It’s the last drink day -to -day – And for people who need their morning choice, Matcha tea is more and more espresso as their caffeine solution of choice.
“I worked on the bar a few weeks ago and I think that after a certain point, you are not content to have milk, you do not shoot. Everything you do is Matcha,” said Nadiia Semenichenko, regional director at 10 Dean, a coffee and a bar in Toronto.
Finely powdered tea demand – generally from Japan and undoubtedly for its bright green color and its earthy taste – has become a supernova since fall, mainly thanks to the legions of influencers who swear them on social networks and viral videos that accumulate millions of views, say that experts that have spoken to CBC News.
But this fervor has shaken Matcha’s delicate supply chain, finally leading to a global shortage which exerts pressure on the Japanese tea industry to increase the production of rare goods.
The Café de Semenichenko looked for new suppliers to meet demand, noting that one of them has put a ceiling on the amount of matcha that coffee could buy each month.
“By the end of this year, we will feel substantial price increases in Matcha, that’s for sure,” she said, referring to coffee costs.
And those who follow the Japanese tea industry say that it is only a matter of time before customers who love the frothy and green drink are struck by a sharp increase in prices.
The explosion of global demand for matcha products left Japanese suppliers who find it difficult to follow, raising prices and causing shorts of finely ground green tea powder.
A sudden shortage
Matcha is made from ground tencha, a type of green tea leaf that is cultivated – giving it a more intense flavor and a deeper color – before being steamed, dried, detailed and passed through a striker to produce a powder.
The highest version of Matcha, used for Japanese tea ceremonies, is harvested in the spring. He crossed a stone mill, making it a time and resources process that produces only a small quantity of the final product.
Semenichenko says that using the ceremonial matcha as a cooking ingredient or in slats is like “if you buy very expensive whiskey and put it in whiskey and coke”.
But when Matcha’s request brutally checked the top of last fall, people suddenly rushed to buy the high level version of the product. “Even the school ceremony schools in Japan could not suddenly find the matcha that they would usually buy,” said Anna Poian, co -founder of the Global Japanese Tea Association.
Some of the most popular matcha brands in Japan – including Ippodo Tea, Yamasan and Marukyu Koyamaen – have published excuses for their customers and have announced that they should put the limits on How much And what genre Matcha products they would sell to their buyers.
At that time, the producers of Matcha “did not really face a real shortage, but they did not expect so much demand,” said Poian.
But the assault of viral videos linked to matcha combined with record tourism in Japan – induced by a weak yen – had people who claimed tea, which finally led to a race on the existing supply and a shortage of production.
Now, the craze has prompted large cafes and restaurant channels to intensify their Matcha offers so that they can also cash.
Most Starbucks locations have served matcha drinks for years, but the coffee giant added a whole series of drinks on matcha specialized last summer. Matcha is on the menu of Booster Juice, Tim Hortons and McDonalds, although companies did not respond when they asked for it when they added it.
Large retailers are not safe from the shortage either. Second CUP, who added another Matcha Latte to his menu in April, recently dealt with the reception of his supply of Matcha, a spokesman for CBC News said.
Change the tides in the tea industry in Japan
The shortage is also a product of changes in the interior tea industry in Japan over the past two decades.
In the country, both consumption And tea production has decreased, and its population of Theagie ages with few successors to take over.
“They do not see a lot of future because the Japanese tea industry has been decreasing for 15 to 20 years, due to the decrease in local consumption,” said Poian, whose organization publishes monthly industry reports.
Conversely, Japanese tea exports to other countries are increasing. In April 2025, total Japanese tea exports increased by 85.7% Since the same month in the previous year, according to data from an industrial group.
The Green Tea of Japan’s Green Tea has increased by 118% since 2015, a spokesperson for global affairs at CBC News said.
According to Poian. “More farmers change and concentrate their production to matcha, but it is unfortunately not an easy change,” she said.
Countries like China and Vietnam also produce matcha, but the Japanese version is considered premium. The Japanese government’s Ministry of Agriculture, with the aim of developing matchas production for the export market, is apparently Recommend to farmers to replace their sencha – another type of green tea leaf – by Techa.
This change is not easy, even for the experienced industrial workforce, explains Jason Eng, head of business development and partnerships at Kametani Tea, a tea production company based in Japan.
“Many of these farmers do not have the resources to do so-to upgrade all machines or simply completely change the machines. The investment therefore costs a lot,” he said.
Kametani Tea, who exports about 25 to 30% of his product to international drinking companies, suppliers and wholesalers, will have to increase prices once the next harvest is ready. And these price shocks will eventually fall to consumers who love matcha in cafes.
“It will be really difficult to digest, I think, for consumers at the end with this enormous increase in demand,” he said.
‘He’s just exhausted’
After developing a taste for Matcha, Cheena Lerum began publishing recipe videos on her Tiktok account. But Toronto’s content designer noticed earlier this year that she had more views when she offered recommendations to know where to buy and get Matcha.
“Do you know when bubble tea became really famous a few years ago?” She said, referring to the Taiwanese tea drink that exploded in popularity in the mid-2010s. “Matcha becomes that now.”
Lerum, which has nearly 30,000 subscribers on the platform, said that she was thinking “all the time” to find out if she contributes to the shortage of Matcha. She publishes on tea less frequently on social networks now, in part because she could not find her favorite products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
“They say they don’t keep, but sometimes there are brands you like, then it becomes too popular and it is sold,” said Lerum. She also noticed that prices are ramping: a 30-gram matcha powder box that she had used online for $ 35 is now almost $ 50, she said.
Back at the cafe, some customers sirède the slats of Matcha. “I just find that it is a much better alternative to coffee,” said Danielle Pineda, who says that matchas the energized without giving her coffee tremors. She has her own whip matcha and often makes the drink at home.
Tommy Tanga, another CAFE customer, said that he found the current price of reasonable matcha – a coffee order generally costs around $ 5 to $ 7, depending on the type of drink. It was his reference order since he tried it during a trip to Japan.
“I fear that it becomes more expensive,” he said.
