How Rocky’s Matcha founder built a blossoming tea brand after being told to quit coffee

The story of Rocky’s Matcha begins not with a business plan, but with a shaman. It was the summer of 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic had brought the world to a halt. At the time, Rocky Xu was working as the global head of brand partnerships for Beats by Dre. He had worked in the corporate world for a long time and, seeking clarity, he enrolled in a 21-day chakra cleanse with a shaman. It was easy enough, but, as Xu was leaving, he was given one final, gutting task. “He hit me with the Steve Jobs ‘One more thing,’” he says. “The shaman told me I needed to stop drinking coffee. Forever.” The reasoning was simple: coffee creates peaks and valleys in energy and temperament. The shaman told Xu, who at the time drank two to three cups a day, that he should switch to a gentler, more sustained source of caffeine. So began his matcha obsession. He founded Rocky’s Matcha in 2022, which sells a range of high-quality matchas from Japan online. The company has since grown into a multichannel business with over 100,000 orders to date. Xu – who still maintains his nine-to-five at Beats by Dre – works with various sources and producers, including companies in the US with ties to Japan and Japanese farmers with expertise inherited from the generations before them. One such partnership is with Horii Shichimeien, a family business from Uji, in Kyoto, that has produced Uji matcha since 1879. Sold by 125 retailers in the US alone, Rocky’s Matcha has appeared everywhere from the Felix Art Fair at The Hollywood Roosevelt hotel in Los Angeles to Paris Fashion Week and Milan Design Week. Its first official store recently opened at Ew.Pharmacy #106, a dried flower shop in Harajuku, Tokyo, operated by floral artist Megumi Shinozaki of creative studio Edenworks. An upcoming collaboration will see the tea brand team up with a Los Angeles art gallery for “Circle House” – a contemporary version of a Japanese teahouse built by artist Oscar Tuazon. The space will feature tatami mats imported from Kyoto, and Xu is in talks with tea practitioners to lead traditional tea ceremonies there in the coming months. Xu extends his philosophy – that authenticity in the art of matcha reigns above all else – across his entire brand. There are no strawberry matcha lattes, mango matcha frappes or sugary desserts at the Harajuku outpost. The simple menu features plain matcha (either hot or iced), a matcha latte and hojicha latte. There are options for dairy or oat milk, and sweetened or unsweetened. That is it. “We don’t want to lean into what’s trending. We want tradition and craft,” Xu says. He is careful not to criticise popular matcha cafes – he diplomatically calls them “kitschy” – that have sprung up to cater to tourists. But the distinction is central to his brand identity. Rocky’s Matcha is not trying to be the next viral sensation. It is focused on quality, education and the story behind the product. The online options are just as intentional and thoughtful, with a curated selection of matcha varieties designed for a specific purpose. From balanced ceremonial blends to bolder flavours better for lattes, the collection is intentionally kept focused. For beginners, the essentials set provides everything needed to start a home matcha practice, pairing a 40-gram tin with a traditional bamboo whisk, scoop and whisk holder. Xu started this journey long before the “matcha boom” on TikTok and other social media platforms, when cafes began offering variations of the tea on every corner. Surprisingly, even then, matcha was not half as popular as it has become now. “When Japan reopened in 2022, I went for the first time post-Covid-19,” Xu says. “There were literally no matcha shops. I would bring my own matcha, my own sifter, my own whisk, and make it in my hotel.” That scarcity is almost unimaginable today, but Xu watched this transformation unfold, fuelled by a broader cultural reckoning that has catapulted Asian food, beauty trends and entertainment into the Western mainstream. Over the past few years, what was once considered niche in Asian culture has become impossible to ignore. K-pop stars sell out stadiums in minutes. Korean dramas dominate Netflix’s global top-10 list. On TikTok and Instagram, everything from Japanese skincare routines to Chinese street food has become viral content, generating millions of views and sparking a wave of cultural curiosity that shows no signs of slowing. As the son of immigrants who arrived in the US from China’s Hunan province, Xu has found this journey surreal. As a child, he remembers being embarrassed by the food his parents cooked and the traditions they brought from China – the herbal jelly, the ginseng, the practices that marked him as different. He always felt caught between two worlds. “I felt like such a weirdo. Like, I would never tell anybody. Now, 30 years later, people are making TikToks about it. It’s awesome,” he says. At the same time, Xu has watched the cultural landscape shift around him. The pandemic brought a wave of anti-Asian hate, but just a few years later, “Chinese summer” and “Chinamaxxing” are trending on social media. Seemingly overnight, Asian culture has become the hottest new thing. Rather than jarring, Xu views the extreme shift in a positive light. “I try not to look at things through the lens of race. It’s really easy to fall into stereotypes. I choose to see the beauty in the things we share as human beings. What we like to say is that you can always find mutual ground over a cup of tea,” he says. “And I don’t necessarily think that we’re riding a wave. I think we found something; we stumbled into it being the right place, right time. We started before matcha became so big, and everybody that’s been working as second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-generation artists started way before us. “We owe it to them – the producers, the tea masters, the generations who have kept this tradition alive. We want to honour as much of the tradition as we can, and we owe it to them to tell their story.” Xu’s passion for matcha extends beyond his own brand. Ask him about other spots and he rattles off a list of favourites – a global network of cafes and purveyors that have shaped his approach. In New York, he credits Cha Cha Matcha, which opened in 2016, as one of the early pioneers. He also praises the team at Kettl – a tea company with locations in New York and Los Angeles. “Zach Mangan is kind of like the sensei when it comes to tea in America. He’s the Yoda master,” Xu says of Kettl’s founder. He also praises the team behind New York’s 12 Matcha, as well as West Hollywood’s Community Goods. As for Tokyo joints, Xu mentions Sakurai in Aoyama and, when it comes to Paris, he recommends Dreamin Man, run by a couple from Shizuoka, in central Japan. “They’re living the 2025 version of what my parents did in the late 80s and 90s – immigrating and building their dream. They specialise in coffee, but we work with them for matcha. They’re great.” When it comes to an end goal, Xu wants Rocky’s Matcha to be a mixture of Blue Bottle Coffee and luxury fragrance brand Byredo – a marriage of speciality brew culture and high-end branding in a matcha company that is both accessible and aspirational. But he is realistic about the timeline. “Do I wish we had 50 or 100 cafes all over the world? Sure. Is that on the cards in the next 18 months? Probably not.” Despite the brand’s success, Xu is not ready to leave his full-time job just yet. The current set-up works, allowing him the financial standing to be picky and avoid shortcuts for profit. “I’m not in a rush to grow this into a US$100 million or billion-dollar business that we have to sell. It’s about taking care of our employees, taking care of the people in our supply chain. We’re only here because of the community that supported us from day one,” he says. “That’s part of the reason we don’t want to latch onto trends. We want to be intentional, and we don’t want to be here today and gone tomorrow.” Rocky’s Matcha is available online and at select retailers in the US, with its flagship location Ew.Pharmacy #106 at 1/F Harajuku Quest, 1-13-14 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.

How Rocky’s Matcha founder built a blossoming tea brand after being told to quit coffee

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Rocky Xu, who started Rocky’s Matcha in 2022, focuses on selling quality, authentic Japanese tea rather than trying to be a viral sensation

Rocky Xu, who started Rocky’s Matcha in 2022, focuses on selling quality, authentic Japanese tea rather than trying to be a viral sensation