From matcha ice cream to cake and chocolate, producers of traditional Japanese green tea are capitalizing on growing global interest in its flavor—even as demand for the drink declines at home.
At Shigehiko Suzuki’s tea shop in central Japan, adorned with a traditional “noren” drape, the customers are flooding in but more to scoop up gelato or cake than to sip the bright-green tea.
In 1998, Suzuki’s company Marushichi Seicha started making powdered matcha green tea—traditionally made using a bamboo whisk in a tiny room. The firm now exports 30 tons of green tea to the US, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
“The demand for matcha is rapidly growing in the world… There’s demand for ice cream, desserts, and coffee,” Suzuki told AFP at his shop in Fujieda, 170 kilometers (105 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
Japan exported more than 5,000 tons of green tea—mainly to the United States—last year, 10 times more than two decades ago.
But in Japan, the consumption of green tea leaves for drinking dropped from 1,174 grams per household in 2001 to 844 grams in 2015, according to the latest government data—a trend Suzuki puts down to a more westernized diet.
“The number of Japanese who regularly drink tea is decreasing while there are more Japanese who enjoy various kinds of food, so tea doesn’t sell like before,” said the 55-year-old.
Japanese traditionally drink green tea with rice but are doing so less as the diet becomes less dependent on the grain.
Sensing the shift, Suzuki branched into matcha-flavored ice cream nine years ago, opening a shop where customers can choose gelato from seven levels of bitterness.
It became so popular, he opened two stores in Tokyo and one in Kyoto, matcha’s traditional home.