Matcha is having a moment — and it's putting pressure on Japan's tea industry
It's the latest beverage du jour — and for people needing their morning pick-me-up, matcha tea increasingly beats espresso as their caffeine fix of choice.
"I worked on the bar a few weeks ago and I think past a certain point, you don't just skim milk, you don't pull shots. Everything you do is matcha," said Nadiia Semenichenko, regional manager at 10 Dean, a café and bar in Toronto.
Demand for the finely powdered tea — usually sourced from Japan and unmistakable for its vivid green colour and earthy taste — has gone supernova since the fall, mostly thanks to the legions of influencers swearing by it on social media and viral videos that are racking up millions of views, say experts who spoke to CBC News.
But that fervour has shaken up matcha's delicate supply chain, ultimately leading to a global shortage that is putting pressure on Japan's tea industry to ramp up production of the scarce commodity.
Semenichenko's cafe has sought out new suppliers to keep up with the demand, noting that one of them has put a cap on how much matcha the café could buy each month.
"By the end of this year, we'll feel substantial price increases in matcha, for sure," she said, referring to the café's costs.
And those who follow the Japanese tea industry say it's only a matter of time before customers who love the foamy, verdant drink get hit by a serious price hike.
Matcha is made from ground tencha, a type of green tea leaf that is shade-grown — giving it a more intense flavour and a deeper colour — before being steamed, dried, destemmed and passed through a milling machine to produce a powder.
The highest-grade version of matcha, used for Japanese tea ceremonies, is harvested in spring. It's passed through a stone mill, making it a time and resource-consuming process that produces only a small quantity of the final product.
Semenichenko says using ceremonial matcha as a baking ingredient or in lattes is like "if you buy really expensive whiskey and put it in whisky and Coke."
But when demand for matcha ticked sharply upward last fall, people were suddenly rushing to buy the high-grade version of the product. "Even tea ceremony schools in Japan suddenly couldn't find the matcha they would usually buy," said Anna Poian, a co-founder of the Global Japanese Tea Association.
Some of the most popular matcha brands in Japan — including Ippodo Tea, Yamasan and Marukyu Koyamaen — published apology notes to their customers and announced they would have to put limits on how much and what kind of matcha products they would sell to their buyers.
At that time, matcha producers "were not really facing a real shortage, but they didn't expect so much demand," explained Poian.
But the onslaught of matcha-related viral videos combined with record-high tourism to Japan — induced by a weak yen — had people clamouring for the tea, ultimately leading to a run on existing supply and a production shortage.
Now, the craze has spurred major coffee shops and restaurant chains to step up their matcha offerings so they can cash in, too.
Most Starbucks locations have served matcha drinks for years, but the coffee giant added a whole suite of specialty matcha drinks last summer. Matcha is on the menu at Booster Juice, Tim Hortons and McDonalds, too, though the companies didn't respond when asked when they added it.
Big retailers aren't immune to the shortage, either. Second Cup, which added another matcha latte to its menu in April, has recently dealt with delays in receiving its matcha supply, a spokesperson told CBC News.
The shortage is also a product of changes in Japan's domestic tea industry over the last two decades.
Within the country, both the consumption and production of tea have declined, and its tea-farming population is aging with few successors to take over.
"They don't see much of a future because the Japanese tea industry has been in decline for the past 15 to 20 years, due to the decrease in local consumption," explained Poian, whose organization publishes monthly reports on the industry.
Conversely, exports of Japanese tea to other countries are on the rise. In April 2025, total exports of Japanese tea were up 85.7 per cent from the same month the previous year, according to data from an industry group.
Canada's own intake of green tea from Japan has increased by 118 per cent since 2015, a spokesperson for Global Affairs told CBC News.
Compounding the problem is the fact that matcha makes up just six per cent of Japan's total tea production, according to Poian. "More farmers are shifting and focusing their production to matcha, but this unfortunately is not an easy switch," she said.
Countries like China and Vietnam produce matcha, too, but the Japanese version is considered premium. The Japanese government's farming ministry, in an effort to ramp up matcha production for the export market, is reportedly recommending that farmers replace their sencha — another type of green tea leaf — with tencha.
That shift isn't easy, even for the industry's experienced workforce, says Jason Eng, head of business development and partnerships at Kametani Tea, a tea production company based in Nara, Japan.
"Many of these farmers don't have the resources to do that — to upgrade all the machines or just change the machines altogether. So the investment costs a lot," he said.
Kametani Tea, which exports about 25 to 30 per cent of its product to international beverage companies, suppliers and wholesalers, will have to raise prices once the next harvest is ready. And those price shocks will eventually trickle down to matcha-loving consumers at cafés.
"It's gonna be really hard to digest, I think, for the consumers at the end with this huge surge of demand," he said.
'It just gets sold out'After developing a taste for matcha, Cheena Lerum started posting recipe videos on her TikTok account. But the Toronto content creator noticed earlier this year that she got more views when she offered recommendations for where to buy and source matcha.
"You know when bubble tea became really famous a few years ago?" she said, referring to the Taiwanese tea drink that exploded in popularity during the mid-2010s. "Matcha's becoming that now."
Lerum, who has almost 30,000 followers on the platform, said she thinks "all the time" about whether she's contributing to the matcha shortage. She posts about the tea less frequently on social media now, partly because she hasn't been able to find her favourite products.
"They say don't gate-keep, but sometimes there are brands that you like and then it becomes too popular and it just gets sold out," Lerum explained. She's also noticed prices creeping up: a 30-gram tin of matcha powder that she used to buy online for $35 now costs almost $50, she said.
Back at the café, a few customers are sipping on matcha lattes. "I just find that it's a much better alternative to coffee," said Danielle Pineda, who says matcha energizes her without giving her coffee-like jitters. She has her own matcha whisk and often makes the drink at home.
Tommy Tanga, another customer at the cafe, said he finds the current price of matcha reasonable — a café order usually costs about $5 to $7, depending on the type of drink. It's been his go-to order ever since he tried it during a trip to Japan.
"I'm worried that it's going to get more expensive," he said.
cbc.ca
