Global matcha tea shortage driving up prices in B.C.
Popular green tea powder, originally made in Japan, now facing production bottlenecks as demand rises
As global demand for the popular matcha tea beverage grows, producers in Japan have been unable to keep up, leading to a worldwide shortage and price increases, which are being felt by B.C. cafés and importers.
Matcha tea refers to a particular kind of green tea, originally from Japan, that is shade-grown, which makes it vibrantly green. Once the young leaves are picked, they're de-stemmed and de-veined, then dried and ground to a very fine powder.
The drink and its distinctive green hue have been a trendy choice on social media, where hundreds of thousands of people have watched matcha preparation videos. The green tea is now a regular fixture on café menus.
But as popularity for matcha tea has boomed, experts say production capacity in Japan hasn't kept up, leading to a shortage that has been driving up prices since last year.
B.C.-based cafés and matcha importers say consumers will likely feel the pinch, and prices could go up further as the harvest season for matcha begins in spring.
"I'm waiting with bated breath," said Jared Nyberg, who runs tea wholesaler JagaSilk in Victoria. "Harvest season is almost upon us. It's the May, June, time period where we start to see a lot more of what we're going to have to pay for these things."
Nyberg said there were some "pretty significant price increases" last year for the teas, and that costs could increase by 10 to 15 per cent in the next few months.
Elliott Graham, who owns the Vancouver café Superbolt Tea, said he's had to turn to multiple sources of matcha tea in order to keep up with the demand of his hundreds of daily customers.
"The challenge there is how much you can actually secure from these farmers," he said. "And I'd say the end consumer is getting hit the hardest.
"There's a scarce supply of matcha at the moment," he added. "So we're seeing a lot, sort of, of ... people are like reselling matcha, and selling it at a higher price."
The café owner said that prices could be marked up by as much as 40 per cent by wholesalers and as much as 150 per cent by resellers.
Production bottlenecks
John Harrison, the CEO of tea importers Andrews and George Co. and the DōMatcha brand, said that over the last five years, the export volumes of matcha tea from Japan had grown by 115 per cent.
He said that the shortage has been a phenomenon since the latter half of 2024 and attributed it to production bottlenecks in Japan, with many of the farms being operated by families and seniors.
"The issue for them is based on an imbalance between production and product," he told CBC News. "And so they have the inventory, they just don't have the mechanism and the volume in terms of the machinery."
Harrison says he estimates that it'll take Japanese producers a year or two to catch up with demand.
Graham says that the unique production process for matcha is a part of the production bottleneck.
To make high-grade matcha, the leaves of a particular tea plant have to be harvested at exactly the right time and ground by hand after a shading process of a few weeks.
But the café owner says that much of the shortage has been driven by a demand for only the highest-quality matcha teas, which have the greenest hue and pop on social media videos.
"Not always having to go for the highest quality matcha is a more sustainable way to, I think, enjoy the matcha," he said. "So that it's not putting pressure on all these old, family-owned farms in Japan."
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With files from Leanne Yu and Maryam Gamar