Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Battles to be Won

Transcript

Battles to be Won · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Sungjun.
0:04
Hello. Hello.
0:05
Who also goes by Sam and we're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha
0:09
products. Yeah, we launched this podcast
0:11
to discuss our learning journey in Matcha, share startup stories
0:14
and interview experts. And today, we're going to talk
0:18
about some of the good battles to be won in the world of
0:20
Matcha. Yeah.
0:22
So we titled this podcast episode Battles to Be Won.
0:26
And the idea of it is, how do we get specialty matcha fully into
0:31
the Main Street? Kind of like how specialty
0:32
coffee kind of used to be a very rare thing.
0:35
Like, it was a movement started in the late 90s and early 2000s
0:39
where you basically needed to live in a big city to access
0:42
what we would refer to as specialty coffee.
0:45
I mean, a lighter roast profile, single cultivar beans treated
0:50
with care companies like Blue Bottle, intelligentsia,
0:53
counterculture. But you know, if you didn't live
0:55
on one of the two coasts and you went to middle America, you
0:59
probably wouldn't have found specialty coffee.
1:01
And then 20 years later, 25 years later, it is almost
1:04
anywhere where even you can go to relatively small towns, not
1:08
only in the States, but across the world and, and find people
1:11
doing pour overs, having really elaborate brewing equipment and
1:15
very good coffee grinders and great sourcing.
1:18
It's really become accessible and ubiquitous.
1:21
And so we wanted to talk about like, how do we get matcha in
1:24
that exact same place? Like how do we get it where it's
1:28
much more accessible? Like Sam, when was the last time
1:32
that you had a great matcha in a cafe when you're just out and
1:36
about in your daily life? I cannot remember but last time
1:41
I had a good matcha was with you Ryan.
1:43
We opened Narino and very enjoyed it.
1:47
But wow, last time I had a good matcha in the cafe.
1:51
Probably back in Bangkok, right? Yeah, I must be back in Bangkok
1:54
in MTCH. But no, normally I just wouldn't
1:58
order matcha when I walk into a cafe.
2:01
Yeah, yeah. Kind of sad, but I guess that's
2:05
a lot of people's reaction too. Yeah, actually what prompted
2:09
this episode was quite a bit of personal frustration.
2:12
A friend of a friend was visiting Paris.
2:14
I I live in Paris now, and she's really into matcha, really into
2:18
tea, Wanted to learn more about it.
2:20
So the place that I wanted to go to is close.
2:22
So we had to change plans. So we went to a coffee shop that
2:24
has an OK matcha program, and we walk in there and I order a
2:29
coffee. I think she was very
2:31
disappointed by the fact that I was ordering a coffee and I was
2:34
like, yeah, but this, you know, if you want to get a matcha,
2:37
this is a decent place. I don't want it.
2:39
I drink too much matcha, which is kind of a lie, it's true.
2:42
But in reality, I don't want to pay €6 for something that is
2:47
just kind of mediocre by my standards.
2:50
Not that I'm a matcha snob, but like, really?
2:53
It's funny you talk to people in the industry who own matcha
2:56
brands or are somehow working in matcha in some way.
2:59
They usually don't order matcha when they go outside, which is a
3:03
pretty interesting phenomenon. Yeah.
3:05
I guess, you know like the the general expectation is just not
3:10
there yet and the general standard, the the floor standard
3:15
of matcha is not there. Yet, that's right, the floor is
3:18
so low that it's oftentimes undrinkable, and it's expensive.
3:23
Yeah, like if you walk into a specialty coffee shop and just
3:29
like frequently you can see some good signs to make a good
3:32
judgement of, you know, if this coffee is going to be passable,
3:36
decent or, you know, it's actually probably going to be
3:40
pretty good. Like if you look at the espresso
3:43
machine, if you look at the what grinder do they use, will pour
3:48
over setup do they use and how people treat the bar counter,
3:52
You know, like the intentionality behind the
3:55
service, Like all of those can be, you know, you can find some
3:58
traces of, you know, signs of, you know, if this coffee is
4:02
actually going to be worth the money that I'm going to pay.
4:06
But you don't quite see these, you know these, I would say
4:11
evidence yet in the matcha. Yeah.
4:14
Not, not yet. Like, at least for me, like I
4:18
haven't developed such a, you know, a way to be able to
4:23
foresee if this matcha that I'm going to get is going to taste
4:27
good. But I think you can have a
4:29
negative filter, like you see a giant glass jar that's open of
4:34
matcha Potter exposed to light and the color of it, or a chosen
4:39
that looks disgusting covered in green goop.
4:41
Well, Ryan, sadly that's not even a filter.
4:44
It's almost as hard as quote. Yeah, it's.
4:47
A little pathetic it's even in places who are trying to do it
4:51
justice. It's just nowhere close to their
4:53
coffee program yet. So with all this frustration,
4:57
you know it's really worth a thought.
4:59
What are the battles to be won? What needs to happen to get this
5:03
movement to progress further? I feel like matcha and coffee
5:07
shared a pretty similar starting point, right?
5:10
Like, you know, Starbucks, it's a pretty good gateway for people
5:16
to get their first exposure to, to, to anything related to
5:19
matcha. And that was the same story for
5:21
coffee. Like a lot of people got into
5:24
specialty coffee because of Starbucks, right?
5:27
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, if you talk to any
5:30
of the specialty coffee people and influencers and change
5:33
makers, from James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle, to James
5:36
Hoffman, the famous YouTube Lance Hendrix, someone who's
5:40
like really deep down the rabbit hole of coffee science, Matt
5:43
Perger, you know, no one's going to hate on Starbucks.
5:47
Like everyone is very cognizant of the fact that without
5:52
Starbucks, there wouldn't have been this pool of consumers
5:55
generally interested in coffee Then were the sub segment that
5:58
created specialty coffee. And what's weird in the matcha
6:02
world, ironically, everyone hates on Starbucks.
6:06
So they'll say Starbucks matcha powder is actually 85% sugar.
6:10
It's no good. Some of it might not even be
6:12
from Japan. Like, you hear all of these
6:14
criticisms, but Starbucks is like most people's first matcha,
6:20
like they were so early, like 2005 in terms of exposing matcha
6:25
to a consumer base that's not in Japan.
6:28
Like there's probably no greater company that has increased
6:32
awareness than Starbucks. Yeah, wow, 2005.
6:36
It's like 20 years ago. Oh my God.
6:41
So like in terms of battles to be won with basic awareness, I
6:44
mean, Starbucks might be the largest change maker introducing
6:49
people to the idea of drinking matcha and a lot of people's
6:53
first matcha that they've ever had.
6:56
So I mean, a huge, you know, hats off to them for doing that
6:59
kind of work 'cause you know, that's the start of the funnel,
7:02
right? If you think in terms of the
7:03
funnel of moving people into a specialty product, and I think
7:07
it's worth talking about, like what do we mean by specialty
7:09
matcha? And so you know, the 3rd wave
7:12
coffee movement, and I'll use coffee as the example, is all
7:15
about tasting and appreciating the inherent flavor variety that
7:20
you can have from the fact that coffee is an agricultural
7:23
product. Different countries have
7:25
different growing conditions and different plants have different
7:27
cultivars or varieties, kind of like there's different types of
7:31
apples. It's just like different types
7:32
of coffee and different types of tea plant.
7:35
You have all this natural variation and it's a celebration
7:38
of that variation where a naturally processed coffee in
7:42
Colombia might taste totally different than a washed coffee
7:45
in Ethiopia. And then you can roast it in
7:47
different ways to express different flavors.
7:49
So it's really a celebration of that variance on the way it was
7:54
grown and the way it was processed and the craft that was
7:56
made to create it versus just your morning cup of coffee or
8:00
coffee that you dumped in a latte with milk and sweeteners.
8:04
And in matcha, this is beginning to exist, especially in the home
8:08
market. And some markets are more
8:09
sophisticated than others. There's this wonderful quote.
8:12
I forget who it's attributed to, but they say that the future is
8:15
already here, but it's not equally distributed.
8:17
And that's very much the case for matcha if you travel to
8:20
places like Thailand, if you travel to some places in Japan,
8:25
although it's actually kind of newer there, which is ironic
8:27
because that's where the culture of drinking matcha comes from,
8:30
but also places like Singapore and the Philippines and in
8:33
Malaysia. And there's this culture of
8:35
single origin, single cultivar matcha and where you can taste
8:38
the inherent expressions based on processing difference or
8:41
genetic differences of the plant, more regional
8:43
differences. And that's beginning to spread
8:46
where people are really treating it like a specialty product.
8:48
It's just very, very new. So Zhongjun, what are some other
8:52
battles to be won to get this to more more successfully move this
8:56
idea and getting other people to appreciate this matcha as a
9:00
specialty product into the mainstream both in the US and
9:03
and abroad? I think for the current stage,
9:05
awareness is definitely the key. We've been talking about
9:10
Starbucks. We've been talking about this
9:12
new specialty movement. At some point, I'm just going to
9:15
use tea coffee as example. You see how the specialty coffee
9:19
movement, the cascade back to Starbucks at some point.
9:23
And then that's I think a trigger, a tipping point, you
9:27
know, of, of that whole specialty movement.
9:30
You see specialty become mainstream.
9:33
And I think something needs to happen in the future in March or
9:36
two, like one day if we see how all of these big names start to
9:41
do specialty label, transparent label and start to educate along
9:46
with all of us to consumers, well, macho really is.
9:50
I think that that's that will be a big battle to be won.
9:54
Yeah. And I think for that to happen,
9:55
like you just need to see enough success in the market.
9:58
Like you see Starbucks opening these Starbucks Reserve stores
10:02
and like, you know, you walk into them and they're like, it
10:04
is a specialty coffee experience.
10:06
But the only reason that they can do that is that all these
10:09
other specialty coffee companies have created educated consumers
10:13
that can appreciate that. And you know that the and the
10:16
pendulum swings. You know, the pendulum swings
10:18
back. So I think what needs to happen
10:20
is there needs to be a couple of players in the United States and
10:24
in all other countries that just become radically so successful
10:29
and so interesting and so different that people start
10:31
copying them. And you see this all over the
10:34
place. Great example are Australian
10:37
style cafes. There's this whole movement of
10:40
Australian style cafes. They usually have fantastic food
10:44
programs, great coffee programs, popularized drinks like the flat
10:48
white, and that got spread all over the world.
10:50
That got spread to New York right around the time when I
10:53
moved there in 2016 with cafes like Black Fox.
10:56
Now you have places like Suited and many, many others.
10:59
You also see them all over the Middle East.
11:01
If you go to Dubai for example, or Abu Dhabi, all of the best
11:04
cafes are almost entirely Australian run and they all have
11:08
very similar like DNA or very similar playbook that they use.
11:14
And it's a very successful playbook.
11:15
And you see others playbooks and specialty coffee like the Nordic
11:19
Coffee Roasters. You have people like Tim
11:21
Windelbow and you have people like La Cabra and you have
11:24
people like copying this aesthetic.
11:26
It's very minimalist. They have great pastry programs,
11:30
and you have this more Nordic, and usually it's marked by
11:33
lighter roast profiles, quite a bit greener, more acidic coffee.
11:37
I mean, you see people copying that all over the place.
11:41
And in China, mainland China, it's a very different playbook.
11:44
You know, they're mixing it with a lot of fruit juices.
11:46
They're doing some interesting infusion work.
11:49
And it's not just infusion for the sake of infusions.
11:52
It's like, how do we work with this agricultural product that
11:54
has these unique flavor attributes and Halo or mask some
11:59
of those flavors in a creative way?
12:01
Yeah, it's almost like cocktails.
12:04
But I think I this idea of developing a very successful
12:07
playbook and having that replicated enough times will
12:12
make it, you know, swing back to the mainstream where a specialty
12:16
matcha can be found at a place like Starbucks.
12:20
The problem is, is that one tea shops are not very common.
12:25
It's very common to have a place that's 100% dedicated to tea or
12:29
to matcha. Most of the places where
12:32
coffee's being or where matcha's being served on premise is in a
12:36
cafe setting. And usually the founders of
12:39
cafes and the operators of cafes have a huge passion for coffee.
12:45
Occasionally they're also interested in tea.
12:50
Majority of the case, it's an afterthought.
12:52
These institutions are not going away.
12:55
It's where the vast majority of the consumption is going to be
12:58
done on premise. So what I think needs to happen
13:01
is a playbook needs to be made because it's not going to follow
13:04
the exact path of coffee because I don't see there being unique
13:08
matcha houses and coffee houses everywhere.
13:11
Like I think they will exist and they do exist right now, but I
13:14
don't think they're going to become as ubiquitous as a
13:17
specialty coffee shop. So developing a successful
13:20
playbook for this to be a profitable and interesting part
13:24
of the business for coffee people is going to be really
13:28
important for Matcha's long term growth as a specialty product.
13:31
Yeah. Like somehow we need to, you
13:34
know, really be able to engineer ourself into, you know, the word
13:40
of coffee and use the language of coffee, too.
13:42
We need to attract coffee people, too, to convert them
13:46
into almost, you know, into into gospels of this new movement.
13:53
Yeah. Absolutely.
13:54
And you know the truth, the Japanese tea industry and we've
13:57
recorded some podcasts on this that people can back listen to
14:00
for some more context. They're not doing themselves any
14:03
favours by the lack of transparency, by the fact that
14:06
it's very difficult to, you know, even ask questions around
14:10
cultivars. I mean, try sourcing tea.
14:12
It's interesting because we talk about transparent labeling all
14:15
the time. We've heard stories of people
14:17
sourcing from farmers, multi generational farmers that are
14:21
basically doing like garden style farming.
14:24
And so we're not talking about large volumes who do not let
14:27
people selling their product use their name.
14:30
You cannot say that this matcha is from this producer.
14:34
Like in some cases, a lot of these brands that are being
14:37
built are not allowed to be transparent.
14:42
And in a lot of cases you'll just be told no, I we're not
14:45
telling you what's in this blend.
14:46
We're not giving you the cultivars, we're not giving you
14:49
our intentions behind what this is, but those are the questions
14:52
that get people interested. I mean, the coffee people don't
14:55
even know the right questions to ask like they do, but they
14:59
don't. And there's this like reverence
15:01
of matcha being a product of tea ceremony, which is just like the
15:07
essence of Japanese NIST. And there's actually a really
15:10
great book about this that I'm reading at the moment.
15:12
It's called Making Tea, Making Japan and talking about how tea
15:16
was used as a vehicle for nation building in Japan.
15:20
And it really makes it this very high in the sky thing.
15:24
And it's very difficult to put on a more critical set of lenses
15:29
and to analyse it as a speciality product because it's
15:32
trapped in this traditional cage at every level, whether or not
15:38
it's the brands or the farmers or the blenders or the
15:41
practitioners. Which makes this an
15:44
exceptionally tricky problem from a battles to be one
15:48
perspective in spreading the good world of specialty matcha
15:52
so that more people can enjoy it.
15:53
Yeah, it's, it'll be hard when, you know, anything touches
15:58
national pride or nationalism. And sadly that's that's very
16:02
true for Japan. And I guess the two parties, two
16:06
parties, meaning people in Japan and people outside of Japan
16:09
needs to eventually work together.
16:12
People coming from outside needs to show knowledge, learning and
16:16
respect. And people within Japan needs to
16:19
be more inclusive, more open minded to this new global
16:25
movement. You know, like the future of
16:28
Mata is not going to be inside Japan, or at least for the near
16:32
term. Maybe in the long term too, the
16:34
future. It will always exist in Japan,
16:37
but the growth is not the. Growth, yeah, the growth is
16:40
definitely outside of Japan and it's going to be a global
16:44
movement in the future. Yeah.
16:47
And for this to happen, everyone needs to work together and
16:51
figure out a way to move forward.
16:53
Yeah, I totally agree. So, Sam, everything that we just
16:57
discussed was largely around sort of on premise or at a cafe
17:01
where someone else is doing the preparation.
17:03
But what if we flip this the other way and we're talking
17:07
about the home brewing, home preparer market and that type of
17:11
growth? What battles there could be one
17:14
to make that grow in a nonlinear way as a specialty product where
17:17
people are not just buying a random can of matcha, but
17:21
they're buying, you know, a can of specialty product that has a
17:25
story and we know where it came from and the producers and why
17:29
it's special. Yeah, the, I think the key
17:31
problem for a home buyer is that most of people actually prefer
17:36
to be a home drinker. They don't want to really endure
17:40
the, the headache of making matcha or cleaning all the
17:44
utensils, cleaning all the mess in the kitchen.
17:47
You know, like occasionally it's, it's great.
17:49
Like, it's ceremonial, it's meditative.
17:52
And you pour your hot water in your morning bowl of matcha, you
17:56
whisk it and you, you drink it and you feel good.
17:59
And then, you know, you got to clean everything.
18:03
You got to clean the dishes. You got to, you know, maintain
18:05
the Chassen. It's a lot of work.
18:07
It's a lot of work. So somehow, you know, in in the
18:11
world of March, some development needs to happen to erase those
18:14
headaches. Yeah, and I mean, that's
18:16
assuming that you even know what to do, right?
18:19
Like it's. It's it's it's quite you know,
18:24
in order to even make the foam forth up properly, that takes
18:29
some skills too. Like it's not, you know, really
18:32
a day-to-day, you know, you can pick up any utensils and you can
18:35
just make it. It's not that easy.
18:38
Yeah, I mean, the macho world needs to see like even, I mean,
18:42
we have them now. We have content creators, but we
18:45
need to see even more explosion of content creators educating
18:49
people how to prepare it at home and enjoy it themselves and
18:52
basic knowledge around brew theory and extraction.
18:55
And you know where these different products come from and
18:58
how to select them and what they might pair well against.
19:01
And you know how to use them and and different ways of how to use
19:04
them. I think would be really
19:07
beneficial for this market. Like, you know, the coffee
19:10
world. In the coffee world, you have
19:14
very famous influencers now like James Hoffman or Lance Hendrick
19:18
and there's many others, but you know, they didn't exist like six
19:22
or seven years ago. And it's kind of interesting.
19:24
So university, I founded the coffee club at Penn State, and
19:29
it was very difficult to find people who knew anything about
19:31
specialty coffee. Our first meeting was, I think
19:33
it was in 2015. You know, it's a pretty large,
19:36
international, diverse campus full of people and there's about
19:39
100 people came to the first meeting.
19:41
It's really coffee club and university tends to attract a
19:45
lot of people. People are interested in being
19:47
caffeinated. Very few people knew what
19:49
specialty coffee was. Almost no one had heard of like
19:52
quote, UN quote, 3rd wave coffee.
19:56
And it's just a very different scene now.
19:58
I went back recently and like the majority of the members are
20:02
coming in with so much more knowledge.
20:04
And no doubt it comes from this explosion of amazing content
20:09
that people are making that's like way beyond like how to brew
20:12
a cup of coffee. It's much more engaging in the
20:15
stories that they're telling and brewing methods and this
20:19
ecosystem of different brewing methods to get different
20:21
results. Yeah.
20:24
And at the same time you will see this explosion of coffee
20:29
equipment, inventions, all of these hardware developments, all
20:33
of these infrastructures that support all of these
20:37
investigations, experiments. I think that's also very
20:40
important. You see the word of hardwares
20:43
between coffee and matcha. It's unparalleled like for for
20:47
most of things that you still use to brew matcha today.
20:50
Like people use it like couple 100 years ago too.
20:53
Which is both amazing and a little sad.
20:55
Yeah, and if you look at coffee, like a new coffee too, gets
20:59
invented every day, almost like something needs to happen in the
21:04
world of matcha 2 to, you know, at this one-on-one hand, you
21:09
want to, you know, let more people learn how to make matcha
21:13
properly. And also, on the other hand,
21:15
maybe we should all try to create some new tools to just
21:19
help people erase the headache, help people get rid of the
21:23
friction of making matcha every day.
21:25
And I think that's super important.
21:27
You see, you know, hardwares like Kuzan that's trying to, you
21:31
know, condense a lot of these process in little machine, which
21:35
is great. But you know, like a lot of
21:37
other things can happen as well, the fresh grinding matcha that
21:41
we are working right now and you know, there are many other
21:43
things like chassen, like whisking ball, a lot of these
21:47
pinpoints that people can try to put their wrap their hats around
21:52
and make some new innovations. No, no, absolutely.
21:56
It's, you know, my, I think one of my biggest macho,
22:00
controversial hot takes is that it's not meditative.
22:04
Or actually, let me rephrase that.
22:06
It's meditative for about 20 seconds, sandwiched between mess
22:11
and stress of keeping all the dry equipment, like the tea
22:15
scoop dry and making sure matcha powder doesn't get everywhere
22:20
and that it's sifted and dosed. And then that has to be clean.
22:23
But it can't get wet all the way through to, you know, cleaning
22:25
up what can sometimes be a bit of a mess.
22:27
A lot of people quickly gloss over, just like the
22:30
Instagrammable video part and forget about the rest, which is
22:35
not so meditative, I might add. Yeah.
22:38
That's very true. And also hardwares can be what I
22:42
was talking about a label in a coffee shop.
22:46
Like when I walk into a coffee shop, if I see the grinder is
22:50
Ek, if I see the espresso machine is a lot more soko, I
22:53
would have some basic expectation of, you know, the
22:56
quality of this coffee shop. And I think there's needs to be
22:59
something like that in a coffee shop for matcha too.
23:02
If you see some sort of equipments out there, you have
23:06
some basic expectation of the the quality of the matcha being
23:10
made over there. No, absolutely very important.
23:13
Another thing that I think is worth mentioning on an episode
23:16
that's titled Battles to be Won is getting matcha in places
23:20
where it has not traditionally been right.
23:24
So like, where can, how can people who are change agents
23:28
from a marketing perspective expose new audiences through
23:32
like what we'll call it cross pollination?
23:35
You know, we've seen some really pretty innovative frontier work
23:39
done on that by brands like kettle.
23:41
It was crazy seeing their picture with Eric Repair from LA
23:45
Bernadette. I think it's one, it's not the
23:48
it's one of the best restaurants in the world.
23:50
I mean, he was friends with Anthony Bourdain.
23:53
I mean, getting matcha into a place like that, that's crazy,
23:57
right? Like among all, like these other
23:59
Michelin starred places, like, like, that type of work is also
24:03
very exciting, you know, and spreading the good word as much
24:07
as you know, that can be appreciated along with something
24:10
like fine wine or your fantastic food.
24:13
Yeah. Do you require anything similar
24:15
happened back in the days of Specialty Coffee Ryan?
24:18
Like what other interesting crossover have you seen?
24:21
It's a great question. Well, one thing that coffee's
24:24
really benefited from probably isn't this a kind of a
24:29
crossover, but also kind of falls in the category of a novel
24:32
format is the tiramisu has probably done so much for
24:37
getting people to try coffee flavor and open their minds to
24:43
it. Like it's part of the ubiquity
24:45
plays into the ubiquity of people having it in a dessert
24:48
format, in a creamy format where it's not just Folgers in your
24:52
cup at home. That probably like if we're
24:55
talking about rising tides, lifting all boats, that probably
24:58
helped rise the tide quite a bit.
25:00
And these types of novel formats, Matcha has this a
25:02
little bit like with maybe like matcha Kit Kat or like Haagen
25:06
Dazs matcha ice cream, but it's not nearly as pervasive as some
25:11
of these other pretty interesting, we'll call it
25:13
exposures. Like if you think of like
25:15
getting into matcha, you need to have like a form of exposure
25:17
therapy, like a very similar thing by just getting it in some
25:21
very novel formats. Well, you kind of see that
25:25
happening more and more like in bakeries, people using matcha as
25:29
ingredient. I remember back in the days, I
25:33
was really into this matcha creep cake made by Lady Anne
25:38
that was very delicious. And they, they only had branches
25:42
in Europe and Asia, but I think back in 2017, eighteen, they
25:47
opened a branch in New York. OK.
25:50
Interesting, it was a big hike at the time.
25:53
Well, I mean, these novel formats are so important and you
25:56
know, we're also starting to see companies using it in CPG
25:59
products or Consumer Packaged Goods, like stuff like that
26:02
you'd buy at the grocery store. A lot of that is in the form of
26:05
RTD ready to drink, or you can still pop open a can and boom
26:09
matcha latte or boom plain matcha, even matcha shot.
26:14
But that that also helps. Yeah, in CPG products, it's so
26:18
hard to turn matcha into CPG product.
26:21
Yeah, because it will settle on you.
26:23
So it's like unless you're shaking it or it's in something
26:26
very viscous or you have some type of stabilizer, it's a it's
26:29
a tricky problem, but there there's some very good Matcha
26:32
RTD products out there. Anyone in the States?
26:35
There's a product, I don't know if it exists anymore, but, or at
26:40
least I haven't seen it in a while.
26:41
It's called Moto Matcha MOTTO and I think it's a sparkling
26:46
matcha. It's a lemonade like product,
26:49
but it's not lemonade. I think there's some apple and
26:52
there's a light sweetener and a little bit acidity.
26:55
It's very good, sounds about worth a try.
26:59
Used to be able to find it at Whole Foods.
27:00
I assume it's still there but I haven't looked or seen it in a
27:03
while since I since I moved. Back in the days I used to
27:06
really enjoy this matcha beer. It was really good matcha and
27:10
beer and in a tall thin glass in a hot summer day.
27:14
Wow, that's fantastic. So Sam, I got another one, which
27:17
I think is a good one to end on in terms of battles to be won.
27:21
And one of the things that the third wave coffee movement and
27:25
the specialty coffee movement did is they got consumers
27:29
willing to pay more for a better product, which I think largely
27:34
defines most specialty industries.
27:36
Like you show how much you value something typically with your
27:40
wallet. Yeah, I think how do we get how?
27:44
Do we get people to? How do we get more much of
27:47
consumers willing to pay more for a better product?
27:51
I think the problem right now is that people are paying more for
27:55
a very mediocre product. I think like two things needs to
28:00
happen. First, good quality, cheaper
28:04
matcha needs to exist, and with that as a baseline, people will
28:09
be naturally be willing to pay more for a better, even better
28:13
quality product, because that way they know the premium went
28:17
straight into the quality, not into some middle dealer's
28:21
pocket. Yeah, there's very few well
28:24
priced, reliable, consistent, available matchas that I can
28:31
think of where I would be happy to just drink it or pay for it.
28:35
If someone is is brewing it in a cafe or something.
28:40
You don't have that moment. I guess like Starbucks is the
28:43
best example. It's like, yeah, like you get a
28:46
filter coffee at Starbucks. It's the same everywhere.
28:49
It's pretty good. Is it specialty?
28:51
No. No one's like going to give Pike
28:53
Place blend any awards. But you know, it's, it's a cup
28:57
of coffee. It tastes good.
28:59
It's fine, you know, it's totally drinkable, but I agree.
29:03
But I also think opening up more to story storytelling, getting
29:08
people to appreciate, you know, a better product, transparent
29:11
labeling, which we talked about ad infinitum.
29:14
But you know, really the subjective, really the
29:18
quantitative and qualitative elements behind transparent
29:22
labeling need to be stories intermixed with hard metrics
29:26
that people can use to judge whether or not they would like
29:29
something and you know, how they would value it.
29:31
And so you see companies like Oika, you see people like
29:35
Kettle, like Matsu Matcha, like Johnny Matcha, like the and the
29:38
list goes on and on and on just giving unlevel unprecedented
29:42
levels of transparency and giving people stories about the
29:47
farmer and why they should be interested in all of this stuff
29:50
in the first place. Yeah.
29:52
And then like backing it up with hard numbers.
29:55
So seeing more and more of that, I think it's a huge battle to be
29:58
won, right? That's happening right now
30:00
pretty fast at a pretty good scale, but really scaling that
30:05
up. And I think also we're will
30:07
require an on the ground effort, which is where I think this can
30:10
go full circle. We're getting like baristas
30:13
really interested in matcha and to have CAFE owners invest more
30:18
in their matcha program where it's obvious that they care
30:21
about it at least at a similar level that they care about their
30:24
coffee. You know, they're the on the on
30:27
the ground people that can explain.
30:28
Yeah, this is the difference between uji and yame matcha.
30:32
This is the difference between a first harvest or second harvest
30:35
product, or this is the difference between these
30:37
cultivars and why they're interesting.
30:39
And we selected this one for this application because it's
30:44
better. And this one we recommend you
30:46
just drink with water. And you know, I think a really
30:48
low hanging fruit one is getting a matcha drink out in the world
30:52
that's standard that doesn't have milk.
30:55
There's a most specialty people don't consume milk based
30:59
beverages. And I think they're an excellent
31:01
gateway. But the moment that a cafe could
31:04
be proud to serve something like an Americano that would taste
31:08
good. And most cafes, if you ask them
31:11
to make a matcha with just water, they'll say no, probably
31:15
because it won't taste any good, because the baseline matcha that
31:17
they're using just isn't suitable for that application,
31:21
right? Maybe they even pick something
31:22
very strong so it stands up to the milk.
31:24
But in just water, right? It's too much, it's too intense.
31:28
So I think that like will be the next major wave or something
31:32
like a Usucha thin tea or a more like light brew style Americano
31:36
more that becomes more prevalent.
31:38
That's when you can really start getting into the differences
31:41
between cultivars or regions or things like that.
31:44
And that's a huge battle to be won and something that I'd love
31:47
to see more and more businesses and consumers try to push for at
31:51
a cafes to offer that so that people can directly taste it.
31:56
And to have a coffee professional, beverage
31:58
professional, tea professional explain to you why something is
32:02
special and that can really be done at the grass roots local
32:05
level. Yeah, totally agree.
32:07
Like it needs to, there needs to be a knowledge structure slowly
32:13
getting infused into consumers with real world references.
32:18
Like they can actually learn and they can actually try and they
32:22
can actually verify their knowledge.
32:25
And I think that's very important.
32:26
And then in the future, and you know, consumer can make
32:29
decisions based their own formative experience of how they
32:33
learned about matcha in the past versus, you know, getting
32:35
blindly educated on, you know, the matcha that they're buying
32:39
is ceremonial grade, imperial grade AAA, quadruple eight
32:44
grade. You know, like that's that's a
32:48
very top down kind of, you know, almost condescending way of, you
32:52
know, labeling or teaching people what school quality
32:55
matcha, which is not really the way that it should be happened.
33:00
Totally agree. Giving consumers the context to
33:03
ask the right questions to determine equality for
33:06
themselves or pinpointing them to products that will meet their
33:11
preferences. Right now the baseline like sort
33:14
of educated much a consumer, they only know to ask whether or
33:17
not something is ceremonial, which we've recorded before, but
33:21
you know, it's a made-up label. Anyone can call anything
33:23
ceremonial grade. So like it's it's a bad
33:27
framework. It kind of almost treats
33:29
consumers like they're stupid when you call something ultra
33:33
super duper premium ceremonial grade.
33:36
Or, or it can be even worse. In Japan, all the matchas are in
33:40
these variable, poetic names that can actually change from
33:44
season to season. Like the Hatsumukashi you're
33:48
drinking today is not going to be the same thing three months
33:51
later. Like, that's almost consumer
33:53
gaslighting. Actually the I have an update on
33:56
the hatsu Mukashi example that we talked about in a previous
33:59
episode for repeat listeners. I recently saw one that I think
34:03
was about 250 U.S. dollars fabled hatsu Mukashi.
34:07
Not that we're the naming police, but it just goes to show
34:11
the absurd spread ranging from, you know, less than $6 to 250.
34:17
It's very confusing. I've even met people who own
34:20
matcha brands and businesses that are confused by hatsu
34:24
mukashi naming convention. It's to be crazy.
34:27
The state of the. World, this obsession is really
34:29
weird, like hatsu mukashi literally means like the
34:33
beginning of nostalgia or like a beginning nostalgia, something
34:38
like that. It's I I wonder where this
34:42
obsession comes from. It's really That would be an
34:44
interesting podcast. Well, the history of Hatsu
34:46
Mukashi love to do that. This one would make some good
34:50
content. Yeah, yeah.
34:52
So Zhangjun, as we wrap up, just to give sort of a high level
34:55
framework for different battles to be won, I guess 1 is growing
34:59
matcha awareness, which is well on its way, but that's a never
35:02
ending journey. The second one that I have are
35:04
getting Matcha into new places like fine dining for example, or
35:08
into a luxury store, into a fashion house.
35:11
So things like that, like a Rocky mock is doing.
35:14
Exposure of, you know, people that are maybe not even coffee
35:18
drinkers. So that's because right now the
35:22
the most conversion happens within, you know, coffee shops
35:25
and people that have been drinking coffee.
35:27
But there are a lot of people that just don't even go to
35:29
coffee shops. And how do we convert those
35:32
people into drinking? We can also use things like
35:35
novel formats, desserts, candies to drink beverages that are pre
35:40
packaged. Like all of that.
35:42
If you think about it from like a quote UN quote exposure
35:44
therapy perspective can really get people interested in the
35:49
product and trying it for the first time.
35:51
And perhaps a more friendly way than getting it, you know, as an
35:54
Usucha or an Americano or even as a as a latte.
35:58
Yeah, and. You know, I think the biggest
36:00
one for the specialty market are everyone who is helping
36:04
consumers be willing to pay more for a better product.
36:09
And that really is kind of the definition of what specialty is
36:12
that you, you learn about something, you appreciate some
36:14
aspect of it, and then you're willing to pay more for it
36:17
because it has some unique characteristics.
36:19
So that's the world that we would like to see.
36:22
And I think he's a. Very win win situation for
36:25
everybody like consumers getting a better product, vendors are
36:29
making more money and then that finally will cascade down to
36:32
macho farmers, which are are really sadly the bottom of this
36:36
whole hierarchy. They are the people touching the
36:38
earth, managing the bushes, and they're getting the less
36:42
attention, the least attention and the least profit from the
36:46
whole chain, which is very. Sad, It's very sad.
36:50
And it's a system that could use some shaking up.
36:53
And you know, also people working on innovation, on making
36:56
Matcha easier to make or shortening the supply chain.
36:59
We see companies like Brian at Matsu Matcha very carefully
37:03
managing his inventory in stocks so that like as soon as it comes
37:07
off the plane, it immediately goes into cold storage.
37:09
He only keeps it for so long and you know, buys everything
37:13
basically in a mill to order format.
37:16
You know, cattle's doing a very similar thing where they're
37:18
placing orders. So it can be, you can go through
37:21
the shiage process fresh, trying to rethink the supply chains a
37:25
bit. And like all other companies
37:28
working on technology like market, Olica, milling Matcha,
37:31
fresh, much closer to the consumer, right?
37:33
That's unheard of. So there's all these very
37:35
exciting things that are going on and so many battles to be
37:39
won. And very optimistic actually,
37:41
with the community of Matcha, businesses and people working in
37:44
matcha that are really helping spread their own appreciation of
37:50
this thing and helping farmers along the way and helping
37:54
consumers along the way and helping spread what is a really
37:58
interesting cultural artifact of Japan, which is this incredible
38:02
product that is Matcha. Yeah, Matcha is very old, but
38:06
the global matcha community is actually very young and it's
38:10
growing. Very exciting.
38:13
Yeah, it's far, far, far away from a 0 sum game.
38:17
We are all working together to grow the pie larger.
38:20
So many battles to be won. So if we missed any, we'd love
38:23
to hear from you and tell us some other aspects that you
38:26
think could drive this industry forward.
38:27
And we'd love this to be a community based conversation and
38:31
and like really energizes us when people reach out.
38:34
So please do so. Thanks so much for listening.
38:37
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with a
38:39
friend or rating us on a on the platform you're listening on.
38:42
And thank you so much. And we'll see you on the next
38:44
one. See you in the next episode.