Matcha isn't niche anymore. You can get it at Starbucks, at the grocery store, in a protein bar, in a body lotion. Awareness of it among younger consumers is close to universal at this point. That's not really a debate anymore. It's just where things stand.

We don't see that as an opportunity so much as a signal. A market that crowded, that commoditized, tends to reward whoever can produce the most matcha the cheapest, not whoever makes the best cup. Competing there as "another matcha brand" would mean competing on exactly the terms we're least interested in.

What matcha's success actually proved

Here's the thing matcha's rise really demonstrated: when powdered tea gets presented with real intention, real story, and real quality behind it, people respond to it. Matcha wasn't inevitable. It became what it is because someone did the work of introducing it well. That's a repeatable lesson, not a one-time fluke, and it's one we think applies to teas that never got the same introduction.

Houjicha, black tea powder, fermented tea. All three have histories that predate matcha by centuries, going back to a Chinese tradition of stone-ground tea from the Song dynasty, long before matcha became the version of powdered tea everyone recognizes. They got left behind while matcha scaled, not because they're worse teas, but because nobody built the same bridge to a wider audience for them.

Where we think this goes

Specialty coffee went through something similar decades ago. Early roasters weren't trying to out-Starbucks Starbucks. They built an entirely different category, with its own language and its own loyal following, well before the mass market caught up to what they were doing. We think powdered tea beyond matcha is at roughly that same starting point right now.

That comes with real responsibility on our end. As one of the first brands doing this seriously, how we introduce these teas has an outsized effect on how the category gets understood going forward. Get it right, and we help define what "powdered tea beyond matcha" means. Get it wrong, cheap, gimmicky, or rushed, and we make it harder for the category to be taken seriously at all.

So, more attention, but not instead of matcha

We're not asking anyone to give up matcha. Emerald Cove is still in our own lineup, and it's a fine place for most people to start. What we're asking is that the rest of the category gets a fair shot at the same kind of attention matcha already has, because houjicha, black tea powder, and fermented tea have earned it just as much. They were just never properly introduced.

We're trying to be that introduction.