Matcha boom doubles in Australia as $8 green lattes become café staple

Donna Win tasted matcha for the first time in Japan in 2019 and found something coffee could never give her—a drink that didn't make her hands shake. The 27-year-old small business owner had always preferred green tea to the bitter intensity of coffee, and when she encountered the vivid green latte, it felt like discovery. Back in Sydney months later, she was struck by how rare the drink was in local cafes. Within a few years, that scarcity would vanish entirely.

Today, matcha has become as ordinary on Australian cafe menus as flat whites and cappuccinos. The transformation has been swift and total. Win and her sister launched the Matcha Club in 2024, a social gathering for enthusiasts who wanted to explore the city's growing matcha offerings together—a venture that would have seemed unnecessary just a handful of years earlier. The standard price for an iced matcha latte now hovers around eight dollars, roughly two dollars more than a conventional milk coffee, yet young Australians have shown no resistance to the premium. An annual report from the ordering platform Hey You and Westpac DataX documented a 133 percent year-on-year increase in matcha orders, with customers under 35 driving nearly all of that growth.

The Japanese beverage, traditionally prepared unsweetened and without milk through an elaborate tea ceremony, has shed its ceremonial origins and entered the mainstream with remarkable speed. On TikTok alone, over five million videos carry the #matcha hashtag, translating digital enthusiasm into brick-and-mortar reality. International chains and independent cafes alike now stock the powder, and the glowing green drink has become a fixture of urban cafe culture across the country.

But the boom has consequences that ripple back to its source. Japanese matcha production, concentrated in Kyoto, is straining under global demand. The wholesale price of tencha—the loose leaves ground into matcha powder—has surged 69 percent in a single year. In 2025, a kilogram cost around 8,235 yen, or roughly 82 Australian dollars. By 2026, that same kilogram averaged 13,972 yen, or approximately 122 dollars. The economics of the trend are reshaping the supply chain in real time.

Sarah Xu, a thirtysomething operations manager, switched from her daily oat latte to matcha last year, drawn by what she perceived as a gentler start to her mornings. She believes the drink offers genuine health advantages over coffee—matcha is indeed rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, though it contains a substance that can interfere with medication absorption. She customizes her matcha with supplements like cacao for mental clarity or keratin for muscle recovery, treating it as part of a broader wellness routine. Win has observed the same pattern among members of her social club: many are fleeing the afternoon energy crash that follows coffee. A typical serving of matcha contains roughly 70 milligrams of caffeine compared to 80 to 100 milligrams in coffee, a meaningful difference for those sensitive to the stimulant.

Jade Gillis, a 24-year-old hospitality worker, doesn't identify as either a coffee or tea drinker, yet matcha has become her drink of choice—she orders it three or four times weekly and credits it with brightening her day. Both Gillis and Win acknowledge the visual dimension of matcha's appeal without apology. The color is striking, almost unnatural in its vibrancy, and the drink photographs exceptionally well. Gillis notes with wry self-awareness that matcha has become entangled with a particular lifestyle aesthetic, one that feels distant from its ceremonial roots—the image of young women doing pilates and carrying farmers market bags filled with vegetables. Yet all three women insist the trend has moved beyond fleeting fashion. When McDonald's adds matcha to its menu, Win observes, you know it has crossed into permanence.

For those wanting to prepare matcha at home, the process is straightforward but benefits from proper technique. Taka Kaneko, founder of Edomatcha and a certified Japanese tea instructor, notes that beginners can simply use a spoon to mix the powder with water, though achieving the traditional smooth, velvety texture requires a chansen—a bamboo whisk that costs between 30 and 80 dollars. Kaneko combines 1.5 to 2 grams of matcha powder with 60 to 80 milliliters of water heated to 70 to 80 degrees Celsius, then whisks in an M-shaped motion, starting slowly before building to vigorous speed to create the characteristic foam. The most common mistake among newcomers is misjudging the powder-to-water ratio; too little creates a watery drink, while too much produces something thick and astringent. The quality of the matcha itself matters as well. Rather than relying on marketing labels like ceremonial or culinary grade, Kaneko recommends looking for matcha marked as first harvested, an indicator that the leaves were picked at their peak.