Back in 2019, we started Gathers as a Taiwanese Milk Tea / Boba Shop and dabbled in Matcha. But as a small business owner, we’re always learning and growing because, after all, we didn’t buy into a franchise or a developed business. Our goal and mission has always been to find and source the highest quality teas as we learn more about the industry and grow with it.

In the beginning, we didn’t know much about matcha (like the technical stuff), but we knew how to make a matcha latte. Matcha was one of the teas we wanted to focus on because we wanted to improve our drinks and find the best quality we can source. In our first year, we were grabbing matcha from grocery stores, then we started working with local suppliers, and over time, we connected with matcha wholesalers in the U.S. By year 3, we found ourselves diving deeper, connecting with tea farmers in Japan—specifically from Uji, Kyoto - and sourcing directly from the birthplace and world capital of matcha!

This journey has been about constantly improving. We’ve gone through five different iterations of matcha, always striving to step up our quality.

Our goal is to bring in different regions of matcha and educate you, our followers, on the different types of matcha, regions, cultivars, and qualities. It’s all about the little details, just like tasting notes in a fine tea. This is something I want to dive deeper into, and I can’t wait to share it with you all, especially those of you in the Chicago market, so we can better understand the depths of matcha together.