The Perfect Storm: Too Much Demand, Not Enough Supply

There's such demand for matcha right now, and just not enough supply. Walk into any café in Hamburg, Berlin, New York, or Los Angeles, and you'll see matcha lattes on the menu. Scroll Instagram and you'll find matcha cookies, matcha ice cream, matcha everything. The global matcha market has exploded.

But here's what most people don't realize: the infrastructure to produce high-quality matcha hasn't scaled to meet this demand. In fact, it's shrinking.

The Aging Farmer Crisis

Tea pickers are getting older, retiring, or dying. There's just not enough interest from young people to take over these jobs.

Think about it from a young Japanese person's perspective: Would you rather work in tech in Tokyo, or spend your days hand-picking tea leaves in rural Kyoto? The economic incentives don't favor traditional agriculture. The work is physically demanding. The hours are long. The pay is modest compared to urban opportunities.

This isn't unique to Japan—it's happening across all traditional agricultural sectors worldwide. But with matcha, the impact is particularly acute because quality depends so heavily on handwork, expertise, and generational knowledge.

What Gets Lost When Farmers Retire

• Generational expertise: A third-generation tea farmer knows which plants produce the best leaves, when to shade them, how to read the weather.
• Quality standards: Mass producers optimize for yield. Traditional farmers optimize for flavor.
• Regional varieties: Small farms maintain unique cultivars like Okumidori, Samidori, Yabukita. Corporate farms standardize everything.
• Artisanal processing: The difference between good matcha and exceptional matcha often comes down to processing details that only experienced producers understand.

Corporate Buyers Are Buying Everything

So many businesses are focused on flavored matcha beverages and are buying up all of the matcha. Large coffee chains, beverage companies, and food manufacturers are purchasing tea in quantities that small cafés can't compete with.

Most important to note: rich companies dealing with tea are buying matcha in the tens and hundreds of thousands—even millions—of dollars. The tea is being bought up. And at the end of the day, money talks.

It leaves the rest of us scrambling, and there isn't much we can do.

The Flavored Matcha Economy

Here's the thing about flavored matcha drinks: quality matters less. Anyone can buy decent matcha and infuse fruit puree into it. You wouldn't really be able to taste the difference between average, good, or excellent matcha if it's masked with strawberry, mango, or vanilla.

This creates a two-tier market:

• Tier One: Mass-market matcha for flavored drinks. Lower quality, lower price, massive volume.
• Tier Two: Premium matcha for traditional preparation. Higher quality, higher price, limited availability.

The problem? Corporate buyers purchase from both tiers, leaving less premium tea available for specialty cafés that refuse to compromise on quality.

Why Lowinsky's Can't Hide Behind Flavors

While most people and businesses are caught up in whether something is organic or ceremonial, we at Lowinsky's are truly searching for phenomenal Japanese teas and matcha. We're not hiding, masking, or disguising the tea's true taste.

We focus on the quality of the matcha and only offer it in its original and true nature. We serve these drinks as either lattes or teas, either koicha (thick) or usucha (thin). Our teas have to be of incredibly high quality—otherwise our customer base can taste the difference.

We're to blame for that, in a way. People have gotten used to the high quality we offer. Our customers have developed good taste. They can discern the teas now.

What "Straight Matcha" Reveals

When you serve unflavored matcha, every flaw becomes obvious:

• Bitterness: Low-quality matcha tastes harsh and astringent. There's nowhere to hide it.
• Color: Dull, yellowish matcha versus vibrant, jade-green matcha. Customers notice immediately.
• Texture: Gritty versus silky-smooth. Ceremonial grade should dissolve completely.
• Umami depth: Exceptional matcha has this complex, savory sweetness. Mediocre matcha is flat and one-dimensional.
• Aftertaste: Premium matcha leaves this pleasant, lingering sweetness. Poor matcha leaves bitterness that makes you want to wash your mouth out.

The Current Reality: Rising Prices, Declining Quality

Although I appreciate and enjoy the challenge of finding the best tea, I'm under pressure because it has become exponentially more difficult to find high-quality tea.

Currently we see an upward trend: prices rising and quality decreasing. This is the reality we have to face, and we're doing our best to find you the best quality.

Why Prices Are Rising

• Demand outpacing supply: Basic economics. More buyers, same amount of premium tea.
• Labor costs: The few young people willing to work in tea production command higher wages.
• Climate factors: Unpredictable weather affects harvest quality and quantity.
• Processing bottlenecks: Limited factory capacity means farmers can charge more.
• Export costs: Shipping, customs, regulations—all increasing.

Why Quality Is Declining

• Rushed harvests: To meet demand, some producers harvest too early or too late, compromising flavor.
• Younger plants: Premium tea typically comes from mature plants. New demand has led to harvesting younger bushes.
• Overproduction stress: Some tea fields are being pushed beyond sustainable yields.
• Processing shortcuts: Mass production can't replicate the careful attention of artisanal processing.
• Grade inflation: What's sold as "ceremonial grade" today might have been called "premium" five years ago.

What It Takes to Find Exceptional Tea Now

Anyone can find average or below-average tea. Scroll through Alibaba and you'll find thousands of listings. But finding good to exceptional tea? That takes experience, expertise, and hard work.

The Search Process

For every exceptional tea we source, I've tasted dozens that didn't make the cut. The process involves:

• Direct relationships: Calling farmers I've worked with for years, asking about harvest quality before it's even available.
• Sample testing: Requesting samples, cupping them multiple times, comparing against previous harvests.
• Timing: The best tea gets purchased immediately after harvest. Miss that window and you're left with second-tier options.
• Negotiation: Convincing farmers to prioritize your small order when corporations are offering more money.
• Verification: Ensuring what arrives matches what was promised. This requires experience to evaluate properly.

Why This Matters for You, the Customer

When you drink a delicious cup of matcha or Japanese tea at Lowinsky's, you're experiencing the end result of an increasingly complex supply chain:

• The hard work producers put into cultivating these teas
• The labor of pickers who handpick leaves at dawn
• The expertise of processors who stone-grind matcha to precise specifications
• The persistence of importers navigating a shrinking market to find quality
• Our refusal to compromise by hiding mediocre tea behind flavorings

What You're Really Paying For

That €5-7 matcha latte isn't just tea and milk. You're paying for:

• Matcha from aging farmers who may not be producing in five years
• Direct import relationships that bypass corporate middlemen
• Quality control that rejects 90% of available options
• Freshness—we import frequently in small batches rather than warehousing
• The expertise to recognize truly exceptional tea when we find it

The Future of Premium Matcha

I'm not pessimistic, but I am realistic. The situation will likely get harder before it gets easier.

What Might Improve

• Technology: Mechanization could help with some labor shortages, though it can't fully replace handwork for premium tea.
• Price signals: As prices rise, more young people may enter tea farming—if the economic incentives become compelling enough.
• Sustainability focus: Growing consumer awareness might shift demand back toward quality over quantity.

What Will Likely Get Worse

• Scarcity: Premium, artisanally-produced matcha will become increasingly rare.
• Prices: Expect costs to continue rising as supply constraints persist.
• Market saturation: More brands will enter the matcha market, increasing competition for limited supply.
• Quality variance: The gap between mass-market and premium matcha will widen.

Our Commitment Despite the Challenges

At Lowinsky's, we're committed to continuing the search for exceptional tea, no matter how difficult it becomes. This means:

• Maintaining direct relationships with small farmers in Kyoto, Kagoshima, Yame, and Shizuoka
• Refusing to cut corners by serving flavored matcha drinks that mask quality issues
• Being transparent with you about why premium tea costs what it does
• Educating customers about what makes truly exceptional matcha different
• Supporting the farmers and processors who refuse to compromise on quality despite market pressures

It would be easier to serve average matcha hidden in strawberry puree. It would be more profitable to buy from corporate wholesalers rather than importing directly. But we started this business to serve authentic, exceptional Japanese tea—and that mission hasn't changed.