By Ramy at Genuine Tea | 7 minute read
Japan exported 13,125 tons of green tea in 2025, up 42% from 9,272 tons the year before, and the value of those exports more than doubled to about JPY 84.7 billion (STiR Coffee and Tea, citing Japan's Ministry of Finance). Powdered green tea, matcha included, makes up the bulk of that volume.
If you run a café, you have already felt what those numbers mean. Allocations got tighter. Your rep started using the word "waitlist." The tin you built your latte recipe around three years ago may not be the tin you can buy this quarter.
This is a guide to buying matcha for a café under those conditions. It covers what actually changes a drink behind the bar, which Katō harvest suits which format, how to keep the cup consistent across a shift, and where a purpose-built barista blend makes more sense than a single-origin tin.
Key Takeaways
- The supply squeeze is real and structural. Tencha, the shaded leaf that becomes matcha, takes years of planting to expand, and Kagoshima's April auction average hit JPY 6,573 per kilogram, up 60% year over year (STiR).
- Harvest and shading matter more than grade language. All three teas here are shade-grown tencha; what separates them is how long they were shaded and when they were picked.
- Spring harvest is premium. It works in milk if your menu is positioned to charge for it. Summer harvest carries more body at everyday prices.
- Consistency is a prep problem, not a product problem. Sifting, dosing by scale, and water temperature account for most of the variation between two baristas making "the same" drink.
- For high-volume latte programs, a blend formulated for milk is the more sensible workhorse. Barista Matcha exists for exactly that job.
Why Matcha Got Harder to Buy
The shortage is not a blip in the logistics chain. It is a planting problem.
Tencha is grown under shade for roughly two to four weeks before harvest, then dried and stone-ground. New tea fields take years to come into proper production, so when global demand climbed, supply simply could not follow on the same timeline. Japanese growers have responded, and tencha output has risen for several consecutive years while Japan's agriculture ministry encourages further planting (MAFF tea industry reporting). That is a serious expansion. It still has not caught demand.
Prices tell the story plainly. The average price for new tea leaves at the Kagoshima auction ran JPY 6,573 per kilogram, a 60% jump from the previous year (STiR). Japan also recorded 13 tea business closures or dissolutions in 2025, a record high, which tells you the squeeze is not making everyone rich.
There is a second effect worth knowing about. Because tencha now fetches so much more at auction than sencha, growers have been converting fields toward tencha, which has begun to tighten the sencha supply in turn. If your menu leans on Japanese green tea beyond matcha, plan for that too.
The practical takeaway for a café is not "panic buy." It is to stop treating matcha as an interchangeable commodity you reorder on autopilot, and start treating it the way you already treat your espresso: a specific product, from a specific place, that your recipes are built around.
Where Katō Matcha Comes From
Katō Matcha comes from the Katō family farm in Uji, Kyoto. We have worked with them directly since 2015, which is the reason we can tell you the harvest and the farm rather than just the country.
Uji is the historic centre of Japanese matcha and still produces some of the country's most sought-after tencha. Worth noting how the map has shifted, though. Kagoshima has climbed into the front rank of Japanese tencha production over the past few years, and its auction volumes now rival the traditional Kyoto and Shizuoka strongholds. Kagoshima is not a fallback region any more. It is where a great deal of serious tencha now comes from, which becomes relevant later in this guide.
The line splits by harvest, and that split is the single most useful thing for a café to understand.
Spring Harvest
Katō Matcha Spring Harvest is a spring harvest picked from the youngest leaves and shaded 30 days before harvest. It is Yabukita, the workhorse Japanese cultivar, and it brews a bright jade cup with almost no astringency. Clean rather than heavy. Stone-ground in small batches, no added sugar or flavouring.
This is the tea for a traditional preparation, whisked as usucha or served in water, where nothing competes with it. It is also the right choice for a café that wants the best matcha on its menu and intends to charge accordingly. A premium latte built on first-flush matcha is a genuinely different drink, and some rooms can sell it. It comes in a 1kg food-service size, so running it behind the bar rather than only as a retail tin is practical.
There is an organic spring harvest as well, though it is a retail-format tea, sold in tins and cases rather than a food-service size. If certified organic is a requirement for your bar programme, that constraint matters, and it points you toward the barista blend further down.
Summer Harvest
Katō Matcha Summer Harvest is the one most café owners should look at first. Same farm, same Yabukita cultivar, but picked later and shaded 14 to 20 days rather than a full month. That gives it a fuller body, an earthy, bold character, and a mature umami that holds its shape when you put it in milk.
A 16oz oat latte can flatten the finer edges of a spring harvest matcha, so unless your menu is positioned to charge for that tea, you are paying for nuance the milk quietly erases. A summer harvest pushes back against dairy and oat, and against sugar, so it holds its own in sweeter drinks, smoothies, and desserts where a finer matcha would simply disappear. It comes in 40g tins, cases, 250g, and 1kg, the widest format range in the line and the easiest to scale from a test run to a full menu item.
Matching the Tea to the Drink
Here is the mapping I would give any café owner, before any conversation about cost.
Traditional and water-based serves. Spring harvest. Whisked usucha, matcha shots, anything sparkling or served over ice with water. Nothing is masking the tea, so the clean first-flush character earns its keep.
Premium lattes. Spring harvest again, if your room supports it. A first-flush latte is a different drink and a legitimate menu position, provided you price it as one and train staff to say why it costs more.
Everyday hot and iced lattes. Summer harvest, or a purpose-built barista blend. Body beats delicacy once milk is in the cup, and at everyday prices that trade is the right one.
Blended and dessert applications. Smoothies, soft serve, baked goods, and anything with sugar in it. Use the most robust matcha you can, because sugar and fat flatten flavour even harder than milk does.
Demand is concentrated exactly where the milk is. Matcha lattes, iced matcha, and ready-to-drink formats are driving most of the category's growth, particularly among younger and urban customers (Tastewise, 2026). That is worth planning your inventory around. Most cafés will move far more summer harvest than spring.
Consistency Behind the Bar
Most complaints about matcha quality behind a bar are actually prep problems. Four things account for the bulk of the variation.
Dose by weight, not by scoop. A bamboo chashaku is lovely and wildly inconsistent between two people. Put a scale on the bar, pick a gram weight, and write it on the recipe card. Two baristas making "the same" latte with scoops can easily be 30% apart on dose.
Watch the water temperature. Boiling water scorches matcha and pulls out harsh, bitter notes. Around 70 to 80°C is the working range. If your only hot water source is a boiler at 96°C, cut it with a splash of cold before you whisk.
Paste first, then milk. Whisk the matcha into a small amount of water to a smooth paste before the milk goes in. Dumping powder straight into cold milk for an iced latte is how you get grit at the bottom of every cup.
None of this is exotic, and a good matcha whisk covers the equipment side cheaply. The discipline is the hard part, not the gear.
Storage deserves a line too. Matcha oxidizes fast once it meets air, light, and heat. Colour dulls from vivid green toward olive, and the flavour goes flat and slightly fishy. Keep working tins sealed and away from the espresso machine, which is often the warmest surface in the building. Open one tin at a time. If you buy a 1kg bag, decant into a smaller working container and keep the mother bag closed.
When Going Beyond Japanese Matcha Is the Smarter Buy
If you are pushing serious latte volume, a single-origin tin is not always the tool for the job. That is why we built Barista Matcha.
It is organic, made exclusively from spring harvest tencha shaded about 30 days before picking, the same shading period as our premium spring tin, and blended from Kagoshima Yabukita and Guizhou Longjing. Being a spring harvest, it drinks smooth and clean rather than heavy, with the bright green colour that survives contact with milk. It ships in 1kg, which is a food-service format rather than a retail one.
It is a blend across two origins, not a single-farm Uji tea. If your café's positioning depends on saying "this is from one family's farm in Uji," the Katō tins are what you want, and the blend is not a substitute for that story.
Blending is what makes it the more cost-effective choice per drink, and it is also what makes it more reliable. A blend can be built to a consistent flavour target season after season, while a single-origin tea moves with its harvest. In a shortage, that matters more than usual.
For most cafés, the sensible structure is both. Run the barista blend as the everyday latte workhorse, and keep a Katō bag for traditional serves and for the customer who asks where the tea comes from. One holds your margin steady. The other holds your credibility.
Frequently Asked Questions
What grade of matcha should a café buy?
Grade language is loosely regulated and used inconsistently across the industry, so it is a weak buying signal on its own. Harvest timing and intended use tell you far more. Ask whether it is a first flush or a later harvest, and whether it was formulated to be drunk in water or in milk.
Will the matcha shortage ease in 2026?
Not quickly. Japanese growers have expanded tencha production for several consecutive years and MAFF is encouraging further planting, but tea fields take years to reach full yield. Expect continued tightness and plan orders further ahead than you used to. Start taking samples of non-Japanese matchas as well, since both China and Korea are catching up in quality.
How long does matcha stay good once opened?
Use it within four to eight weeks of opening for best colour and flavour, kept sealed and cool. It remains safe well beyond that, but the vivid green and the sweetness fade noticeably, and customers can tell.
Does matcha need to be organic for a café?
Only if your positioning or your certification requires it. Organic status says nothing about flavour or grade on its own. If it is a requirement for your bar, note that the organic Katō spring harvest is a retail format, so the organic barista blend is the practical food-service option.
Getting Started
If you are testing matcha on your menu for the first time, start with one drink, not four. A hot latte and an iced version of the same recipe will tell you most of what you need to know about whether your customers want it and whether your bar can execute it during a rush.
Get the dose on a scale, write the recipe card, and taste the drink your least experienced barista makes rather than the one you make yourself. That is the cup your customers are actually buying.
We ship matcha, loose leaf, and hojicha to cafés, restaurants, and hotels across Canada, and we are happy to send samples before you commit to a format. If you want to talk through what fits your bar, open a wholesale account or reach out and ask for matcha samples. We deliver across North America, and have no MOQ's.
We've got you covered through koicha (thick) and through usucha (thin).
