January 2020 Newsletter
- about d:matcha tea field （by Chisei T. )
It becomes colder and colder day by day. Being cold is very hard for people, on the other hand, it is very good for tea quality.
Young tea buds are dormant (asleep) in cold weather, that's why they sprout all at once in spring.
However, cold is not always better for tea quality. In general, the color of the leaves change to brown at - 13℃（8.6℉) and tea leaves and stems are dead at - 15℃ (5℉).
The following measures are necessary in Wazuka town, where the cold is severe.
- Cut the autumn branches and leaves at the right time and give a lot of organic fertilizer
When day time becomes shorter after cutting autumn branches and leaves, the ratio of the water gets lower and the concentration of the tea cell fluid gets higher. Then they can prevent cold weather, like that phenomenon: fresh water is freezed easier than sugared water. Tea trees get damaged if the tea can't make the water ratio lower if you cut late autumn branches and leaves.
In conclusion, to give a lot of organic fertilizer and to cut the autumn branches and leaves at the right time is important to prevent damage from cold weather.
- Cut the autumn branches and leaves even
Temperature is very different by only 2-3cm. If you cut deeply (uneven), cold air accumulates. Then that part becomes damaged.
- A short story during lunch（by Natsuki S.）
One day, two customers came to our cafe at lunch time. We talked a lot about our company and what we are doing. After they had lunch, they tried our tea tasting and we talked about our tea products. When they left our cafe, they said: "Thank you for talking, we had fun and we found a nice tea shop, so we will come back here again". Talking about tea and when our customers find their favorite Japanese tea, I'm so happy. It's not easy to make all customers happy, but we can try to by keeping in our mind how to give good service to our customers.
- about d:matcha （ by Daiki T.）
In the first week of Dec. 2019, we visited our three FC stores in Cebu Philippines. We started the first store in Cebu on June 2018 because my MBA classmate in the U.S. introduced me to a shop owner of Cebu who already runs a ramen chain in Cebu. He opened two stores in 2019.
We feel so happy that we can promote our Wazuka tea in Cebu, but at the same time we were challenged to fit our products and service to the local market.
In Cebu, there are customers who travel a lot and know a lot about tea. However, the majority of the customers prefer a sweet taste. So we need to think of how we can keep the authenticity of the tea and to attract the mass customers.
The other difficulties are to source the ingredients. For example, we can not purchase mascarpone in Cebu, so we need to pay more for dairy products than in Japan. In Japan, matcha tiramisu is one of the most popular products, but I stopped to sell the tiramisu in Cebu, instead. I developed the cheesecake by using the cream cheese.
I enjoyed a lot confronting these challenges and adjustments. I feel that our flexibility is a very important value. Customers are always super important and we need to be humble about the customer’s needs without breaking our core brand value.
Now we are developing a new drink menu of bubble tea as an entry to the green tea world. I am so happy that they will enjoy our single origin tea taste in the future.
