
• 50:02
  show like all the work behind the scene, then that would
• 50:05
  really helps people to see and like increase the value
• 50:09
  perception that they have on the product.
• 50:10
  And for example, you might see the shop some of the chocolate
• 50:13
  brand they probably have like the chef making chocolate and
• 50:16
  that also can. Like the lint chef?
• 50:19
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We recommend like the clients to
• 50:23
  do that. So I think like we're trying to
• 50:25
  sell the story like behind the scene in the workshops or in our
• 50:29
  on our Instagram food To tell people that much has actually
• 50:33
  requires a lot of work behind the scene, which is true.
• 50:36
  But like people like can hear a little bit more and make it more
• 50:40
  like distinct. Yeah.
• 50:42
  And this is the way it's like the way it's communicated.
• 50:44
  It can be communicated in so many different ways and there's
• 50:47
  so many different like frames of communication that can be given
• 50:50
  to people to understand this product.
• 50:52
  It's not people aren't just like consuming the product itself can
• 50:56
  kind of consuming the story around it.
• 50:58
  And there's so many different stories that have been told.
• 51:01
  Yeah, and like the use of colour, there's like a lot of
• 51:05
  psychology. I mean, I'm not like neuro
• 51:07
  design, but there's a little bit like a concept around that of
• 51:10
  the visual hierarchy and we try to integrate that into our
• 51:14
  packaging. There's still like there's, I
• 51:16
  think there's still a lot of room for improvement on the
• 51:18
  website and the packaging. But yeah, he's trying to embed
• 51:21
  that ad and kind of introduce a sensory experience in the
• 51:26
  packaging because I think that makes a much a difference from
• 51:30
  like different region and cultivar.
• 51:33
  But it's as much because when you look through the shelf or on
• 51:37
  websites on Amazon like, like what's the difference because.
• 51:43
  It's all visual. Yeah, so we have like the the OG
• 51:48
  1 is more floral. So we have the image of like
• 51:51
  cherry blossoms because it's not, it's not like rose that has
• 51:55
  very strong like florals and cherry blossom also plays really
• 52:00
  well with like Japanese like. The teeth, kind of.
• 52:03
  Yeah. And for the Yami 1 is smoky or
• 52:06
  like both things. So we have kind of like the like
• 52:09
  the smoke around the tea leaves. And also the Toro in Yami is
• 52:13
  more like misty. Like the Toro this particular
• 52:17
  cultivars grown is kind of misty on the heel.
• 52:19
  So it's kind of like a little bit nuanced and abstracts so
• 52:23
  people can interpret. Bring in all the senses.
• 52:26
  Yeah, bring the sense. Yeah, interesting.
• 52:29
  It might be interesting if you can like set up some kind of AB
• 52:32
  tests to test different, you know, visual language, visual
• 52:35
  communication. When like a person clicks into
• 52:38
  the website, it just randomly leads the person into a, you
• 52:42
  know, different version of that presentation.
• 52:44
  You can calculate the click rate or the the amount of time they
• 52:49
  spend on the webpage. I actually love looking at like
• 52:53
  the, the, the stats, the analytics for, for the website,
• 52:57
  like when you change something and just like the conversion
• 52:59
  rate and stuff like that. It's like really interesting.
• 53:03
  I think it's a lot more interesting when it's your
• 53:04
  product. How would you guys think about
• 53:07
  like there's like the consumer piece of this where consumers
• 53:11
  deciding I want to be a regular specialty much a consumer.
• 53:15
  This is something I'm interested in both intellectually learning
• 53:18
  the regions and the process, etcetera, and in the taste, like
• 53:22
  the actual hedonic pleasure of consuming this thing and its
• 53:26
  flavors. But there's also the B to B side
• 53:29
  where the biggest change matrix makers with the largest leverage
• 53:34
  are the cafes where all the on premise preparation is happening
• 53:38
  and exposing A new generation and new set of consumers to this
• 53:42
  product. How do we market to the business
• 53:46
  people and the coffee people and the people who have this really
• 53:49
  enormous leverage, who are choosing to put it on the menu
• 53:53
  and deciding what that story should be?
• 53:55
  Yeah. Well, that's a good question.
• 53:58
  Yes, you've got The thing is, is that like we've got so many
• 54:01
  ideas about how cafes could be like giving this customers like
• 54:04
  in relative format. Part of us is like, should we,
• 54:09
  should we be saving these ideas for and create our own space or
• 54:12
  should we like so? But we have kind of like so when
• 54:17
  we sell to, because we do sell to like some some cafes and
• 54:21
  stuff. We kind of tried to say these
• 54:23
  are some cool things you could do with like how you put it on
• 54:25
  the menu and stuff. You can sell it through the
• 54:27
  different regions or the way you prepare it.
• 54:30
  You can prepare it in this cool way that's different to what
• 54:32
  other people do. So we try to like bring in that
• 54:34
  consulting element to it as well.
• 54:37
  We're not just giving you a product, but we also like, we,
• 54:40
  we, there's like a partnership here that you can work with and
• 54:42
  we can like advise you on how to do it.
• 54:45
  Yeah. That's awesome.
• 54:48
  Yeah. We also offer like complementary
• 54:51
  training for them so that they know how to properly like make
• 54:55
  the matcha and how do they present products to customers.
• 54:59
  Like if the customers ask the information, then they can say
• 55:02
  that correctly. So we offer all that because
• 55:05
  there's still like a lot of kind of brewing techniques that they
• 55:09
  might make a shortcut to be honest, because like in the cafe
• 55:12
  scene is really busy and they probably don't have time to
• 55:15
  waste it properly in every bowl. And that's really big challenge
• 55:20
  and we would always do not premate.
• 55:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think as well, because you
• 55:27
  talk about the opportunity in B2B, I think that there's other
• 55:29
  spaces of work as well which we'd love to like work with,
• 55:33
  which is used to match like places like hotels where you
• 55:36
  could create like an experience. Yeah.
• 55:39
  You mentioned earlier about like afternoon tea and stuff in the
• 55:41
  UK, like, so to be like hotels would have like an afternoon tea
• 55:45
  experience that would be like the place to go for that.
• 55:48
  But if you could incorporate more natural experience into
• 55:52
  that, that could be a way of, yeah, maybe bringing that into
• 55:55
  kind of the modern day a bit more and be really cool to work
• 55:59
  with hotels on that. Yeah.
• 56:00
  And the the other places which we think would be cool to kind
• 56:04
  of bring more matching to would be like in offices or
• 56:07
  workplaces, because obviously everyone has like coffee
• 56:11
  machines and stuff. And what they were preparing
• 56:14
  matches to, to start the day to like, you know, to power them
• 56:18
  for the for the day ahead, then that could be cool, yeah.
• 56:22
  Yeah, yeah. Got a frame of focusing on
• 56:25
  productivity throughout the day? I think the biggest opportunity
• 56:30
  is that. But the challenge too is like,
• 56:32
  imagine like what that like little Matcha station looks
• 56:35
  like. If not everyone knows how to use
• 56:37
  the equipment or to keep the dry side dried, the wet side wet to
• 56:42
  hydrate the toss and to clean it afterwards.
• 56:45
  Yeah, that's just simply, I don't know how you do it.
• 56:47
  I think it'd be cool. A bit tricky, yeah.
• 56:51
  We need to. Someone needs to invent like the
• 56:53
  equivalent of an espresso machine where the preparation
• 56:56
  complexity is abstracted away and like it's a push button kind
• 57:01
  of experience someday. Yeah, that's what that's what I
• 57:04
  was thinking as well. But I mean I own that have the
• 57:06
  knowledge to know how to do that.
• 57:08
  But I think there is an opportunity there.
• 57:10
  I think we saw a. Tricky hardware problem.
• 57:12
  We've given it a lot of power and thought they're like this is
• 57:16
  really tricky. Yeah.
• 57:19
  I saw like this matcha in the tube product.
• 57:22
  Not sure you guys have seen. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:25
  Yeah, it's not controversy. Controversial and actually after
• 57:32
  that happened, I mean it's a really great idea for
• 57:34
  convenience like just like what you say like you could work in
• 57:37
  the office. But from that incident, I just
• 57:39
  realized, wow, like, the way that people, like, who love
• 57:42
  matcha so much, like, they are very protective of the culture,
• 57:46
  which is really, really nice as well in a way.
• 57:48
  But it just makes like, as we're like, oh, my God.
• 57:50
  Like, we need to be very careful when we communicate everything.
• 57:54
  Yeah. Yeah, it was a great case study
• 57:57
  for the rest of the industry. Yeah, like, it's not a bad idea.
• 58:01
  Just had literally the world's worst messenger.
• 58:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I.
• 58:05
  Think it wasn't it like, because at the start of the video and
• 58:07
  then just like swiped all the traditional Japanese stuff,
• 58:10
  like, like really? Yeah, yeah.
• 58:13
  So she'll include this in the vodka.
• 58:17
  Even from a product perspective, like we, we haven't tried that
• 58:22
  one, but we have tried some other ones in Wuji actually, and
• 58:26
  they didn't taste good. It's just a bad product.
• 58:29
  Yeah, it's a long way to go. Well.
• 58:31
  I cannot imagine it would be great.
• 58:34
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 58:35
  And the color and I don't know the test, Yeah.
• 58:39
  Like the one we tried, the color was actually very suspiciously
• 58:42
  green. Very green.
• 58:46
  Ingredients much on water it's kind of like slightly thicker
• 58:50
  than a koi cha but. There's definitely something
• 58:52
  other than water in that tube. Some really interesting citrus
• 58:58
  note. I don't know what that is.
• 59:00
  Yeah, I think they need to add like preservatives.
• 59:03
  Yeah, I think so. I don't know how either.
• 59:06
  It was very almost off putting, but you know, it was priced low.
• 59:11
  I think it was under ten U.S. dollars for like 8 like pretty
• 59:15
  large tubes so like the expectation to the taste kind of
• 59:19
  made sense. Granted it didn't taste good.
• 59:23
  Might be nice for a cookie or something.
• 59:25
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes we get people who want
• 59:30
  to buy a matcha and I sort of say, oh, this would be great for
• 59:34
  great. We could use this matcha for
• 59:35
  like making like cookies or making like our desserts and
• 59:38
  stuff. And we sort of say like, so
• 59:40
  don't know how to like respond to that always because we're
• 59:43
  like, like this is like meant to be for like drinking.
• 59:46
  I mean, you can use it, but you might be basically you'd be
• 59:48
  overpaying for using a product that you don't need to put into,
• 59:53
  into baking goods as well. That's why I would try to like
• 59:57
  add a kind of advice consulting element onto like what we sell.
• 1:00:00
  But then also I want to be like, oh, we're telling you what to do
• 1:00:03
  with our product. Like if you buy it, then what to
• 1:00:06
  do with that? Yeah.
• 1:00:07
  I mean, there are much that just meant for, you know, being put
• 1:00:11
  into a bakery or well, it's it's even in Hari Shi to man like
• 1:00:16
  they have like matcha designed for latte on their menu.
• 1:00:20
  There are much are meant to be served for certain purposes.
• 1:00:23
  And yeah, but this whole matcha shortage thing, it's really a
• 1:00:26
  shortage of good matcha. There's no shortage of, you
• 1:00:29
  know, other matcha. Yeah, that's true.
• 1:00:32
  At Japan Centre there they sometimes have like Maruku
• 1:00:36
  matcha and there was the day that they restocked that and we
• 1:00:40
  were doing the sampling there as well.
• 1:00:42
  And obviously they like a lot of people come to find Maraku
• 1:00:45
  matcha, but they already run out of the like the one for the the
• 1:00:49
  usucha one. There's only half like the
• 1:00:51
  cooking grade left and people who wants the matcha for
• 1:00:54
  drinking, they just get the cooking grade because they don't
• 1:00:57
  know the difference, but they just know the brand.
• 1:01:00
  Yeah. Which is quite interesting to
• 1:01:02
  see. We're just like, OK, like, do
• 1:01:05
  you want to try a matcha? And if you want to make drinks,
• 1:01:07
  maybe this one's better. Yeah, they did this.
• 1:01:13
  But like, it's quite interesting how this Marcu trend is like,
• 1:01:17
  really, everyone's seeking for Marcu matcha.
• 1:01:20
  Yeah. It's a little actually.
• 1:01:22
  I was just reflecting on this the other day because they put
• 1:01:25
  out this big announcement saying trying to crack down on
• 1:01:28
  resellers. Like another way of looking at
• 1:01:32
  this is that Maruq is pricing undervalue.
• 1:01:36
  So like, the moment someone buys it, it is literally worth more
• 1:01:40
  on the secondary market because there's so much demand and it is
• 1:01:44
  so scarce. And it's because you see other
• 1:01:46
  industries doing this like, you know, famously like the luxury
• 1:01:49
  industry like Rolex or Hermes purposely price their products
• 1:01:54
  below their value. And the moment you walk out with
• 1:01:57
  it, it automatically becomes worth more on the secondary
• 1:02:00
  market. And it's a really interesting
• 1:02:02
  phenomenon that's now happening to Matcha, which is like bizarre
• 1:02:06
  cuz it's a perishable product. And I understand what they're
• 1:02:09
  cracking down on resellers. Who knows what happened to those
• 1:02:12
  cans when you buy them on eBay, but it's an interesting choice
• 1:02:16
  that they're keeping suppressing prices very low.
• 1:02:20
  And I wonder when or if they want to harvest more of that
• 1:02:23
  value, because the way you crack down on the secondary market is
• 1:02:27
  by pricing to value so that when you buy it, right, like it's,
• 1:02:32
  you know, it's not automatically worth more the moment you, it's
• 1:02:35
  in your hands. Yeah, very convenient way for
• 1:02:39
  them to raise prices. So by the end of the day, I.
• 1:02:41
  Mean, but it's also what the market is saying it's worth.
• 1:02:44
  Yeah, that's true. Then you're also like, then it
• 1:02:47
  becomes this elite thing and now you're pricing out tons of
• 1:02:50
  people like, so like what they're doing is very good for
• 1:02:53
  the average consumer if you can get your hands on it, keeping it
• 1:02:55
  an accessible price point. Curious to hear what your
• 1:02:58
  thoughts are on that in the industry that you work in.
• 1:03:00
  Because like, I feel this really falls into like, consumer
• 1:03:03
  behavior, like space sphere around, like the scarcity and
• 1:03:07
  secondary market and the way people are deciding to price
• 1:03:10
  things. Yeah.
• 1:03:11
  I think it's so like for Thailand, there are so many
• 1:03:15
  retailer resellers that like got the Masha from Japan and they
• 1:03:20
  sell it like 10 times or even more, which is quite
• 1:03:23
  disheartening to see. And then, but I think we're the
• 1:03:26
  UK landscaped people, they sort of don't order matcha online
• 1:03:32
  from the Japanese brand that much because it's the shipping
• 1:03:35
  costs quite a lot. So they tend to seek for kind of
• 1:03:39
  the option of like UK brand a lot more.
• 1:03:41
  And I would say the pricing, people kind of know that if they
• 1:03:45
  get like the 8#8# matcha for 30 grams, which is probably similar
• 1:03:50
  to like 8 euros, 7-8 euros will be, that's going to be like the
• 1:03:56
  low quality 1. And especially if they get it
• 1:03:58
  from the Asian market, the price that they would see is quite
• 1:04:04
  reasonable for the good quality. It's probably like 15 and
• 1:04:07
  higher. And we use like the first
• 1:04:10
  harvest matcha and it's also stone meal.
• 1:04:13
  But because we feel like we want to make Masha quite accessible
• 1:04:17
  and more like a good margin, a lot of people actually say it's
• 1:04:22
  quite affordable. I wish it.
• 1:04:24
  Yeah. Like I would say like our matcha
• 1:04:26
  is really good value for money. And but we're trying to sort of
• 1:04:30
  shift a little bit more because like there will be higher cost
• 1:04:34
  on matcha. Like like the farmers already
• 1:04:36
  told us that there's like 30% increase in the fertilizer price
• 1:04:40
  and cost in everything and lower yield.
• 1:04:43
  So we sort of need to prompt people that and anchor people
• 1:04:47
  that it will be a little bit more.
• 1:04:49
  I think it's easy to convince people who knows what is the
• 1:04:52
  good quality of matcha is and the pricing, but it's hard to
• 1:04:57
  convert people who not used to good quality matcha to.
• 1:05:00
  Yeah, it'll make that even harder that yeah, yeah, 10.
• 1:05:04
  Pounds or more? Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  Yeah. But when you talk about consumer
• 1:05:07
  pricing, I guess like sometimes when you're on the as as like
• 1:05:11
  brand like trying to sell it, you might look to what it costs
• 1:05:14
  and then like add a margin on then to like consumers you don't
• 1:05:18
  know, they don't know any of like the background costs.
• 1:05:21
  So they have to like have different area for how they
• 1:05:25
  decide what's value for money, what's not.
• 1:05:27
  And a lot of the times that comes from either having like a
• 1:05:30
  reference point to like another product, like if it's in a cafe,
• 1:05:33
  comparing it to how much coffee costs, or, you know, just like
• 1:05:38
  what else is out there in the market or kind of if there's any
• 1:05:42
  signals of quality and stuff like people are used to like
• 1:05:45
  signals like organic. Like, even though matcha
• 1:05:48
  wouldn't have like umami flavour that you get from an organic
• 1:05:52
  product, certain words like that would make them think, Oh, I can
• 1:05:56
  pay more like, you know, organic.
• 1:05:58
  And then you can introduce new things like ceremony or great is
• 1:06:01
  a big thing, which is like, even though it's a bit of a marketing
• 1:06:05
  term, which is kind of like boost the price of the product
• 1:06:07
  made it seem like, Oh, this is, this is something I can pay more
• 1:06:10
  for. So this yeah, they I mean, they
• 1:06:13
  have to go. It's interesting.
• 1:06:15
  Like it's like the pricing kind of it works very differently for
• 1:06:18
  when you look at it for a consumer versus when you're
• 1:06:20
  selling it. I think.
• 1:06:21
  So when we try to like think about pricing, it's good to try
• 1:06:24
  and think about it from the consumer who comes at it
• 1:06:27
  perspective who doesn't know all the background costs and how
• 1:06:29
  they would look at how they would compare against other
• 1:06:32
  products. It's.
• 1:06:32
  Very interesting because you know it works both ways for from
• 1:06:36
  a consumer perspective perspective, right?
• 1:06:38
  Like you would match a, you know, a high quality product
• 1:06:43
  with, you know, higher or more appropriate price tag.
• 1:06:46
  But also on the other hand, you would expect a high quality
• 1:06:49
  product to be more expensive. So sometimes you probably want
• 1:06:53
  to give the product a slightly higher price to reflect its
• 1:06:58
  quality. Yeah, to the consumer.
• 1:07:00
  Yeah, that's that's something in like payroll science called like
• 1:07:04
  the price quality heuristic, where it's like if something's
• 1:07:07
  priced higher, then people will use that as a kind of rule of
• 1:07:10
  thumb to say, oh, it's probably high.
• 1:07:12
  It's an indicator of high quality.
• 1:07:14
  It's not the quality for, it's not them going, oh, this is high
• 1:07:17
  quality socially, price high. It's actually the other way
• 1:07:20
  sometimes going this is price high, so it must be high
• 1:07:23
  quality. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:25
  And then they convinced themselves because they've
• 1:07:26
  already spent the money. What situation I was in.
• 1:07:31
  But I remembered like, it was some touristy place.
• 1:07:33
  It was very famous. And I heard, like a lot of
• 1:07:36
  people say, oh, this is so good. And I'm thinking to the back of
• 1:07:39
  my mind, well, this is kind of expensive.
• 1:07:41
  I don't think this is very good. And I think they're just
• 1:07:44
  convincing themselves how incredible it is because, like,
• 1:07:46
  they spent money to get here and like to pay for this thing.
• 1:07:50
  Was that in? Was that in Paris?
• 1:07:52
  I think it was in like a wine context or something.
• 1:07:55
  Yeah, I forget what the context was.
• 1:07:57
  I remember how I was think feeling at the time.
• 1:08:00
  Yeah. You sort of need to justify
• 1:08:02
  that. Oh, like I already paid this
• 1:08:03
  amount, so it got to be good. Yeah.
• 1:08:07
  Hard though, because like when you are starting the business in
• 1:08:12
  the market where the matcha knowledge is still like not
• 1:08:15
  quite widespread. And then you also want to get
• 1:08:18
  out there to so people can buy, buy your product.
• 1:08:21
  If you said like price too high, but people don't really know
• 1:08:24
  your brand just yet, it's quite hard to sell.
• 1:08:27
  Like in the first few months that we started, it's really
• 1:08:29
  hard to get people to buy a matcha because they they think
• 1:08:33
  like a lot of feedback we got like, oh this is quite expensive
• 1:08:36
  like sampling in Japan center because they already they only
• 1:08:39
  have like in the Masha for like 8 LB.
• 1:08:41
  Yeah, I mean, because it's the context isn't so because when we
• 1:08:44
  were first selling it, we it wasn't, ours wasn't that
• 1:08:47
  expensive, but it was the most expensive like in the shop at
• 1:08:50
  the time. So it like looked really
• 1:08:52
  expensive compared to what they had because yeah, they just had
• 1:08:55
  some like cheaper, cheaper versions.
• 1:08:57
  But now they have like more expensive versions.
• 1:09:00
  So it doesn't look as expensive. And there's some people saying
• 1:09:02
  and like, oh, this is really like affordable match, which I
• 1:09:05
  kind of don't like. I don't like, I don't want
• 1:09:07
  people to like, say, to use the word well, I don't want it to be
• 1:09:10
  affordable, but I don't want it to be like that, to be the main
• 1:09:12
  descriptor of it as affordable. You know, yeah.
• 1:09:15
  Because that has different connotations.
• 1:09:17
  Yeah. It's tricky.
• 1:09:19
  Yeah. How do you prime people to think
• 1:09:21
  quality? Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  I mean, we've, we've spoken with other business owners in like
• 1:09:26
  different categories also producing natural products.
• 1:09:29
  Like no, people like in the olive oil industry, like have an
• 1:09:32
  olive oil brand. It's like a similar thing in a
• 1:09:35
  way where they're trying to source from farmers in Italy and
• 1:09:38
  then and then sell it under their brand.
• 1:09:40
  Cool. OK.
• 1:09:41
  Yeah. But that they had, they had like
• 1:09:43
  they the way they priced that olive oil and they had like some
• 1:09:46
  sales and then there was like a there was a shortage of olive
• 1:09:49
  oil because there was just wasn't a high yield for that
• 1:09:51
  year in the harvest of olive oil.
• 1:09:53
  So their prices have to go up. But when they put the prices up,
• 1:09:58
  they actually sold more at the higher price than they were like
• 1:10:02
  the previous year become like there's like an olive oil
• 1:10:06
  shortage. And then it was like people like
• 1:10:08
  really want the oil more. So then the next year they had
• 1:10:10
  there was a much higher yield and so there was more available.
• 1:10:14
  So really should have put the prices down.
• 1:10:16
  The people say, are you going to put the prices down?
• 1:10:18
  It's like no, because it's of more elevated price.
• 1:10:24
  That's good for. Them.
• 1:10:28
  Yeah, it's really interesting to see that in the Western world
• 1:10:31
  there are quite a lot more products that they trying to do,
• 1:10:34
  sourcing from small farms and introducing nuances like olive
• 1:10:38
  oil. They also like a trend in that
• 1:10:41
  as well. This one is from Greece, this
• 1:10:43
  one is from Italy. From this.
• 1:10:46
  The single origin, it's interesting actually as well,
• 1:10:49
  seeing how many different food products work in a similar way
• 1:10:52
  that you might not have always expected because she'd like food
• 1:10:54
  products And it's like, it's obviously completely different
• 1:10:56
  experience tasting it or using it.
• 1:10:59
  But the actual, if you have it, if you're a brand who uses that
• 1:11:02
  product, the actual experience of like running back has a lot
• 1:11:06
  of similarities. Yeah.
• 1:11:08
  I mean, I think ultimately like you're trying like giving
• 1:11:11
  someone the context to understand why it's good, like
• 1:11:14
  to do their own self evaluation, why is this good?
• 1:11:17
  And like cultivar region, like all of these things processing,
• 1:11:21
  we can all borrow and learn from each other across like these
• 1:11:24
  industries. Yeah.
• 1:11:26
  And that's, yeah, exactly like because when you have like a
• 1:11:28
  brand as well, it's like we don't make anything like it's
• 1:11:32
  made by, well, it's manufactured by the farmers.
• 1:11:34
  So other people might have like a food or drink product where
• 1:11:37
  they're like making a drink or something with a certain recipe.
• 1:11:40
  We are just. So all we're doing really is
• 1:11:42
  just like time to sell a story about the well we're curating
• 1:11:46
  the match of that we think is like really high, high quality.
• 1:11:49
  And then we're just selling the story of it and showing them why
• 1:11:54
  they should, why they should buy it and trying to get them to
• 1:11:57
  appreciate match from from where we're sorted from.
• 1:12:00
  It's awesome. Well, it's a really important
• 1:12:02
  part of the value chain because like, I guess what all of like
• 1:12:05
  everyone who's focused on specialty, like we're creating a
• 1:12:07
  new market. We're creating a new type of
• 1:12:09
  consumer that's making purchasing decisions and
• 1:12:12
  evaluating and consumption behavior on a very different set
• 1:12:16
  of axes than someone who just wants it in a bubble tea or in a
• 1:12:20
  random latte or someone who wants it for a tea ceremony for
• 1:12:23
  that matter, right? Like it's a different market,
• 1:12:25
  but like that market needs and the context basically.
• 1:12:29
  Yeah, yeah. And it's quite interesting, like
• 1:12:32
  experience and when you come into the, when you come into the
• 1:12:35
  industry, there might be, there's a balance between like
• 1:12:38
  selling, selling to people in a way and what people are already
• 1:12:41
  accustomed to. So like the, the common way,
• 1:12:45
  like the popular way to experience mattress is through
• 1:12:47
  like the matcha lattes, a lot of milk and without appreciating
• 1:12:51
  the different codes of ours. But when, when you, when you
• 1:12:53
  want to sell something new, you have to kind of sell in a way in
• 1:12:56
  which they're not, which isn't their most, their most popular
• 1:12:59
  way of like consuming or something because you are trying
• 1:13:02
  to sell something new. That makes sense.
• 1:13:03
  So it's kind of like, but then also you don't want to be if
• 1:13:06
  you're, if you kind of sell to people in a way which is like
• 1:13:09
  completely alien to them. It doesn't.
• 1:13:10
  It's not something which they're accustomed to do or they have
• 1:13:13
  any kind of experience with, then they might not, they might
• 1:13:16
  not, they might not resonate with them as much.
• 1:13:18
  So there's like a balance between giving them something
• 1:13:21
  new or resonating with what their interests are.
• 1:13:24
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:27
  Probably. You'll probably need a little
• 1:13:29
  bit of both. Along the way, yeah, A.
• 1:13:32
  Difficult needle to thread. You know, we struggle with that
• 1:13:35
  too, like all the time actually, because like you have to meet
• 1:13:40
  people where they're at. Yeah.
• 1:13:41
  And even on the podcast, like mostly think that we're speaking
• 1:13:45
  to like AB to B audience and people or like consumers who
• 1:13:49
  already know a lot about like all the various aspects recipe
• 1:13:52
  matcha like do we find define Hansu shaded every time that we
• 1:13:57
  talk about it? Do we like describe what an
• 1:13:59
  issue is every time we use that word?
• 1:14:02
  Like for half of the audience, probably it looks like annoying,
• 1:14:05
  and for the other half it's extremely helpful and like,
• 1:14:08
  yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:10
  But, you know, it's it really, by the end of the day depends
• 1:14:14
  on, you know, what you care and who you care about.
• 1:14:17
  It will act almost as a natural filter.
• 1:14:20
  Yeah, to filter out the audience that you wanted to have.
• 1:14:24
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Like we were not gonna can or cannot reduce the price even
• 1:14:29
  further to capture like people who say, oh, this is expensive,
• 1:14:33
  you know, yeah. That's just never going to be
• 1:14:36
  your consumers. Yeah, Yeah, that's true.
• 1:14:40
  And I think an interesting point when now that we're talking
• 1:14:42
  about this is like there's a big cultures of macho gurlies in the
• 1:14:45
  West. I've never seen that before in
• 1:14:50
  Thailand because actually most of the matcha cafe owners seem
• 1:14:54
  to be like men who revolutionize like the way of drinking matcha.
• 1:14:59
  And also when I go to the cafe with my friends, there's a mixed
• 1:15:02
  group of like, there's a lot of men and not just.
• 1:15:05
  Girls, yeah, it's a more gender balance.
• 1:15:09
  I've noticed that too. Yeah, yeah, or even in like back
• 1:15:12
  in the day, samurai like drink matcha.
• 1:15:14
  Yeah, yeah. Primarily a men's activity.
• 1:15:17
  Yeah, because expensive as well. We were just talking with
• 1:15:21
  someone in Australia about that who does a lot of pop ups and
• 1:15:24
  she was saying the number of like young teenage girls that
• 1:15:27
  are coming up to the booth dragging the parents saying I
• 1:15:29
  want this matcha, like mom, dad, taste the matcha.
• 1:15:32
  She made such an interesting observation that just completely
• 1:15:35
  blew my mind and kind of feels obvious now is that like this
• 1:15:39
  new generation of adolescence is forming a very different
• 1:15:42
  relationship with caffeine and that like they want a more
• 1:15:45
  balanced energy profile. They want something with some
• 1:15:48
  functional benefits and instead of getting hooked on coffee, you
• 1:15:52
  know when you're 14151617, when you're kind of getting more
• 1:15:56
  exposed to like adult like the caffeine culture that we all
• 1:16:00
  live in and like have like a lot of people like depend on and
• 1:16:05
  they're forming that relationship with matcha and
• 1:16:08
  not. And and that's like a entire
• 1:16:11
  generation. And they're impacting their
• 1:16:14
  parents. And also like, imagine their
• 1:16:16
  kids will be growing up in that culture too.
• 1:16:18
  So this whole culture is going to last for many, many years in
• 1:16:23
  the future, probably never disappeared.
• 1:16:26
  Be the dominant culture. Like if you project out the
• 1:16:29
  number of people that that's happening to, like even my
• 1:16:32
  sister who's seven years younger than me, that's what all of her
• 1:16:35
  friends want to drink. Like they don't know anything
• 1:16:37
  about tea. They're not particularly
• 1:16:39
  interested in Japanese culture. Like it's fascinating, like
• 1:16:42
  going home and like, you know, sometimes like her friends are
• 1:16:45
  around and I'm like, oh, whoa, wow.
• 1:16:47
  And they know quite a bit about matcha, like more than you would
• 1:16:50
  think, probably more than like the same age group knows about
• 1:16:54
  coffee that drinks coffee every. Yeah.
• 1:16:57
  Yeah, you. Think that will extend to like
• 1:17:00
  men, women going forward. What do you think?
• 1:17:03
  I think so too. I yeah, I don't see why not.
• 1:17:05
  Yeah, it's very interesting. You know, like it's really a
• 1:17:10
  internationalization movement or a moment for matcha because, you
• 1:17:14
  know, for coffee originally from Ethiopia.
• 1:17:16
  But, you know, I've been not too many people know about
• 1:17:19
  traditional Ethiopian culture history while drinking coffee.
• 1:17:22
  Yeah. And that's going to happen too
• 1:17:24
  much in the future, too. It will be lifted up from its
• 1:17:27
  the culture of birth into a more, you know, nationless and
• 1:17:31
  cultureless element on its own. That will happen slowly.
• 1:17:36
  Yeah, and it also expand to other kind of Japanese cultural
• 1:17:41
  elements as well. Like people now look for a
• 1:17:44
  different experience like a cabana and matcha.
• 1:17:47
  And we just really, it's kind of beautiful moments when you like
• 1:17:51
  kind of kind of introduce other aspects of mindfulness practices
• 1:17:55
  for. Sure.
• 1:17:56
  Yeah, you're. Having an international moment.
• 1:17:59
  Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
• 1:18:01
  I mean, that's another interesting because it's kind of
• 1:18:03
  like a slightly different element, but also interesting
• 1:18:05
  element is like the different the philosophy around match and
• 1:18:09
  then like tea ceremony and stuff like bringing that in because we
• 1:18:12
  try and bring in a little bit of that in the match tasting
• 1:18:14
  experience, even though a lot of it's focused on the different
• 1:18:17
  cultivars. I guess that's like, and that's
• 1:18:21
  like slightly different like Strand to like just focusing on
• 1:18:24
  the cultivars and the farming and the production and stuff.
• 1:18:27
  There's just a lot of different elements to matcha, which you
• 1:18:29
  can kind of explore and stories you can tell, you know?
• 1:18:33
  It adds so much depth, yeah. Yeah, it's a gateway.
• 1:18:39
  It's a gateway towards many things.
• 1:18:41
  That's what make, I mean, I think that's what makes matcha
• 1:18:43
  so unique compared to a lot of other things.
• 1:18:45
  Like there's this some South American herb called why you saw
• 1:18:49
  that's caffeinated. But like as far as I know,
• 1:18:52
  there's not like a huge consumption culture or like this
• 1:18:56
  really rich tradition of consumption like we see in
• 1:18:59
  matcha in like the impact that that's had culturally, at least
• 1:19:03
  within Japan. But there's probably all of
• 1:19:05
  these different like plants and that have various functional
• 1:19:08
  properties that just don't have the cultural richness which
• 1:19:13
  it's, it really does make it endless to explore.
• 1:19:17
  Like there is something there are pathways to go down to
• 1:19:20
  expand on, you know? Like there's so many elements
• 1:19:23
  from like across the supply chain, like from planting,
• 1:19:27
  harvesting, producing and consuming Like you have chasse
• 1:19:31
  and like there's a cultures like craft.
• 1:19:34
  Unrelated. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:36
  Like and like, Oh my God, everything.
• 1:19:41
  Yeah. All right, so moving forward,
• 1:19:44
  what's the plan for Haru Matcha? Yeah.
• 1:19:46
  So I mean, we've got so many different ideas for how we want
• 1:19:50
  to expand. I think like one of the one of
• 1:19:52
  our dreams or probably like our biggest dream is to have like
• 1:19:55
  our own, like things where we have we curate a match, a menu
• 1:20:00
  where we show the different cults of ours.
• 1:20:02
  And so people can really like experience and different cults
• 1:20:07
  of bars and we can like talk them through the tasting notes.
• 1:20:09
  We kind of like because that's such a, it's a difficult place
• 1:20:12
  to go in, to go in like straight away without like significant.
• 1:20:16
  Funds we're kind of like explored this place of doing
• 1:20:19
  these like pop ups and tasting experiences and having our own
• 1:20:22
  brand. So I think like for for the
• 1:20:25
  foreseeable future, we're just going to try and do more of
• 1:20:28
  these pop up events, like working in more, more markets to
• 1:20:31
  kind of test this experience of like taking through like the
• 1:20:34
  different cultivars, different regions and work in partnerships
• 1:20:38
  with people with different cafes to kind of like sell this
• 1:20:41
  experience in a little bit more as well.
• 1:20:44
  But yeah, we just really love like combining the experience of
• 1:20:48
  tasting matcha and appreciation for the quality, the nuance and
• 1:20:53
  the depth of flavor that you can get with different cultivars and
• 1:20:56
  different matcha as opposed to just like drinking mattress
• 1:20:59
  generic product. Yeah.
• 1:21:02
  Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm sure like along the way you
• 1:21:05
  probably end up finding a lot of peers and like minded people
• 1:21:08
  that you know can share the journey experience too.
• 1:21:12
  Yeah, it's really fun to see how they react on like what we tell
• 1:21:16
  them. And so we just feel so happy
• 1:21:19
  like seeing. And I think another factor is
• 1:21:22
  that we so like after we factor in like the problems of the
• 1:21:25
  machine shortage, we also probably have to think about how
• 1:21:29
  we're going to tackle that. So we would like to be like the
• 1:21:33
  the UK's brand specialized in Japanese tea.
• 1:21:36
  So we want to also expand to other kind of tea that is still
• 1:21:40
  very, very good quality, like Gilkro or like even like, like,
• 1:21:45
  yeah. And hold the shot in the war
• 1:21:47
  because we also try like Kodisha from Oji and Yemen or so it
• 1:21:51
  tastes different. Yeah, a lot.
• 1:21:54
  Of nuances around every single yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:58
  That's wonderful. Ho Chi Cha in particular, I
• 1:22:01
  think it's a under under like explored rabbit hole in the
• 1:22:05
  yeah, especially the differences.
• 1:22:08
  It's like people just talk about Ho Chi cha Ho Chi cha powder but
• 1:22:10
  like the different expressions or leaf compositions or roast
• 1:22:15
  levels like. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:18
  Yeah, yeah, still a lot of things to learn.
• 1:22:21
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:22
  Oh, it's exciting. Congrats.
• 1:22:24
  Yeah. Really lovely.
• 1:22:24
  Looking for. Yeah.
• 1:22:26
  I'd love to come to London, come to one of your workshops
• 1:22:28
  sometime. It'd be.
• 1:22:29
  Yeah. That'd be cool.
• 1:22:31
  Yeah. Yeah, cool.
• 1:22:32
  Thank you so much for coming on. Love the work that you're doing.
• 1:22:35
  And for all the listeners, thanks for listening.
• 1:22:38
  And if you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it with a
• 1:22:40
  friend. And that's all we got.
• 1:22:42
  Thanks. See you in the next episode.
• 1:22:44
  Yeah. Thank you.