What the matcha craze is really costing

A tiny bamboo whisk. A green swirl of powder. A few seconds of silence before the first sip. This is how matcha entered many of our lives: not just as a drink, but as a ritual.

But lately, something’s off. Prices are climbing. “Sold out” signs are more common. And Japanese producers—many of them small, family-run farms—are sounding the alarm. We’re living through a global matcha supply shortage. Not because the tea suddenly disappeared, but because we turned something sacred into something scaled. Let’s walk through what’s really happening behind that frothy green cup.

Matcha wasn’t designed for mass consumption. It was never meant to be a café trend, a dessert topping, or a TikTok aesthetic. Its roots go back to 16th-century Kyoto, where it was central to chanoyu—the Japanese tea ceremony. The original intention? Stillness. Discipline. A moment of beauty and presence.

Now, matcha lives in protein bars, overnight oats, and “sugar-free” gummies. It powers our mid-morning Zooms and fills the Instagram feeds of wellness influencers everywhere. We’ve made it part of our everyday—but that frequency is where the system begins to strain. What used to be an occasional ritual is now a routine. And when rituals become routines, they demand scale. But matcha isn’t built to scale easily.

Here’s the quiet complexity most drinkers don’t see: true matcha comes from tencha leaves—grown in shade for weeks to boost chlorophyll, hand-picked, then ground slowly with stone mills. That shade isn’t metaphorical. It’s physical. Producers build pole and straw structures to block sunlight, slowing growth and deepening nutrient density. The process increases L-theanine, a calming amino acid, and reduces bitterness.

It can take an hour to grind just 40 grams of ceremonial-grade matcha. That’s enough for maybe 20 lattes. Compare that to standard green tea, which can be grown, harvested, and bagged on industrial timelines. Matcha production is still artisanal. Even large-scale producers rely on traditional methods because the flavor and texture simply don’t emerge with shortcuts. But demand isn’t slowing to match tradition.

In 2012, Japan produced 1,430 tonnes of matcha. By 2023, that number had nearly tripled to over 4,000 tonnes. More than half of it was exported—primarily to the US, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia. It’s not just tea shops driving the boom. Matcha has become the base ingredient for everything from pastries to skincare. If there’s a wellness product that can be tinted green, someone has tried to matcha-fy it.

Gen Z played a massive role in this expansion. Their aesthetics, buying habits, and health awareness gave matcha a new identity: clean, focused, photogenic. A drink that feels intentional—but accessible. Still, matcha’s newfound popularity isn’t purely visual. It offers a caffeine hit with less crash, thanks to its L-theanine content. And its antioxidant profile continues to earn it praise in health circles. But scaling demand without scaling systems has consequences.

Matcha’s supply chain is sensitive. The best leaves are grown in just a few Japanese prefectures—Uji, Nishio, Sayama. Many farms are small, family-owned, and labor-dependent. There’s no easy way to triple output without compromising quality or overextending workers. And that’s exactly what some farms are facing. Producers have shared concerns about aging labor forces, limited arable land, and seasonal bottlenecks. Younger generations are hesitant to take over tea farms. Traditional skills take years to master—and there’s little training infrastructure in place for rapid onboarding.

Tea farming in Japan is also governed by deeply rooted seasonal rhythms. Shading, hand-picking, and slow drying require predictable weather and careful coordination—not quick pivots or last-minute scaling. As climate patterns shift, even long-reliable harvests are beginning to wobble, with unpredictable rains or temperature swings affecting yield and flavor consistency.

At the same time, global demand is no longer seasonal. Western consumption has normalized year-round matcha use, particularly in colder months when lattes are popular. But Japanese producers can’t simply grow more to meet winter spikes—they harvest just once or twice a year. This mismatch between natural cycles and commercial appetite is quietly widening. If matcha production is pushed too hard, the long-term result isn’t more tea. It’s burnout—of land, labor, and legacy.

Layered onto this fragile supply system is a new risk: tariffs. Matcha currently faces a 10% import tariff into the United States under former President Trump’s trade regime. A proposed increase to 24% is on the table—threatening to upend pricing for matcha retailers, cafés, and direct-to-consumer brands alike. For a powder that already costs double the price of standard green tea, these margins matter. A 24% tariff doesn’t just bump up costs. It can reshape the entire product tier—from premium staple to occasional luxury.

If implemented, it could force cafés to shrink portion sizes, charge more per cup, or switch to lower-grade matcha blends that compromise quality. And for producers in Japan, it may become financially untenable to export ceremonial-grade powder at all. These trade pressures also come at a moment of generational transition within Japan’s tea farming communities. Many smallholder producers are already struggling to stay viable as younger successors choose to leave rural areas or shift toward more stable forms of employment. An added tariff barrier may make international partnerships too risky or complex for these farms to sustain.

This isn’t just about the economics of tea—it’s about protecting a fragile agricultural ecosystem. Tariffs don’t just punish exporters. They disincentivize future cultivation, stall reinvestment in sustainable practices, and erode the viability of craft-scale production. In a world where matcha is becoming mainstream, the supply system is being squeezed by both ends: demand pressure from consumers, and cost pressure from policy. And for a product rooted in balance, that kind of squeeze is dangerously out of sync.

At the consumer level, the first thing most people will notice is cost. A $6 matcha latte could soon become $8. Premium powder jars might inch toward triple-digit price tags. Lower-tier culinary matcha will proliferate in more packaged foods—diluting the meaning of the word, even if not the flavor.

This mirrors what we’ve seen with other heritage food exports. Think acai from Brazil, or quinoa from Peru—where global wellness trends outpaced local supply, raised domestic prices, and stressed ecological and cultural systems. Matcha risks joining that list if we continue to treat it as just another “functional ingredient.”

But maybe this shortage isn’t a failure. Maybe it’s a signal. Matcha’s scarcity could be an invitation to return to intention. Not every morning needs a green latte. Not every product needs a matcha variant. Some things are better when reserved.

Consider how we might build new rituals—ones that don’t require daily consumption to feel whole. Matcha was never about frequency. It was about attention. What if we stopped trying to scale the sacred? What if we let matcha remain matcha—not a meme, not a multi-product brand extension, but a pause?

For those who want to keep matcha in their lives—without contributing to burnout—there are quiet shifts that can help:

• Buy less, choose better. Opt for smaller amounts of ceremonial-grade matcha and savor it weekly instead of daily.
• Respect the process. Use the whisk. Use the bowl. Let the preparation be part of the experience, not just the flavor.
• Support ethical sourcing. Look for producers or retailers who work directly with Japanese farms, pay fair prices, and emphasize heritage practices.
• Let it be occasional. Rituals don’t require repetition. They require presence.

When we ritualize something, we give it meaning. When we routinize it, we strip that meaning away.

The global matcha supply shortage isn’t just about green powder. It’s about how easily modern desire turns craft into commodity. It’s about how quickly something sacred becomes something consumed. But it’s also about how we can choose again. There’s a quiet joy in making matcha the slow way. In pausing, whisking, watching the froth rise. In knowing that not everything in life should be instant, daily, or scalable.

If your favorite café runs out of matcha this week, don’t be disappointed. Be curious. What happens when we let scarcity teach rhythm again? What we repeat becomes how we live. Let matcha stay rare, and let it stay real.