The matcha boom: when an ingredient becomes a market.

• Article by: Lucrezia Scopelliti, COO of Eccellenze d'Impresa.

From a Japanese tradition to a global phenomenon.

The success of matcha tells us something more than the story of a new food preference: it shows how consumption habits change and how an ingredient can move across different categories, generating new opportunities for innovation and value creation for businesses.

Until just a few years ago, for most Western consumers matcha was a product known mainly by enthusiasts of Japanese culture and by a niche audience particularly focused on wellness.

Today, we find it on the menus of major coffee chains, in supermarkets, ready-to-drink beverages, biscuits, chocolate, desserts and snacks.

What is happening with matcha is interesting not so much because of the current size of the market, but because of the speed at which a traditional ingredient is becoming a global platform for innovation.

It is a phenomenon worth observing because it illustrates very clearly how new consumption habits are formed today.

The numbers point to a structural change

The first signal comes from its country of origin.

According to Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, green tea exports reached 36.4 billion yen in 2024, growing by 24.6% in a single year. The same Ministry identifies the international expansion of demand for powdered tea, including matcha, as one of the main drivers of this growth.

To understand the speed of the phenomenon, it is enough to go back just two years: in 2022, Japanese green tea exports were worth around 21.9 billion yen. Moreover, over the previous decade, export volumes of Japanese tea had already more than doubled.

We are therefore not simply dealing with a trend driven by social media. Growth in international demand is beginning to have tangible consequences for production and the supply chain.

The Japanese government is in fact planning measures to increase production of tencha, the raw material used to produce matcha, and has set an export target for tea of 81 billion yen.

Success does not come from the product alone

Matcha has a particularly effective combination of characteristics.

It has a recognizable origin, a history, a preparation ritual, an immediately identifiable colour and a strong association with the world of wellness.

Several factors contribute to matcha’s international success: authenticity, heritage, naturalness and association with wellness. Added to these is an element that is particularly relevant in today’s food market: its strong visual recognizability. Its intense green colour makes it immediately identifiable and particularly well suited to digital communication and social media, helping to amplify its visibility and spread.

In other words, consumers are not simply buying green tea, but simultaneously purchasing product, origin, ritual, experience and meaning.

It is this layering of value that allows matcha to sustain a premium positioning and enter consumption occasions that are far removed from the traditional Japanese cup of tea.

And this is also why the comparison with coffee is interesting.

Matcha does not need to replace coffee. It can use the infrastructure coffee has already built — coffee shops, out-of-home consumption, daily rituals and takeaway — while introducing a new consumption occasion with a different positioning.

From the coffee shop to the shelf

This is probably the most important transition in the evolution of the category.

At first, foodservice allows consumers to discover the product without needing to know it or prepare it themselves. Matcha latte lowers the barrier to entry: it makes familiar an ingredient that was not familiar before.

Once consumers become familiar with matcha’s taste, colour and identity, the ingredient moves beyond the boundaries of beverages and begins entering new product categories.

And that is exactly what is happening.

Innovation opportunities linked to matcha are expanding far beyond beverages, involving categories such as bakery, snacks, confectionery and skincare.

In bakery in particular, matcha is already used in cakes, biscuits and pastry products; among the matcha retail products considered in the analysis, biscuits account for 73% of the bakery offering.

Matcha is progressively moving beyond the boundaries of its original category. Born as a tea, it entered coffee shops through matcha latte, then spread into ready-to-drink beverages and subsequently into categories such as bakery, snacks, chocolate, functional foods and beauty.

This expansion profoundly changes the economic scale of the phenomenon: matcha is no longer competing only in the tea or beverage market, but is becoming a cross-category ingredient, capable of generating new products, consumption occasions and innovation opportunities across markets.

We are no longer looking at the growth of a beverage, but at the ability of an ingredient to transfer its meaning from one category to another.

When an ingredient becomes a platform for innovation

This is a mechanism that food companies should observe with particular attention.

An ingredient reaches a higher level of maturity when consumers no longer need to be told every time what it represents.

Matcha is building a recognizable code.

Its colour, Japanese origin, ritual and perceived connection with wellness become elements that a company can transfer into mature categories to create a new variant, reach different consumers or build a premium positioning.

A biscuit remains a biscuit, but an ingredient with a strong identity can transform its positioning and increase its perceived value.

This is where matcha becomes particularly interesting for companies: it is not simply a new flavour, but an innovation tool capable of renewing established categories and reaching new consumers.

And it is precisely at this stage that product development and marketing need to move together, turning an ingredient into a new value proposition.

From adoption to innovation

There is another interesting signal.

In some Western markets, matcha is now familiar enough to push companies to search for the next generation of Asian ingredients.

GlobalData notes, for example, that ingredients such as yuzu, moringa, butterfly pea flower and rambutan still have relatively low levels of familiarity among British consumers, despite having characteristics that are compatible with the growing demand for naturally functional foods.

This is a significant transition.

The market is not simply adopting a Japanese ingredient: it is expanding its food vocabulary, opening up to new flavours, ingredients and consumption occasions.

Growing familiarity with matcha makes the discovery and adoption of other products from the same food culture more natural. It is a process already observed with sushi and ramen, followed by ingredients that were once niche, such as miso, kimchi, gochujang and yuzu, which are now increasingly present outside their cuisines of origin.

Growth, however, also presents a constraint: supply

The success of matcha is also revealing the other side of growth.

International demand is putting pressure on Japan’s production capacity.

In April 2026, bottlenecks were being reported both in production and in milling and drying activities. Product shortages are also increasing the risk of substitutes, improperly labelled products and counterfeits.

Some operators are already responding by diversifying sourcing. The British brand PerfectTed, for example, has expanded its sourcing to China and South Korea precisely because of the pressure demand is placing on Japanese production capacity.

This introduces a second important lesson.

When demand grows faster than production, competitive advantage no longer depends only on marketing, but on the ability to secure raw materials, quality and continuity of supply.

Origin, quality, production capacity, supplier relationships and raw material availability become an integral part of strategy.

The real lesson from matcha

The matcha case is therefore far more interesting than the story of a beverage that became popular.

It shows the path through which a new market can emerge today.

An initially marginal ingredient wins over a niche of consumers. Foodservice facilitates discovery and experimentation, while social media amplify visibility and recognizability. Over time, consumers learn to know the product and integrate it into their habits. Retail then moves it from out-of-home to in-home consumption, increasing occasions and frequency of use. At that point, companies begin experimenting with it in an ever-wider range of product categories, further expanding the market. Demand grows until it reaches a scale that involves not only marketing and innovation, but also production, sourcing and supply chain.

At that point, value no longer lies only in the ingredient itself, but in the ecosystem of products, consumption occasions and meanings that the ingredient has managed to generate.

For food companies, the real lesson is to identify earlier than others those still-marginal signals — new ingredients, behaviours and consumption occasions — that have the potential to spread across different categories and become new markets.

Because when a phenomenon is already obvious to everyone, an important part of the opportunity has often already been captured.

SOURCES:

• Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF), FY2024 Trends in Japan’s Agriculture, data on Japanese green tea exports and growth in matcha demand, 2025.
• Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF), Japanese Tea Expanding Overseas, data on the evolution of Japanese tea exports and international demand for matcha.
• Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF), Basic Plan for Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas 2025, export growth targets and increased production of tencha intended for matcha.
• GlobalData, AI platform reveals matcha’s popularity growth, driving innovation opportunities beyond beverages, analysis of matcha expansion into beverages, bakery, snacks, confectionery and skincare.
• GlobalData, Matcha shortage calls for stricter regulations to curb rise in counterfeit products, April 2026, analysis of demand growth and its consequences for the supply chain.
• GlobalData, UK appetite for traditional Asian superfoods signals shift from adoption to innovation, April 2026, evolution of matcha and other Asian ingredients and diversification of sourcing.
• GlobalData, Beauty-inspired foods redefine functional nutrition as consumers pursue holistic wellness, 2026, convergence between matcha, functional food, wellness and beauty.