What’s the downside with matcha?

Estimated studying time: 7 minutes

Key takeaways

• Main espresso manufacturers are chasing matcha’s booming recognition.
• Virality is driving over-commercialisation, diluting high quality and cultural that means.
• Japan’s scarcity means lower-quality matcha is changing into extra widespread.
• Espresso and matcha aren’t rivals; cafés ought to merely serve matcha effectively.

Matcha is all over the place. It’s now in iced lattes, chilly foams, ready-to-drink (RTD) cans, lemonades, and refreshers, turning numerous cafés worldwide vibrant inexperienced.

Clean Road’s rebrand is the clearest instance of how far the development has travelled from its Japanese roots. The US$500m chain dropped “Espresso” from its title, softened its signature inexperienced to a matcha-latte hue, and rebuilt its id round non-coffee drinks. 

Inevitably, the commercialisation of matcha has diluted its cultural id. Within the UK alone, Sq. recorded 1.6 million matcha beverage gross sales throughout greater than 2,100 retailers in simply June and July 2025. At this quantity, fastidiously sieving and hand-whisking every drink to order isn’t possible. Preparation shortcuts, together with pre-batching, have now turn out to be important for busy cafés.

Customised matcha drinks are a profitable strategy to appeal to a youthful, extra visually pushed, and extra experimental crowd. For Gen Z, the drink more and more ties into private expression. Selecting sweetness ranges, milk, toppings, and flavours capabilities much less as indulgence and extra as a type of management and identity-building.

Not everybody, nevertheless, welcomes matcha’s recognition, and the protests are rising louder. Considerations about provide and sustainability persist, as does the query of whether or not the craze owes extra to intelligent advertising than to high quality.

You might also like our article on whether or not matcha has misplaced its cultural id.

From ritual to viral development

For hundreds of years, matcha was a Japanese ritual that demanded endurance and mindfulness. Social media has since propelled the drink into mainstream Western tradition, turning it right into a shorthand for wellness, virality, and personalised consumption.

Life-style manufacturers, in the meantime, current matcha as extra of an adjunct than a beverage. It has turn out to be a social signifier, and that is usually the place the issue with matcha begins. Complaints concern not the ingredient itself however how hardly ever it takes centre stage. As an alternative, the emphasis falls on customisation: syrups, milks, sweeteners, and whichever seasonal drops will carry out effectively on TikTok or Instagram.

A part of the frustration is that many manufacturers look like hopping on the development to money in shortly, reasonably than constructing thought-about menus. The identical flavours and limited-edition runs have created a race to the underside to see who can win Gen Z model loyalty first.

Matcha’s virality means its recognition is usually linked to Gen Z, however opinions concerning the drink fluctuate primarily based on greater than age.

“We ran the matcha polarisation query by way of our Gen Z Intelligence Lab, which additionally covers older cohorts, gathering responses from greater than 60 nations,” says André Eiermann, World Espresso Product Supervisor at Melitta Skilled, who has been working the Gen Z and Espresso survey. 

“The important thing perception is that matcha polarisation is pushed way more by beverage worldview than by age,” he explains. “Folks aren’t divided by technology alone, however by how a lot they embrace cafés as locations for exploration, id, and new beverage experiences.”

The runaway commodification of matcha

Matcha’s mismatch between ritual and retail mirrors espresso’s journey. As soon as a drink with cultural significance in Latin American, African, and Arabic nations, it has been repackaged for mass consumption worldwide.

Espresso has its personal additive and customisation tradition, and matcha has merely turn out to be the latest, extra photogenic car for a similar behaviour: stack elements, chase virality, and focus much less on the bottom ingredient. In different phrases, the issue is that the worth of matcha lies largely in aesthetics.

The worth of the worldwide matcha market will attain over US$7bn by 2030, with the US, Germany, the UK, Taiwan, and Thailand rising as the largest importers. The US buys roughly 2,000 tonnes of matcha from Japan yearly, whereas income from UK imports totalled round £46 million in 2025 – greater than double the earlier 12 months.

The business strain this creates is actual. Japan’s matcha manufacturing almost tripled between 2010 and 2023, but record-breaking heatwaves and an ageing farmer inhabitants imply provide can’t preserve tempo with hovering international demand. International locations corresponding to China, Vietnam, and India are stepping in to fill the hole, however matcha grown in these nations usually lacks the umami depth that Japan produces.

Matcha already has a naturally grassy, barely bitter flavour, so one other downside is that lower-quality matcha solely encourages shoppers so as to add extra syrup, milk, and sugar.

With most demand development on the commodity-grade stage, matcha that works effectively in sweetened lattes bears little resemblance to the product that conventional Japanese producers recognise. 

Equally, “grades” of matcha, corresponding to “ceremonial” or “culinary”, carry no standardised definition and aren’t utilized in Japan. As an alternative, they’re advertising classes that Western sellers use to distinguish their merchandise and justify completely different value factors.

Espresso and matcha don’t must compete

A lot of the discourse about matcha has settled into an unfair framing: espresso vs matcha, as if trade professionals and shoppers should choose a facet. Influencers like Dritan Alsela push this narrative, insisting that “actual” espresso drinkers would by no means drink matcha.

“Roughly three-quarters of respondents are receptive to matcha, however the true divide emerges in how folks relate to cafés, discovery, and experimentation,” André says. “Matcha lovers are considerably extra open to hybrid drinks, customisation, and chilly and layered drinks, and so they’re extra more likely to uncover new merchandise by way of social media and to see cafés as social areas.

“Rejectors, in contrast, are inclined to favour acquainted espresso rituals, less complicated codecs and decrease ranges of experimentation.”

Matcha isn’t an alternative to espresso; it serves a unique objective solely, and infrequently capabilities as a gateway drink that introduces new clients to specialty espresso who later order flat whites or chilly brew.

The extra productive query for cafés is find out how to supply high-quality matcha and serve it correctly, reasonably than debating whether or not folks ought to be ingesting it in any respect.

This implies sourcing fastidiously, permitting innovation and custom to coexist. It additionally means coaching workers to organize it to a correct customary, whether or not that’s hand-whisked to order or fastidiously batched throughout busy service, and being clear about the place their matcha comes from.

Matcha is more likely to find yourself the place most traits land: an early wave of hype and mass-market dilution, adopted by a slower, steadier appreciation for provenance, grade, and preparation. 

Cafés that get forward of this shift now, by sourcing effectively and coaching workers correctly, stand to profit lengthy after the seasonal drops have moved on to the subsequent development.

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Matcha FAQs

Why is matcha so in style with Gen Z proper now?
Matcha’s vivid inexperienced color, wellness associations, and customisable format enchantment to Gen Z’s style for aesthetic, health-conscious drinks. Manufacturers like Clean Road and Black Sheep have capitalised on this, constructing total ranges round matcha reasonably than treating it as a distinct segment add-on.

What’s the downside with the matcha development?
Many in specialty espresso really feel matcha’s high quality is being sacrificed for customisation and virality. Matcha additionally has a grassy, hay-like style and may shortly flip bitter if not sourced or ready correctly.

Why is there a matcha scarcity, and does it have an effect on high quality?
Demand has outpaced Japan’s tencha manufacturing, which almost tripled between 2010 and 2023, but it nonetheless can’t meet international demand. This has pushed lower-grade matcha from nations like China and Vietnam into cafés, which regularly lacks the umami and depth of Japanese matcha.

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