Why Riyadh's Matcha Cafes Are Feeling Japan's Global Shortage

Key facts

Japan's green tea exports, driven largely by matcha, reached a record 497 million dollars in 2025, with volume topping 10,000 tons for the first time in roughly 70 years, according to a report carried by The Korea Herald via the Asia News Network. The export boom is happening even as domestic tea output falls: total Japanese tea production dropped to 75,100 tons in 2025, a 25 percent decline from two decades earlier, as the country's aging farmer population shrinks the workforce able to do the demanding shade-growing and hand-harvesting that matcha requires.

The supply squeeze shows up most sharply in tencha, the shade-grown leaf ground into matcha powder. Tencha prices in 2025 ran roughly six times 2024 levels, and new-leaf lots at Kagoshima's spring auction reached about 44 dollars per kilogram in April, a 60 percent jump, the same report found. Bottled green tea drink prices inside Japan rose about 10 percent in March. Globally, matcha's popularity keeps climbing rather than cooling: Forbes reported in June that consumer interest in matcha grew 19 percent year over year on social platforms, organic matcha demand rose 21.4 percent worldwide, and the global matcha market is projected to reach 7.43 billion dollars by 2030.

Riyadh has been part of that curve for a while. Saudi matcha imports jumped nearly 900 percent between 2022 and 2023, from 9,000 kilograms to 81,000 kilograms worth 9 million riyals, Arab News reported, with 2024 imports totaling 46,000 kilograms. At Jon and Vinny's in Riyadh, matcha now makes up 22 percent of beverage sales, and at Pro 92 Cafe, matcha lattes account for 10.5 percent of total sales and more than 150 kilograms of matcha a month across branches.

What it means for Riyadh

Riyadh's matcha cafes are plugged into the same supply chain as Tokyo, London and New York, not a separate regional market. When tencha production cannot keep pace with global orders, the leaf reaching Riyadh through import channels comes from the same shrinking harvest and the same competitive auctions pushing prices up everywhere else. The price pressure already showing up in Japan's own bottled tea market, roughly 10 percent higher in March, is a reasonable preview of what local importers are negotiating around now.

For Riyadh residents, the practical effect is less about matcha disappearing from menus and more about what a cup costs and what grade it actually contains. A market moving this fast tends to attract shortcuts, culinary-grade or blended powder sold at ceremonial-grade prices, so cafes that are transparent about sourcing region and grade are worth seeking out over ones that simply list "matcha" on the menu without detail. Given how quickly matcha has embedded itself in Riyadh's cafe culture, with venues like Jon and Vinny's and Pro 92 Cafe already drawing double-digit shares of revenue from it, a global price shock is unlikely to push residents back to coffee alone. It is more likely to reshape which cafes can hold their prices steady and which have to adjust portion sizes or blends instead.

Background

Matcha starts as tencha, tea leaves shaded from direct sunlight for several weeks before harvest to concentrate chlorophyll and amino acids, then steamed, dried and stone-ground into the fine powder that gives ceremonial-grade matcha its bright color and smooth taste. Production is concentrated in a handful of Japanese regions, with Uji near Kyoto and Kagoshima prominent among them, and the shading and hand-harvesting the process requires is labor-intensive work that does not scale quickly. A newly planted tea bush also needs years before it reaches full production, so farmers cannot simply expand supply to meet a demand curve that has moved this fast.

That mismatch has been building for a few years. Global interest in matcha, fueled by social media and a wellness-driven shift away from coffee, has grown from a niche specialty item into mainstream demand across North America, Europe and the Gulf. Forbes reporting in June found repeat purchase rates climbing among matcha drinkers, evidence the trend has moved past novelty, with close to 40 percent of matcha drinkers now replacing at least one daily coffee cup with it. Japan's farming workforce, meanwhile, is aging and shrinking, a structural limit that a single strong harvest cannot fix.

Takeaway

The matcha shortage driving up prices in Japan is not a distant story for Riyadh. The same tight tencha harvest, the same competitive export market, and the same sourcing questions are already part of how the city's matcha cafes operate. Riyadh's matcha boom is likely to keep growing, but the cafes that manage it well will be the ones honest about where their matcha comes from and what grade is actually in the cup.