Matcha hits peak in Edmonton, but experts warn trend may not last
Matcha’s current popularity in Edmonton has been driven primarily by social media, but it may not be sustainable, says one local tea flavourist.
“It looks very trendy online, and eventually everyone has to try it and decide whether it will continue to be a part of their day or not,” Sarah Proudlock, owner of tea wholesaler The Tea Girl, said. “This is the top of the bubble, but it will level off.”
Matcha is defined as a finely-ground powder of shade-grown green tea. It was introduced to Japan in the 12th century, and the country produces most of the matcha consumed worldwide today. Matcha is prepared by whisking the powder with water. The ubiquitous matcha latte is made by adding milk and optional flavouring agents or sweeteners.
This summer, Edmonton has seen no less than four matcha-focused pop-ups, including Meet Your Matcha, The Girly Pop Café, Never the Same Company, and Whisked (which just transitioned from a pop-up to being available daily at Kommune Snack Bar). Many other local cafés have added matcha-based drinks to their menus, something Proudlock has found to be seasonally-induced.
“The whole trend is driven by the summer,” Proudlock said. “If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have thought matcha would be considered a winter drink. I would have never expected it to be driven by strawberry matchas. But it is very visual, bright green and red and white. One of my cafés said that some days, they sell more matcha than coffee.”
Proudlock has seen the appetite for matcha grow exponentially over the last several years. “No one can ever predict booms,” Proudlock said. “It was a small part of what I did but now it is a big part. Twenty-eight of the cafés I supply to now serve matcha, many of them in small town Alberta.”
The Tea Girl supplies matcha to several Edmonton cafés, including Rogue Wave Coffee, Labo Coffee, and Felice Café, plus The Nest with locations in Lamont, St. Paul, and Vegreville, and CAFN8 in Bonnyville. Proudlock shared that her wholesale quantities have doubled every year since 2020, and by August 2025, had already sold more matcha than in all of 2024.
Proudlock said the eye-catching appeal of matcha helped it spread widely on social media, especially during the pandemic when people were glued to their screens. She credits Edmonton’s strong café culture for matcha propagation locally.
“Per capita we have a lot of cafés for our population,” Proudlock said, who ran her own café from 2010 to 2018. “Then people started to ask for matcha. Coffee shops used to have a chai latte, London fog, and now, it’s a matcha latte.”
At Chinatown café and cocktail bar Boa and Hare, Kelly Yu has seen that demand firsthand. Matcha-based drinks (including its most popular, a strawberry matcha latte) make up almost two-thirds of its café sales. Yu believes attention to process, water temperature, and recipes sets Boa and Hare apart from others.
Kelly Yu of Boa and Hare with their signature strawberry matcha latte
“A while back, our team went to different cafés to try different matchas,” Yu said. “I was seeing places that were not whisking the matcha correctly, not using the correct equipment, not taking care of the equipment. Our matcha lattes are measured by grams. Other cafés made the drinks too sweet which takes out the grassy earthiness. We are matcha-forward.”
It is also important for Yu and her staff not to mislead customers about the type of matcha being used. Boa and Hare sources its matcha from Tea Monde, a Calgary-based supplier with close ties to farmers in the Kagoshima region.
“I like to describe my matcha as second harvest matcha,” Yu said. “First harvest is perfect, leaves with the best-looking outward appearance (before they are milled). Second harvest is taking more imperfections.”
Yu said many cafés are trying to exploit the trend and the general public’s lack of knowledge by misusing terms such as “ceremonial grade” in order to imply a level of quality that may not be accurate. “People will capitalize on it and people think that it will be better,” Yu said. “It is good to try new things but not let yourself fall for marketing.”
Proudlock echoes that sentiment, and acknowledges that while one of the two types of matcha she sells is labelled “ceremonial”, she said it is used “tongue in cheek, with it being a way for Western North Americans to understand it.”
For Proudlock, it is key that the matcha used is appropriate for the end product. “Get the right tea for the right application,” she said. “For example, when you mix high-grade matcha with milk you lose the flavour. You want it to be bright and green and blended for that but you want it to be more bitter so it will cut through the flavour of milk.”
At Boa and Hare, Yu’s love of matcha is partly due to its role as a vehicle for creativity, as the café encourages her to experiment. To commemorate the Filipino Sari Sari Mercado that took place in Chinatown on Aug. 31, she created an ube sapin-sapin matcha with ube syrup and salted coconut foam. Boa and Hare offers a weekly matcha drink special to entice return visits.
Yu is considering ways to better share her knowledge of matcha. As a result, she will lead monthly matcha classes starting in September. The one-hour session will teach participants how to make matcha at home, including syrups, and all attendees will take home a matcha kit with powder and syrups. Dates and more information will be shared on Boa and Hare’s Instagram page.
Yu believes customers will continue to patronize cafés like Boa and Hare because they specialize in matcha. “Edmonton is late to trends, and there are many business owners trying to capitalize on it right now,” Yu said. “I think cafés that focus on matcha will last, but for those just adding it to the menu because it is trendy, no.”
Proudlock, who has been enjoying matcha herself for more than 20 years, looks forward to the hunger for matcha stabilizing. “It’s an amazing product, but it would be good for people to slow down a bit,” Proudlock said. “Like everything, we need to stop overconsuming it.”
Openings
- Wish Delish, will be opening at 364 Saddleback Road NW, serving pasta, baked goods, and pouring coffee from The Colombian.
- Taproot highlighted forthcoming bar Coco’s Cocktails & Agave Bar, to open in the Sylbert building on 105 Street near Jasper Avenue in October
Upcoming Events
- Savour returns to Strathcona County celebrating the area’s food, art and music on September 7 at the Strathcona County Community Centre.
- Eats on 118 returns this fall on September 11, 25, and October 2 and 16. Tickets are $56 and each tour will include samples at three businesses.
- Barrel Fest, the 3rd annual festival of barrel-aged and barrel-fermented beer, will take place in Ritchie Park on September 13. Entry tickets are $43.89.
Local News
- Sang has completed their renovations and are now re-open with an all-you-can-eat menu of Korean BBQ and sushi. It is too bad they couldn’t continue the hanjeongsik concept as they conceived it.
- Design magazine Wallpaper wrote a feature on Daniel Costa’s trio of restaurants in Citizen on Jasper.
- Strathcona County’s new agricultural hub, The Pointe Agricultural Event Centre, opened at the end of August.
What I Ate
- It’s become a bit of an end-of-summer tradition for our family to take in the Disney in Concert at Churchill Square every year. And Drift is as much a part of that tradition, too!
Buttermilk chicken sandwich from Drift
- While running errands in Old Strathcona on the weekend, we grabbed a couple of the smoked meat sandwiches from Beb’s Bagel’s pop-up at The Hub. They were as delectable as I had hoped, with perfectly tender meat. Good news – Beb’s (and Balay Coffee) will both continue their residency into September.
Beb’s x Meuwly’s smoked meat sandwich
- It was so great to see how packed Chinatown was on Sunday for the Summer Festival and Sari Sari Mercado. With the hot weather, it was also a great excuse to cool down at Little Bon Bon afterwards.
Emily at the Sari Sari Mercado
Only Here for the Food 