When Marie David opened Lola’s Coffee Bar in the middle of 2023, “I would only make one matcha beverage a month,” she tells Broadsheet. Two years later, whisking Japanese green tea powder with hot water is a constant activity at her Tarragindi and Kelvin Grove cafes, where staff make about 2000 matcha-based drinks for Brisbane tea fiends every week.

The massive sales spike is partly driven by David’s inventive matcha recipes. One signature sees the tea mixed with vivid splashes of purple ube and bright green pandan – foods strongly connected to her Filipino heritage. Another, featuring pistachio, took six months to perfect. Lately, an elaborate banana bread matcha has been pulling the crowds.

“Our banana bread matcha is made up of four layers and is our most complicated drink yet,” David says. What began as a honeydew and banana milk experiment now evokes the baked treat that adorns many cafe counters. Fruity banana puree is lined with milk, house-made banana-bread cream and first-harvest matcha from Uji – a mountainous town south of Kyoto city and the birthplace of Japan’s matcha industry.

Japanese Buddhist monks have been whisking matcha since the 12th century, for use in tea ceremonies and as a meditation aid. But the powder’s popularity has exploded in the west only recently, thanks to its social media-ready colour, potential health benefits and general calming effect compared to coffee drinks.

David credits viral food trends like the strawberry matcha latte for turbocharging demand. When she posted Lola’s version of the drink last year, she was astonished by the queues that formed the next day, with customers willing to wait up to 90 minutes for a taste.

This boom is by no means limited to Brisbane or Australia. Japan’s agriculture ministry says global demand has doubled in the last decade and now accounts for more than half of the country’s green tea exports. In an unprecedented move, centuries-old Japanese producers Marukyu Koyamaen and Ippodo put a cap on sales last year as they struggled to keep up. Meanwhile, record numbers of tourists are flocking to Japan – Kyoto especially – to fill their cups.

Reports of a global shortage came home in November when David’s cafes ran out of the coveted ingredient. “Our farmers in Uji could not keep up with our weekly 15-kilogram matcha order,” she says. “With the new harvest, we have secured priority supply of matcha.”

While things have since stabilised for David, other businesses haven’t been so lucky. Since 2022, Derek Yang has worked with tea farms in Uji to source matcha for his two Melbourne cafes, Hikari and Lunar. But those relationships haven’t always prevented scarcity. “Sometimes we even ran out of stock for a week or two,” he tells Broadsheet.

Among Hikari’s most popular items is the Coconut Bloom: a coconut water and jasmine tea hybrid topped with shredded coconut and a pillowy cloud of matcha cream. “The jasmine tea is brewed for a period of 10 to 15 minutes, then we immediately cool it with ice [to curb astringency],” says Yang of the drink’s intricate assembly.

Like the Tokyo Banana matcha at The Sneaker Laundry Lab in Sydney, or the blueberry compote matcha at Dine by Arrival Hall in Perth, marrying matcha with other ingredients is a creative way to stretch a cafe’s limited supply. But creativity is a double-edged sword: Hikari’s Coconut Bloom was only meant to be a summer special. But it became so popular, it’s since joined the menu on a permanent basis.

Yang has seen Melbourne’s appetite for matcha intensify since 2024, with consumer interest overwhelming supply soon after. Wholesale prices tripled, and it was no longer possible to place an order and expect it to arrive from Japan within a fortnight. “We are now placing orders almost three months ahead to secure our batch,” he says. “As the demand continues to grow, we are finding new suppliers across Uji and other regions in Japan so we don’t run out of stock for our signature matcha latte.”

Still, the hiccups haven’t stopped. When Hikari received a batch of matcha in April this year, the texture and taste weren’t quite right. “The quality was not up to our standard: the grind was not fine enough,” says Yang. “We didn’t want to compromise, so we decided to return [the tea],” he says.

Tea Craft founder Arthur Tong has been selling matcha for more than a decade, supplying 40 businesses across Australia including Sydney cafes Punpun and Cafe 143. He says sales have doubled in the past 12 months. “Matcha, especially organic matcha direct from Kirishima or Uji, was never easy to obtain in the first place because the production process is slow,” he tells Broadsheet. “But about 12 months before such articles [about the shortage] came out last year, we already knew it was going to be a serious problem.”

Tong believes the situation is “probably even worse” than initial forecasts. “Right now, even as a wholesaler, I have to pre-order months in advance and … I’d be lucky to get 25 per cent of what I need from Japan. I’ve been working a fair bit with Japanese trade councils and directly with an expanding pool of prospective producers just to try to meet the demand,” he says. “Still, my supply isn’t certain. I am still on a waiting list just to buy samples.”

He adds that “the situation is grim … some areas have experienced poor weather conditions, further limiting supply along with the heightened global demand. It will definitely be an ongoing issue.”

But Tong says the problem could be partly alleviated if the Australian hospitality industry looked beyond Japan for its green tea supply. “[Let’s] promote matcha of good quality from other parts of the world like China and Korea. Especially when nearly all the cafe matcha usage is latte-based, there’s definitely suitable stuff coming out of those countries.”

In the meantime, drinkers should keep an eye out for other tea-based drinks. Tong recommends hojicha as a substitute. The roasted Japanese green tea can also be ground into a powder like matcha and it has a sweeter, matcha-adjacent flavour. “[Hojicha] is a great alternative if what you’re looking for is a powdered tea that works well with all milks,” he says.

Likewise, any cafe with green tea on the menu has alternatives worth considering. Take Lola’s Coffee Bar: “Although our matchas are popular, our dirty iced ube and dirty iced pandan drinks are equally as popular,” David sats.

In Sydney, Comeco Foods serves an intriguing menu of matcha-free Japanese lattes, from black sesame sweetened with maple syrup to kuromamecha, a beverage made with premium black soybeans from Kyoto. “[Kuromame] is hard to find in Australia,” says owner Yu Ozone, who grew up in Japan. “Every time I have it, it brings back warm, nostalgic memories.”