Matcha guides

Raising the menu price is the option everyone reaches for first and the one customers notice most. There are three others, and one of them costs you nothing to test.

Price per kilogram tells you almost nothing until you convert it into what one drink costs you. Here is the arithmetic, with our own wholesale prices as the worked example.

Limited tencha farmland, a global demand surge, and a short harvest window are pushing ceremonial-grade prices out of reach for daily use.

It is a real distinction and an unregulated label at the same time. Here is what it describes, what it does not guarantee, and when the word should change your purchase.

Guizhou province plans more matcha than Japan currently produces. Published government targets, what they would mean for prices, and what they do not tell you.

A matcha latte has meaningfully less caffeine than a double-shot latte, and the L-theanine changes how that caffeine lands.

The honest version, from someone selling it. Here is exactly what is different, when it matters, and when it does not reach the customer at all.

Almost every matcha brand sells Japanese matcha and treats Chinese matcha as the thing you settle for. The honest version is more useful: they are made differently, they taste different, and one of them is much cheaper per drink.

Matcha is green tea — but shade-grown, stone-ground into powder, and consumed whole-leaf instead of steeped and discarded. That one change in how it's made and drunk explains almost every other difference.

Ceremonial grade matcha is built for one job: whisked with water, on its own. Everyday matcha is built for a different job — lattes, smoothies, baking.

Bulk matcha suppliers publish very little. Here are the eight questions that decide whether an order is a good one, and what a straight answer looks like.

Colour is the fastest quality signal you have and the easiest one to misread. Here is what green actually means.

Matcha does not spoil, it fades. Buying a year of stock to chase a discount is how cafés end up serving khaki lattes in month eight.

Cheap matcha fails in specific, predictable ways. Four checks catch almost all of them before you commit to a kilogram.

Dessert applications are where matcha economics are most brutal and where premium grade is most wasted.

Clumps and a dull grey-green are the two failures of iced matcha, and both have the same cause. Neither is a reason to buy more expensive matcha.

Most matcha problems are a dose problem wearing a quality costume. Here are the numbers for lattes, iced, plain, smoothies, and baking.

Blended drinks bury matcha under ice, dairy, and fruit. The fix is dose and grade, not a more expensive tin.

Most home matcha lattes taste chalky or bitter for one of three reasons — here is how to fix all three.