Matcha, the powdered green tea drink hailed in the U.S. as the next big thing in food and beverage, is now pretty much everywhere — in the nation’s coffee chains and on grocery store shelves, mixed into baked goods and skin-care products, and even sprinkled on fried chicken at one upscale River North restaurant.
This summer, pop-up cafe creators cashed in on the craze at vendor events, farmers markets and even in their homes across Chicagoland, with growing hordes of Gen Z and millennial customers lining up for a taste of unique crafted drinks.
Entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s behind pop-up cafes such as Homebody, Fein Matcha and Matcha Moo Tea began as small-time hobbyists who are building a loyal social media following that’s translating to in-person fervor.
For consumers, pop-up cafes offer matcha drinks that are higher quality than national chains.
“I feel like when you go to fast-food places like a Starbucks or a Dunkin, it’s OK, but you can get little chunks in it. They don’t mix it by hand,” said 27-year-old Alyssa Cerda at a matcha pop-up held in June.
Meanwhile, matcha has become so ubiquitous that Japanese tea farmers and suppliers have reported a dramatically low inventory of quality matcha. The generations-old matcha farms in Uji, a short train ride away from Kyoto, Japan, are struggling to keep up with the ballooning demand this summer after the tea harvest produced fewer crops than expected.
Whisking from home
At their first anniversary pop-up in June at Pizz’amici in the West Town neighborhood, Homebody pop-up owners Katie Richcreek and Calvin Thai saw selfie-snapping Gen Z customers line up to sample Italian-inspired matcha drinks, like a cannoli matcha latte, dolloped with a ricotta cream topping.
They cofounded Homebody to explore their passion for matcha and make friends after moving to the city last year. Their pop-ups have grown from intimate gatherings in the lobby of their West Loop apartment building to collaborations with businesses across Chicago.
“From the beginning, I wanted this to be something where people feel like they’re coming to our home for this experience,” Richcreek said.
They draw inspiration for flavors from their travels. A trip to Japan last year inspired a sakura matcha latte for a pop-up in Hyde Park in May. They also make teas from matcha’s roasty, nutty cousin, hojicha.
The couple, both full-time physical therapists, work on Homebody in their spare time, but the momentum hasn’t stopped. They hosted a performative male-look-alike contest last month in Wicker Park that drew hundreds of onlookers and about 80 competitors, many with matcha in hand. The contest, which made fun of men who develop interests specifically to court favor with women, was a sign of how big matcha has gotten culturally.
Friends Louise Pueblos and Selene Paculba love matcha but were tired of paying for overpriced, bland drinks. In January, they started a home cafe, Northbrook-based Fein Matcha.
As college students, “it was just more convenient for us to be in the apartment,” Paculba said. They’ve since hosted pop-ups at night markets and Pilates classes, and continued arranging matcha pickups from their apartment. Fein offers an oat milk matcha latte, a banana pudding-topped latte, an eispanner matcha latte, plus other rotating seasonal drinks and matcha-flavored cookies.
People may not understand that they don’t like matcha lattes because of how it was prepared, Paculba said. If it’s too milky, the umami flavor may not be apparent. If there’s not enough sweetness, it can taste too earthy and grassy. Some cafes “measure with their hearts,” she said.
“The ratio when you make matcha is super important,” she said, “If you’re off, the matcha will taste so different.”
Homebody whisks 4 grams of matcha for every 12-ounce latte, while they say many cafes may use at most 2 to 3 grams for a 16-ounce drink.
“You’re getting a lot of matcha for what we offer,” Richcreek said.
Mindfulness in a cup
But aesthetically pleasing posts of green and white blended drinks on social media don’t reveal a history of matcha consumption in Asia that dates back over a thousand years.
According to Louise Cheadle and Nick Kilby in “The Book of Matcha: The Superhero of Tea,” matcha has been a part of Japanese culture since the 12th century, with crucial influence from Chinese Song dynasty tea customs dating back to the eighth century. Matcha was viewed as vital for meditation in Japanese monasteries and plays a key role in traditional tea ceremonies.
From traditional tea ceremonies, today’s U.S. consumers have adopted the use of the chasen, or bamboo whisk, to prepare matcha, as well as the chawan to pour drinks and a chashaku to scoop powdered matcha.
Like the tea ceremonies that focus on the ritual of tea, the pop-up owners recall getting into matcha for the slow process of making a cup of tea for themselves or their friends.
A drink that may take five or 10 minutes to prep behind a counter takes much longer to grow from the Earth. It can take five years for a plant to reach maturity and produce the tencha leaves that are ground into powder.
Genuine matcha is vibrant green and is grown in the shade to prevent the photosynthesizing process that makes tea taste harsh. Afficionados steer clear of brownish or yellowish green tea powders that create murky-looking drinks and are overly bitter.
The attributed benefits of green tea and matcha are also a draw, as functional beverages gain popularity among consumers looking for drinks with added health bonuses. Thai said he started drinking matcha in grad school when he needed caffeine to study, but didn’t want to drink coffee.
“It’s a great source of caffeine. It’s a very natural energy spike versus the jittery coffee feeling,” Richcreek said, referencing the L-theanine matcha contains that slows the release of energy.
Using every last gram
Earlier this year, Sugoi Sweets/Mokoma Tea cofounder Jason Rice warned customers to expect tea prices to increase because of the rising costs of producing and selling tea in Japan and new tariffs on Japanese products.
Rice said his business gets matcha from Marukyu Koyamaen in Uji, which announced a price increase, citing a lower summer harvest yield due to warmer temperatures.
“During my Japan travels, two sources confirmed that the first weeks of the tea auction saw an unprecedented 180-200% increase in the price of matcha,” the West Town business owner wrote in a blog post in May. “This shocked experienced buyers who rely on this tea to produce their blends, and will ultimately lead to higher prices for end consumers.”
More young people traveling to Japan is leading to matcha’s resurgence in popularity stateside, Rice said in an interview. Reuters reported in July that the export value of Japanese green tea rose 25% by value to $252 million in 2024, driven largely by growing demand for powdered teas such as matcha, according to data from the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Fein uses matcha from Sugoi/Mokoma, but its owners say shortages haven’t affected their ability to provide drinks to their customers. Since it’s a smaller business, they said they don’t need to buy as much compared with larger cafes.
Homebody’s owners attest to the lower matcha amounts needed as a pop-up.
“The good thing about the home cafes is that the overhead is low. We can get our friends to help us out. We can keep our prices more reasonable,” Thai said.
Homebody has had luck sourcing from a New Jersey supplier that grinds the leaves instead of a Japanese-based farm, cutting down the process.
But still, “it’s a very slow process of milling the matcha leaves into the powder. It’s hard to make more when it’s all being consumed,” Richcreek said.
Matcha for the masses
At the South Loop Farmers Market one summer evening, Matcha Moo Tea cofounders Wayne Huang and Katie Guan whipped up drinks for an hourslong line of customers there for social media-famous concoctions like mango sticky rice and coconut pandan flavored matcha lattes.
The business began out of their Brighton Park home last year. This summer, with a presence at the South Loop and Wicker Park farmers markets, there was as much opportunity for in-person eyeballs as there were online views. But the pressure’s been intense for the small team. Each drink is hand-whisked to order, “to create a unique and special experience for each person,” they said over email.
“Our biggest challenge is perfecting this process to become more efficient,” the couple said. “We are still working on improving our efficiency so that we can serve everyone who patiently waits in line to try our drinks.”
While all three matcha businesses said they value the opportunity to experiment and explore Asian flavors through matcha, they also have a deep respect for the art form and want people to engage further with matcha’s origins.
With no answers to the potential shortage, for now, the pop-up cafes will continue chugging along, as long as TikTok and Instagram keep pointing matcha-loving customers in their direction.
“Bringing people together to enjoy this art form is really at our core of what we intended to do,” Richcreek said.
Sugoi Sweets, 937 N. Ashland Ave., sugoisweets.com
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