Story

Matcha is the new coffee. The farms didn't get the memo.

The world wants Japanese matcha more every year. Japan makes less of it every year. ISSA MATCHA! sits in that gap.

Rolling tea hills in winter

The contradiction

Cafés in Berkeley, Dubai and Warsaw are adding matcha faster than any other drink. Meanwhile the number of tea farms in Japan's main producing prefectures fell from about 37,600 in 2005 to about 12,300 in 2020, and most growers are past sixty. The demand is real and the supply is quietly disappearing. Nobody in the chain was telling the buyers.

Who is behind it

I'm Junpei. Half Japanese, half Trinidadian, UCLA International Development Studies. I spent years on the road in 30 countries before coming back to Tokyo and starting ULUHASHI. On @junpeitalks I film what is happening in the tea fields for a few million people a month. ISSA MATCHA! is what happens when those viewers ask "so where do I buy it?"

Three rules

01
Only Japanese-grown.
No overseas leaf blended in for volume. Ever.
02
Name the region and the harvest.
On the bag, on the invoice, on the website.
03
Say the inconvenient part.
If a lot is late, or a harvest is thin, you hear it from us first.
The whole chain
FARMOur own tea field in Minamiyamashiro, Kyoto, and 100+ direct farm relationships across Yame, Kagoshima, Shizuoka and Wazuka.
MILLWe buy at the mill that grinds the lot, taste it there, and put the mill's certificates on the paperwork.
WHOLESALE50+ wholesale partners: cafés, brands and importers in North America, Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, from 1 kg.
RETAILOur own brand on Amazon.com in the US and on the shelf at SEIBU The Exchange TRX in Kuala Lumpur and ISETAN in Malaysia.
CAFÉWe pour it ourselves: the SO TARTE pop-up in Omotesando, and the next one.
In the field

We go, we look, we ask. Then we buy.

Junpei with a partner grower in the field
Checking new growth with a grower
A handful of fresh leaf
On the farm truck
Smelling fresh leaf at the mill
In our own words

Three films that explain why we exist.

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