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Transcript

Our Startup Updates · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:06
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Much Podcast.
0:09
My name is Ryan and this is Michael Ho Sungjun who also goes
0:12
by Sam. Hello and we're the Co founders
0:14
of Sanco Much Products. Yeah, we launched this podcast
0:17
to discuss our learning journey, Mucho share startup stories and
0:20
integral experts. And today we're talking about
0:23
our startup updates. So it's been a while since we've
0:27
posted, and we've been less regular than we've hoped to be.
0:31
Sorry, sorry, sorry, hope to have been.
0:34
I should say, I think we went about 75 episodes that were
0:37
nearly weekly on a continuous basis, which I was very proud
0:41
of. So we've been a bit less regular
0:44
lately, and it's largely due to Sanko Macho Products, which is
0:48
our startup. And you know, part of our intro,
0:50
we promised to talk about the startup stories and we've
0:54
realized it's been a while. We've talked about what we are
0:56
doing as a company and that we owed everyone some updates.
1:01
Yeah, that's right. Has been a lot of ongoing
1:06
holidays in China, which really makes some logistic more
1:09
complicated. But thankfully everything has
1:11
been solved. Yes, we are going to see this
1:15
prototype in the very beautiful state very soon, which is very
1:18
exciting. Yeah.
1:19
So for those of you that don't know, we run and founded the
1:22
company Sanko Macha Products along with our cofounder Gwen.
1:26
And our goal is to raise the ceiling of what consumers can or
1:32
should consider high quality matcha.
1:36
And a huge part of that mission is to give businesses and cafes,
1:40
the agency, the equipment, the knowledge to create matcha as a
1:45
product much closer to their consumers.
1:48
Because there is no such thing as the world's best matcha.
1:52
It's really the world's best matcha for whom, at what time,
1:56
in what circumstances, in which context, and to what their
2:00
preferences are. And there's like a million best
2:03
matches in the world. And the people that can find
2:06
them are the people that know their consumers the best, which
2:09
are people who are in their local geography.
2:12
And one of the biggest quality barriers is just a fresh
2:15
product. There's a massive difference
2:17
between Matcha that was milled on day one versus 2 weeks versus
2:23
two months versus 18 months. That's totally right, and you're
2:28
also totally right about there's no world's best matcha, but
2:31
there could be world's freshest matcha, which is the matcha
2:34
milled right in front of. You and there are tons of
2:37
benefits to that from a from a flavor perspective, you can
2:42
immediately tell the difference even between day one and day 2
2:46
can be massive on a lot of the tension that we've milled in our
2:49
prototyping. Not to mention even the
2:51
nutritional benefits. What we're going to record a
2:53
separate podcast in the future that is sort of like how we
2:56
would advocate for Matcha as a fresh ground product and why
3:00
everyone should be drinking fresher and fresher matcha.
3:02
And just in the same way that the coffee industry, especially
3:05
the 3rd wave movement and specialty coffee, etcetera, like
3:08
early days, Blue Bottle, Intelligentsia, Counterculture,
3:11
Stump Town really pushed the idea of coffee as a fresh food,
3:17
as a perishable food, as a food you would want to or a beverage,
3:21
a beverage that you would want to know when it was roasted, a
3:24
beverage that was made from coffee beans that were only
3:29
fresh ground, not have been ground you didn't even know when
3:33
and then brewed because oxygen and surface area and air do
3:37
their magic. They create oxidation and off
3:40
flavors and destroy a lot of the health benefits.
3:43
And matcha is 10 times finer than a ground for espresso,
3:48
which is sort of the context space that we're operating in.
3:50
And unfortunately, nearly all of the matcha grinding equipment
3:54
are at the industrial scale. It's not anything that would
3:58
look good on your countertop. There's really only one form.
4:02
Of matcha grinding equipment which is issues.
4:07
That's that, at least from a gold standard perspective.
4:10
Yeah. And also, well, aesthetically
4:12
looks kind of cool to have that sitting over your countertop.
4:16
But it's just especially for the situation right now, so
4:21
complicated and expensive to get your hands on one of them.
4:25
And you most likely will be put on a very very very long wait
4:29
list. And then if you don't know what
4:30
you're doing, which will be most people for the first time,
4:33
you're going to need to get it refinished more often than not.
4:37
Yeah. And there's a very high risk,
4:39
especially if you're using random tensile, that that soft
4:42
granite is going to get damaged in some way.
4:44
So typically for new users, probably it's going to have to
4:47
go through a refinishing process anywhere from one year to every
4:52
two or three years. And that requires shipping about
4:55
50kg of granite back to Japan to get put on another wait list to
5:00
have a stone Mason refinish it for you.
5:04
So it's awesome that there's so many cafes that are getting
5:07
these traditional stone mills all over the world.
5:10
But from an environmental standpoint, from a practicality
5:13
standpoint, it's just not very scalable.
5:16
That's true. Also like one piece of
5:18
interesting information we learned recently, not verified
5:22
yet, but we we've been seeing like this very interesting
5:25
looking issues you've been running in some cafes recently,
5:28
which has this darker color that's a little bit different
5:32
from the Japanese issues and they're Chinese made.
5:35
And the key difference between them, not to talk about the
5:39
quality of the product coming out from it, but the milk
5:41
itself, is that the stone that they use is not natural granite.
5:46
It's actually a type of synthetic stone which shares
5:50
more similarity to a concrete. It's a composite.
5:53
It's a composite. Supposes though we need to
5:56
verify this still, but we have it on decent authority that
5:59
they're composite stone. We also had primary experience
6:02
tasting the product coming out, which as an Usucha has some
6:07
texture problems. Yeah, but but for this type of
6:10
composite stone, you can use a machine to cut it and finish it,
6:15
whereas for a natural granite there are some natural cracks
6:20
inside the stone which will not withstand a very high pressure
6:23
machine cutting. Like CNC like.
6:25
CNC it's you know, that's why you know, all of these Japanese
6:29
stones are usually finished with stone Masons.
6:33
And it's a very protected craft in Japan.
6:35
So anyway, it's the company that we're working on in the product.
6:38
We have been working on this product for over 2 years now or
6:42
just about exactly 2 years from when we like really hit the
6:46
ground running. The idea is 3 years old of kind
6:50
of copying the physics of an Ishiyusu and shrinking it and
6:55
putting it on a machine that would look good on the
6:57
countertop, that could produce a very similar quality standard as
7:03
an Ishiyusu, but faster with a lighter machine and with some
7:08
benefits that you you don't get. It's much smaller footprint, you
7:12
have a lot more control. We put sensors all over it so
7:16
you can control the speed. You can see what's going on with
7:18
the temperature. You have swappable millstone, so
7:21
no big deal. There's no shipping 50kg of
7:24
granite back. So from a maintenance
7:26
perspective, it's much more economically viable.
7:29
If your stone breaks, we will send you a new one the made with
7:32
a very durable type of ceramic. So that's what we've been
7:35
working on. So in October, we launched a
7:37
beta program because what the machine that we're creating is
7:42
new technology and that needs to be battle tested and there needs
7:45
to be a lot of Co learnings. Like if we were, I don't know a
7:48
coffee grinder company, right, like most of our customers would
7:53
have had experience with other coffee grinders and grinding
7:57
coffee before. But because Matcha is such a
7:59
protected craft, very few people have any direct knowledge or
8:04
experience milling much of themselves or understanding
8:07
quality standards or blending tensha, what works at certain
8:12
different parameter settings. So we wanted to create a group
8:15
of tight knit early users, early adopters that we're calling our
8:19
beta program. We found 15 fantastic people all
8:22
over the world representing over 8 different countries.
8:26
And we are right now here now in April 2026 and the final stages
8:34
of getting these things to life out to be manufactured and
8:39
assembled. And it is just been a whirlwind
8:43
the past two months of bringing this thing to life.
8:48
And I have you to thank Sam, who's been here in China.
8:51
It's the first time we're manufacturing such a complex
8:54
product that is not like would be very complicated, let alone
8:58
for the fact that we're doing it for the first time.
9:00
Yeah. It's not just we are doing it
9:02
for the first time, it's anyone doing it for the first time.
9:05
That's right. It's actually turns out to be a
9:08
quite complicated machine to engineer and manufacturer in the
9:12
1st place. And especially so because all of
9:15
these suppliers and factories and our design partners have
9:19
never seen a type of machine like this before.
9:21
Yeah, we're not just making another like Mr. Coffee Pot or
9:24
something. Yeah, there's nothing we can in
9:26
reference. There's no comparables.
9:27
Yeah, exactly. So we are Co discovering a lot
9:32
of interesting problems to solve and which made the whole journey
9:36
very intellectually intrigued. At the same time, you know, it's
9:40
it's, it's quite complicated to work through all of these weeds.
9:45
A lot of dependencies and a lot of complexity, especially with
9:48
the electronics component. So like we have a thermoelectric
9:52
cooling system that's constantly removing heat.
9:54
We iterated through I don't even know how many versions of
9:57
ceramic mill stones, but to find things that work shockingly
10:00
complex science actually, the number of harps that you have,
10:04
which determine the angle and number of grooves, the depths of
10:07
the grooves of the geometry, the concavity, there's a the surface
10:12
finish. There's so many different
10:14
variables that make millstones effective or ineffective, and
10:18
even in other industries like milling grain, it is very much
10:22
still kind of considered more of an art than a science.
10:25
Yeah, it's or, or more of the empirical science.
10:29
Yeah, the the the way to kind of examinate how these particles
10:34
actually gets a process through all of these mill surfaces are
10:39
actually quite intricate and sometimes impossible.
10:43
So very hard to learn what's actually happening, you know, in
10:47
between these very hot and fast spinning.
10:51
You know. Plates.
10:52
We spent an abnormal amount of time envisioning ourselves as a
10:56
tiny flake of green tea moving through this system.
11:00
I dream about it. All right, it's going down the
11:02
hopper. It's trying not to get stuck
11:05
getting pulverized and slowly pushed out to the edges like the
11:09
migration paths and the and not to mention too like it's not
11:15
really talked about when you learn about matcha in Japan.
11:19
The idea of different like angles, the idea of surface
11:22
finish, the idea of cavity, how tension doesn't get stuck when
11:27
it moves from the hopper into the plates, the migration path
11:32
once it's in the plates like it's really under talked about.
11:37
Which we actually develop a very specific component in the mill
11:41
to solve that clogging problem, which we probably will talk
11:44
about it in. After it's successfully
11:47
patented, we have a lot of hard one lessons.
11:50
We are all for transparency in general, as I'm sure all the
11:53
regular listeners of the Specialty Module podcast are
11:56
aware. But one of the reasons we
11:58
haven't talked about the Mill quite as much is because these
12:03
lessons are very hard one. And we're not quite ready to
12:08
talk about them publicly, at least until this thing is out in
12:10
the world and all the IP is a little more secure.
12:14
Because we went through way too much pain and way too much money
12:17
to give someone a playbook to, to make this quite yet.
12:21
We are happy for competitors so long as they're not just
12:24
directly copying what we're doing.
12:26
This is would be unfair competition as far as we see it,
12:29
at least at the moment. So it's a it's been a whirlwind
12:34
and we're so excited among the 15 people, we promised the first
12:37
seven that we would go do an in person implementation for the
12:42
first seven people who who gave the prepayment.
12:44
So we'll be going to a couple places in the States and we're
12:48
going to announce the full list later.
12:51
So we're psyched. And while we're there, you know,
12:55
we would love to host much of meet ups and kind of be a little
12:59
more community thing and we'd love to sort of make an event of
13:03
it. Yeah, really puts a smile on my
13:06
face that this list is so like, random, all these like places in
13:11
the world, like really is a good manifestation of how macho has
13:15
spread. Indeed, it's very exciting and
13:18
to have such a diverse group of users to some.
13:22
Some are owning cafes, some are tea companies, right?
13:25
Like some are much of distributors.
13:27
So just even getting a large depth and breadth just for us as
13:30
our own. Like, like, like if we view this
13:34
conversation from the lens of a startup and our go to market
13:38
strategy and trying to create what is economically viable,
13:43
sustainable and what we hope to be quite successful company is
13:47
just understanding how everything is going to be used.
13:51
And we're we're so excited that we could find a group of
13:53
fantastic individuals that were like minded.
13:57
It's so understanding. We've we've had to delay this
14:00
manufacturing a few times and everyone has been nothing but
14:04
gracious and nice and understanding and we are just
14:07
incredibly grateful. Yeah.
14:09
Thank you, thank you, thank you. They say hardware is hard, but
14:12
wow, hardware is hard and hardware is expensive.
14:16
It is. It's hard on our wallet.
14:18
Even with the prepayments that this is very challenging to to
14:23
get over the finish line, we're very happy to do it.
14:25
And I mean we're creating the future that we would like to
14:28
see. I mean, I really think it's a
14:30
shame that probably 80% of the world's matcha, maybe higher, is
14:34
probably more stale than it needs to be.
14:38
And it's just absolutely crazy that we live in 2026 and it is
14:42
nearly impossible to get a fresh ground product.
14:45
Most matcha founders have never tried matcha straight off the
14:51
mill like it, like most of the people who are doing this
14:54
education all over the world that's created this crazy demand
14:58
for matcha. That's created these morning
15:00
rituals that have become so meaningful.
15:03
And so many people's lives just don't have access to large part
15:08
parts of the way that matcha gets crafted to understand that
15:12
flavor transformation and to like get a little closer to the
15:16
process. Yeah, and even people in Japan
15:20
like, it's pretty incredible that how inaccessible fresh crab
15:25
matcha is even even in its home country.
15:29
We're actually pretty happy that a few mills are going to be, you
15:32
know, based in Japan, too. Yes, and it's really making a
15:37
grand homecoming to bring this idea back to, you know, where
15:40
it's from. And we are pretty excited to,
15:43
you know, really empower people in Japan underground to, you
15:47
know, keep making more innovations, you know, using our
15:51
tools to help them learn or discover more about this very
15:56
beautiful product they they have created.
15:58
Also helped move the ball. And I personally see this as a
16:02
great accomplishment when we win the people in Japan when they
16:06
use the machine. Indeed.
16:07
And all the positive feedback and interest that we've gotten
16:10
from people we've met there, it's very exciting.
16:13
We hope to move the ball forward too.
16:15
Like it's, I think innovation like this isn't talked about so
16:20
much among the Japanese tea industry and community.
16:24
So the idea that all these places that could potentially be
16:27
fresh milling matcha or fresh milling even something like
16:30
Gokaro or finishing their own tensha by giving it a light
16:34
roast or something, and really participate in the craft of
16:38
making it not only domestically but internationally too.
16:41
Yeah, that's right. And one thing that really
16:43
surprised me is that we end up getting a lot of attention and
16:47
interest from farmers in Japan, which we kind of accidentally
16:52
stumbled upon. A very interesting problem
16:54
amongst the tea farmers and the tea manufacturing communities in
16:57
Japan is that a lot of these milling capacities, macho
17:01
milling capacities in Japan are centralized and controlled by a
17:05
very few blend houses or local factories that are not equally
17:10
accessible by all the farmers in Japan.
17:13
So a lot of these farmers just do not have the money and the
17:16
capacity to own any milling equipment or own any land
17:21
they'll construct any milling facilities.
17:23
So this machine will actually be very useful for them to make
17:27
much enable them to have more liberty into investing more in
17:32
perfecting their products or making interesting new
17:35
innovations or new products. Absolutely.
17:38
So we're very excited to get these out into the world.
17:40
So moving through dependency and rate limiting step by rate
17:44
limiting step, I mean it's challenging.
17:47
Not only is this there's no like comparable products to what
17:50
we're making, like we're not making an espresso machine or
17:53
something that people kind of have some understanding of the
17:56
way these things are put together.
17:58
But like we're small company in our first order will be just for
18:02
a total of 20 mils because we need to fulfill everything from
18:05
the beta program and we make a few extra that are based
18:08
basically sales demo units and some to sit in the warehouse in
18:11
case someone's brakes, we can kind of hot swap it.
18:14
And you know, we're a small player and you know, when you're
18:17
talking to all these different manufacturings, just even
18:19
getting prioritized is it takes a lot of pushing.
18:22
And that's one reason why we have been significantly less
18:25
regular with the podcast is Sam has just been pretty heads down,
18:29
constantly trying to move the ball forward here to make sure
18:33
that there's no abnormal delays. And we understand what the
18:36
dependencies are and where we can push and how we can push.
18:40
And, and you know, we're still not even on time.
18:43
So it's, it's honestly, it's I, it's very frustrating, Well,
18:48
having so little control. It's OK, you're in good hands,
18:51
right? But it's, yeah, it's, it's quite
18:53
complicated to manage 28 different suppliers at once.
18:57
And there are politics between these suppliers, which is, you
19:01
know, kind of requires some art of guanxi to, to, to make sure
19:05
everyone is, you know, like being accountable at the same
19:09
time, you know, willing to work with us continuously.
19:13
Yeah. And really investing in these
19:14
relationships for the future. I was, you know, we think that
19:18
this is just sort of the beginning of what can be what we
19:21
hope to be a rich ecosystem of matcha infrastructure to allow
19:27
to give other people agency and the infrastructure to do other
19:32
cool things to craft a fantastic product.
19:34
We're not exactly sure what that's going to look like in the
19:36
future. We are way too in this like
19:39
tunnel to to think or be, you know, more creative.
19:43
I mean, this next year is going to be our go to market year for
19:47
Senko Uzu 1, which is the name of our mill.
19:50
So that's that's going to be full time for a while, but we'd
19:55
love to innovate on top of this and see where this all goes.
19:58
There is this very culturally rich community out there in the
20:02
world of Matcha that just constantly innovating and
20:07
envisioning things that we probably never thought of or
20:10
could have thought of because of, you know, their cultural
20:12
background, their ethnic background and all of these
20:17
wonderful things that makes Matcha so unique and so
20:20
delicious. Yeah, absolutely.
20:23
So, Ryan, you've been working on something very interesting
20:25
recently. Yeah.
20:27
So unfortunately I don't speak much Chinese, so I'm a bit less
20:31
useful, other than bothering Sam to bother everyone else, which
20:35
says sometimes productive, sometimes unproductive.
20:39
It's a good thing we've worked with each other for more than 10
20:41
years. So there was, I'm pretty sure.
20:44
I will be driving each other crazy.
20:45
But I know my limits. I know your limits.
20:48
I'd like to think that I stop before I drive you too crazy.
20:53
Oh, you just need to buy me a very nice drink.
20:56
But I, I've been working on a couple projects to move the ball
21:00
forward to create what we hope to be useful tools for the
21:05
community. And something we've talked about
21:06
quite a bit on this podcast is, so both Sam and I, before we
21:10
started this company, worked at a startup before Chachi PT at
21:14
the intersection of AI, sensory, sensory science, and the science
21:19
of taste and smell, food and beverage product development.
21:22
We primarily worked with really large companies and
21:25
understanding consumer preference models.
21:27
And we created a predictive model that you could put in any
21:30
combination of flavor, aromas and textures and the model would
21:34
predict what consumer demographic would like it, how
21:37
much would they like it, who among that group would like it,
21:40
and different ways of improving it for them.
21:42
So part of that work involved collecting a lot of consumer
21:46
preference data for different combinations of flavor, aroma
21:49
and texture. I mean, both Sam and I got to
21:51
live what I considered the best, one of the most interesting jobs
21:55
in the world that I could have ever envisioned myself having is
21:58
just going from country to country, city to city,
22:00
recruiting anywhere from 100 to thousands of consumers to taste
22:04
all of these different products. And we were doing this on a
22:06
particular sensory system that was very proprietary to the
22:10
company. And we spent the last, I don't
22:12
know, 5:00 to eight-year 5 for you, 8 for me years working on a
22:18
sensory tool to capture flavor Roman texture experience
22:21
products that we no longer have access to, which was a little
22:25
frustrating starting this company because sensory is so
22:29
important in creating good matcha even for us to we want to
22:33
be able to track in a quantitative way.
22:36
If we are milling at 10 RPMS versus 20 RPMS versus 30 RPM,
22:42
but you're generating different amounts of feet, you're changing
22:45
fundamentally the migration velocity of tea through the
22:48
mill, which can change the taste in non predictable ways.
22:52
I mean, we needed a way to really measure what was going
22:54
on, so we didn't have access to the tool.
22:58
And then recently, with all of the explosion of AI tools for
23:03
coding online, I realized that all I needed was a good scope on
23:08
what the software needed to be and look like, and I can now
23:11
code it myself with these tools. And so for the past month, I've
23:14
been working on a tool, which I'm calling Matcha Graph, which
23:17
is a sensory system to collect what you perceive from flavor,
23:22
aroma, and texture in matcha and what your preferences are.
23:26
And it's the system that we are using to evaluate and make
23:30
experiments on our mill. But we're also doing it for a
23:33
wide variety of all of the matchas that we're just trying
23:37
and have even talked about on the Specialty Matcha podcast.
23:40
And a part of this development, I created a little community
23:43
page where people can actually share their tasting notes.
23:46
And what's beautiful about this community page is that a very
23:50
thin layer of AI on top of all of this, it will create really
23:55
powerful recommendations. So you know it knows what you
24:01
rated and what you taste and what you liked it and how you
24:05
described it, and also knows that of all of the other people.
24:08
And a very thin layer of AI on top can points you in certain
24:13
directions saying, you know, you really like these Hoshino
24:18
village roasty, toasty notes. You know, Ryan me reviewed
24:22
something from Nagasaki from Karari 31 cultivar that was
24:26
produced in a method where it was both steamed and pan fried
24:30
at the same time that exhibited the same hazelnut note that you
24:35
absolutely loved in this other tea and has the same basic
24:38
profile. And unless you went through
24:40
every single review, you just, I didn't know that.
24:43
Yeah. And also, like I found this tool
24:46
exceptionally useful in a way that it really like kind of
24:51
solve the difficulty or the inertia of just doing a review.
24:55
Yes, like all of these sensory reviews out there, like at worst
25:00
a piece of like spreadsheet that you have to fill, which is very,
25:04
very painful. Or at best, like a, you know, a
25:08
semi functional app that you still need to click around to
25:11
think about all of the entries and all of the things alongside,
25:15
you know, keep sipping this product in front of you.
25:18
Or you're using a Google form and then you're stuck with all
25:22
the data in the spreadsheet and you have to figure out all of
25:25
the data visualization on your own.
25:27
Yeah, but you know, with also a very thin layer of AI, but you
25:31
can just like type or even talk to the software and then it will
25:35
figure out all of the implications of, you know,
25:38
flavors and flavor intensities for you.
25:41
And obviously you can make adjustment after, you know it
25:44
presented the resulting analysis to you before you crystallize it
25:48
into a a final review. But it's just so much easier.
25:53
It's incredible. We're going to do a full podcast
25:56
episode on Matcha Graf when we release it.
25:58
It's we're a couple weeks away from doing it, but essentially
26:01
it uses LLMS and you give it natural language description of
26:05
what you're tasting. You can say it tastes.
26:07
This is a super umami bomb. It has really nice roast and
26:11
toasty notes. I get a hint of maybe zucchini
26:14
and edamame vegetable notes mixed creamy.
26:17
It has the richness of unsalted butter.
26:20
I'm also getting some notes of nori and this delicate white
26:25
flower note. And it will take that and it
26:28
will guess and it gets it about 80% right about how intense you
26:32
might find the bitterness or the umami.
26:35
And then you can. It also structures all those
26:37
other notes and the beauty of having both quantified as well
26:43
or quantitative data, like saying I taste bitterness at a
26:48
level of two on a scale of five, right?
26:51
As well as qualitative, like your natural description.
26:55
The way you would talk about it to someone else is that it
26:58
really allows us to see to put some really cool data
27:02
visualization. So for example, if you want to
27:06
review someone's premium ceremonial grade versus their
27:10
standard ceremonial grade, you can just put those graphs on top
27:15
of each other and see exactly how different they are.
27:18
And there's sort of a I've also built a Venn diagram feature to
27:21
see what flavors they have in common and which ones they have
27:24
that are separate, but also some much more complicated features
27:28
to help you discover your own preferences.
27:31
So this is the most powerful feature for me is it looks at
27:35
everything that you've ever tasted in a particular category
27:38
like usucha, or you could set it to latte or whatever, and it
27:42
looks at multivariate interactions on your
27:45
preferences. So when a creamy flavor, which
27:50
is that would be under dairy, is present with let's say a roasted
27:54
flavor, if you look at all those reviews and compare the average
27:58
preference score compared to all of your reviews, is it higher or
28:03
lower? So in other words, if it is both
28:05
creamy and roasted, are you more or less likely to like the
28:08
product? And you can learn about your own
28:11
preferences like, and there's some really non intuitive ones
28:14
for me, the more I've used that tool.
28:16
So it's going to be community based.
28:18
We're also going to make it groups where you can form
28:20
different tasting groups and you basically set up panels.
28:23
So if you're a large group of people, you can pre enter in
28:26
what all the detail is. You can make it blinded,
28:29
unblinded. And so we're currently, the
28:31
software is like 90% finished and we're in the late stages of
28:34
testing. And because obviously I'm not a
28:37
programmer, but I've spent the last decade, what feels like the
28:39
last decade of my life thinking about what sensory software
28:43
should look like. I'd like to think that we're at
28:45
least qualified to have made on the front end of it.
28:50
And also the intention of, you know, polishing this tool is
28:53
that it's useful for us. Yes, we first and foremost built
28:57
it for ourselves because we needed a solution to keep track
29:00
of flavor and to visualize it and to compare it for this mill
29:04
and for everyone that's part of the beta program.
29:07
It's so much easier instead of like sharing freeform notes, to
29:12
share quantifiable data, especially if we link it with
29:16
data from milling parameters. Then we can really help move the
29:20
craft of making matcha into the future.
29:23
Because who cares that you set it at this pressure in this RPM
29:29
if you don't know how it made it taste better or worse.
29:33
Like it's all comes down to sensory.
29:35
Isn't that like the whole point of like why we're drinking this
29:38
is to make it taste better and better and better to the grease,
29:41
to the degrees to which we can control it?
29:43
So this we're super excited about.
29:45
The other project I've been working on is something called
29:47
the Tenshaw Exchange, which will be AB2B tensha trading platform.
29:52
And so we're going to sell tensha on it as well.
29:54
But we're going to open it up to other people to sell tensha as
29:57
well to sort of do cross business commerce because it's
30:00
just so difficult buying tensha right now.
30:03
And the reality is if you are a major customer of matcha at the
30:07
moment or tensha at the moment, like we know people that import
30:11
like many metric tons of matcha a year, they will always be
30:17
prioritized before us unless we grow huge.
30:21
So their ability of how much and even what they can order is very
30:25
different than if you haven't built up any transaction history
30:30
with farmers in Japan. So if you're just entering in
30:34
the door because of this matcha shortage, maybe they'll sell
30:37
you, I don't know, 3 to 5 kilos a month.
30:40
But someone who's already ordering 100 or 200 or 300 kilos
30:44
a month has the ability to order much larger quantities even than
30:49
that because they've been doing that for like 6 years.
30:51
And so we hope to make this a platform where they're able to
30:54
make some money, but they're also able to unlock some tension
30:58
supply for people that are mill owners that are in a less
31:03
established business or sort of these win win ecosystem
31:07
interactions. So we're working on that.
31:09
It doesn't have a launch date yet.
31:11
And last but not least, and we're going to record some stuff
31:14
about this is we have alluded to this for over one year now.
31:18
Azone Jun and I have been pretty intensely researching a piece
31:23
about what is Uji Matcha? Which turns out to be an
31:27
insanely complicated question to answer.
31:30
And I was polishing up my article was supposed to be a
31:32
blog post and then we're going to record a podcast turned into
31:36
a 33 page document. So I'm not exactly sure how
31:39
we're publishing it yet, probably.
31:41
But at the start of Season 4, we will publish at least 2 episodes
31:47
dedicated to answering the very complicated question of what is
31:51
Ujimacha, what was Ujimacha, and perhaps even what should
31:55
Ujimacha be. And that, of course, would be
31:59
more of an opinion piece. Yeah.
32:02
We do along the way learn about all of these, you know,
32:06
compromises and political complexities on the ground that
32:11
really kind of made the current status quo of Ujimacha
32:16
inevitable, which is kind of the sad reality we are facing.
32:21
But for those of you that you know, maybe haven't back
32:23
listened where we were referring to this research that we've been
32:27
doing Ujimacha, it doesn't mean that it's from Uji.
32:31
It doesn't mean that it was even processed in Fuji.
32:34
Uji is a very small place that has about 35 active farming
32:40
families, but the legal realities are it can produce IP
32:45
37 metric tons of Matensha a year and they put that into
32:51
perspective. Japan produces for about 4000
32:55
and the amount of Ujimacha that's sold is very likely in
33:01
the number of 1500 metric tons. So it is just a very small
33:10
percentage. Less than 1%.
33:12
Well, it's, it's about 1%. Actually it's about 1 to 2%
33:16
depending on what assumptions you make.
33:18
But actually it's worse than that.
33:20
It's because almost all of the Uji families with very few
33:24
exceptions. I think we can count the
33:27
exceptions on perhaps one hand or close to one hand, send
33:31
almost all of their volume to the large wholesalers like the
33:35
traditional blend houses that are every I'm sure everyone
33:38
listening is aware of who blend it with tea from other regions.
33:42
So the amount of true single origin matcha from Uji grown
33:47
tensha is probably way less than 1% sold because even the farmers
33:53
that do keep some a single origin, it is way less than 50%
33:58
of what they produce. And it's a very complicated and
34:02
interesting story of sort of the because at one time actually all
34:06
macho had to come from Uji by like decree.
34:10
It was illegal for it to come from anywhere else.
34:13
It's a state controlled monopoly called Ujishisha man.
34:16
And then that changed and evolved over time.
34:19
I mean, there's all sorts of interesting things from a food
34:23
labeling scandal to a UNESCO bid to ancient fertilizing
34:28
practices. It's even to even to a beef
34:31
labeling scandal that led to the modern definition of what uji
34:37
matcha has evolved into. And there's all of these
34:41
different people that disagree with each other.
34:43
There's so many different perspectives.
34:46
It is fascinating. Like there are some people that
34:50
believe it should be GI protected single origin.
34:53
There's some people that believe it should just be the Yamashiro
34:56
region, which are like the eight towns around Uji, which include
35:00
like Uji Tawara, JoJo Wazuka. And defenders of that narrative,
35:06
like a lot of people will say Wazuka matcha is Ujicha, right?
35:11
And there's also farmers in Wazuka that say Kwazuka, here's
35:15
Wazuka, it's not Uji. So even within the same place,
35:19
you have very different perspectives.
35:21
And obviously people actually in Wuji I think is the most
35:25
strongly opinion in this situation.
35:29
But yeah, like by and large, Ujimacha doesn't mean it's from
35:34
Uji. It doesn't really mean it's from
35:37
Japan either. Technically not.
35:40
Technically not, so we've. All heard of this big argument
35:44
about like whether or not Mata should really be Japan, a
35:49
Japanese product, which I think intellectually I would say that
35:54
you know, Mata is inherently Japanese.
35:56
It's even in the name, right? That the spelling the
35:59
romanization of Mata is based on the Japanese language, but in
36:04
reality matcha came from China, which was called mocha at the
36:08
time to Japan. And to this day there are still
36:12
large amount of matcha or if we want to call it mocha or powder
36:15
green tea being manufactured in China too.
36:18
And there is this whole argument, like between Japanese
36:22
and Chinese or between consumers who will side either with the
36:28
Japanese or with the Chinese or with none of these parties, you
36:31
know, just enjoying this whole turmoil and fight, sipping
36:35
matcha on the side. But in reality is that the
36:39
Chinese and the Japanese have always been working with each
36:43
other, creating matcha. There's so many farms.
36:46
Well, not always. Let's say in the past like 3
36:49
decades. Yeah, which is, you know, after
36:53
the Cultural Revolution, modern China, I should say that.
36:57
China didn't create mucha for like 700 years. 800 years.
37:02
Yeah, it was like a. Contemporary thing it.
37:04
Was it was also by decreed band? Quite the opposite actually.
37:09
By by the 1st emperor of Ming dynasty.
37:13
But that's another very interesting topic that we can
37:16
talk about in the future. But anyways, in modern China,
37:19
the Japanese and the Chinese have always been working with
37:22
each other to set up factories and farms to produce matcha.
37:26
And, and actually some of the top quality matcha currently
37:31
being produced in China are Japanese owned.
37:33
So there is this very interesting dynamic and cultural
37:37
and economic exchange between these two countries.
37:40
And now it's also slowly spreading into other countries
37:44
as well, such as Thailand and even, you know, countries in
37:48
Africa like Kenya. And Korea and.
37:50
Korea and Sri Lanka, Vietnam. So, you know, we are really not
37:58
just seeing a globalization of matcha consumption, but also
38:01
matcha production, which is, you know, some people will see this
38:07
as kind of a sad future. Some people celebrate it.
38:11
But I would say that matcha has been international since the
38:14
beginning. He was coming from China in the
38:16
beginning, and it was a wonderful, wonderful cultural
38:19
exchange between the two great civilizations in the past.
38:23
Yeah, it's transcended its original thing.
38:25
It's like sushi. Like, why are we passing
38:27
judgement on someone having like, convenience store sushi in
38:31
like Peru or something, right? Like sushi has just become like,
38:35
it's really its own unique identity.
38:37
Actually, there's a really interesting is is an article and
38:41
maybe it was a YouTube documentary about sushi in
38:44
Ukraine and why it really took root in Ukraine really very
38:51
early. And they did a lot of local
38:53
adaptation, and it's still just incredibly popular and it's kind
38:57
of blended itself into contemporary culture.
39:00
Was it because of like Japanese immigrants or like, why would
39:04
they? Forget the details, I need to
39:06
look them up again. OK, wow, that's fascinating.
39:08
But what's really weird, I actually have some personal
39:11
experience with this. My grandfather and I took the
39:13
train when I was 13 years old from Vienna, Austria to Odessa,
39:18
Ukraine. It's like 36 hours on a sleeper
39:23
car with shared with like four other people.
39:29
No air conditioning in the summer.
39:31
It's quite, quite the adventure. But I remember when we got to
39:34
Odessa, we, I, I was tired. I'm sure he was very tired.
39:38
I was like, you know, grandpa, what are we going to eat?
39:41
He's like anything you want. I think he just, like, wanted to
39:43
stop walking. I picked the nearest thing.
39:46
So we walked into a hotel. We had sushi.
39:49
And I was like, oh, that sushi sounds good.
39:51
So my first meal in Odessa was sushi at a hotel.
39:57
And I remember thinking, wow, this is weird.
40:00
It was good. It was good.
40:02
But it's interesting how, like, you know, these two cultures
40:04
take root in other places in ways that you can't even fully
40:10
appreciate. Even within the case of sushi,
40:13
sushi's actually Chinese invention that made its way
40:17
Japan. Same with ramen.
40:20
That's the other thing. Shocking number of things that
40:23
are actually Chinese origin. Since the Han dynasty.
40:28
So it's, yeah, it's much more internationalized, but that's
40:32
what we've been working on. And we're trying to work on
40:34
things that can help lead to a more successful future of the
40:39
craft of matcha leaving Japan's borders.
40:42
And whether or not it's measuring flavor and
40:45
communicating what you like and discovering new things that you
40:48
might like more other than some mislabeled town of quote UN
40:51
quote, Uji matcha all the way through some tensile exchange
40:55
platforms to to make it easier for people to buy and sell.
40:59
And of course, probably not. Probably, definitely the most
41:02
important is getting this mill out into the world ASAP.
41:06
Which? I heard you.
41:07
I heard you. We are in the final innings of
41:10
doing. We're recording this year in
41:12
China and we're going to be here the next few weeks and then
41:16
we're going to head to Japan for harvest season.
41:18
We're going to pick some tea and IG Prefecture for a couple days
41:22
and record a bunch of content around that.
41:25
And of course, keep everyone updated with the launch of these
41:28
mills and produce more content on it and hopefully get some
41:32
more guests on pretty soon. We have unfortunately completely
41:36
run out of our backlog. That's why we've had a couple of
41:41
weeks where we weren't able to post, but we hope to be on a bit
41:45
more regular schedule now we're both physically in the same
41:48
place. It's a little bit easier to
41:50
coordinate recordings. So thank you so much for
41:53
listening. Thank you so much for your
41:54
support. It wasn't for the Specialty
41:56
Matcha podcast. I don't think we would have able
41:58
to find so many like minded people who are willing to go on
42:02
this journey with us by pre purchasing a Mel and you know,
42:06
really help form the foundations.
42:08
And we hope to be a big and thriving community of what we
42:11
hope are the early stages of a major wave of specialty matcha
42:16
hitting every cafe near you. Yep.
42:19
Oh, stay tuned. Wish us luck and we'll be
42:22
putting our full gears into content and also this mill
42:26
production and we wish to see you very soon.
42:31
And we wish, on behalf of our machine, to see you very soon.
42:36
Yeah, we hope the future is bright green and thanks for
42:40
listening. And if you enjoyed it, please
42:41
consider sharing it the friend. We really appreciate your
42:44
listenership and we'll see you next week.
42:47
Next week. Next week, I promise.
42:50
Bye bye.