Why Us?

Breakaway Matcha is Obsessed

Why is our matcha experience so different from everyone else’s? Obsession.

We’re obsessed with great flavor, and obsessed with innovation in serving it. Most of all, we’re obsessed with developing great relationships with growers, producers, and customers.

We do this by being respectful and by assuming the best in people, and it’s amazing how well it works.

The obsession begins on the farm. We source directly from farmers we know, like, and trust. We pay them premium prices for extraordinary matcha, and are very happy to help provide them a good living wage. We buy the sweetest, most umami-filled tencha leaves in Japan, blend and grind them to order, and find global markets for them.

Extraordinary means 18 grades of matcha, graded according to rigorous criteria we’ve developed ourselves. We’re really, really serious about producing great matcha.

One last obsession: We want to make human lives better. We love powering brains and bodies with the ultimate in nutrition. We work hard on creating experiences that delight on both the cellular and conscious levels. We want you to discover where great matcha can take you, and hope that you’ll invite us along for the ride. We’re optimists, and we’re obsessed!

Our Farmers and Craftsmen Are Obsessed

We source matcha directly from smaller farmers and producers who are committed to the very highest standards they can muster (and in Japan, this equates to obsession). They tend to not speak much English, aren’t interested in scaling, and don’t have websites. Many of our farmers have been working the same land for 20 or more generations.

They live and work Japan’s three primary growing regions that specialize in matcha: Uji, Nishio, and Kagoshima. More than 95% of their yields are consumed domestically, and we consider ourselves extremely lucky to have access to these remarkably trustworthy and experienced people.

This goes for our ceramicists, too — they’re as obsessed about quality and originality as we are. You can see it and feel it in the one-of-a-kind pieces they create for us.

Obsessive Blending

Matcha is a lot like wine. Growing regions express different terroirs, and even within terroirs there are microterroirs. Blending matcha from several terroirs produces matcha that’s complex, consistent, and delicious.

We also combine and blend harvests from different “vintages.” Each year in May the new harvest takes place, and those newly harvested leaves will get combined with leaves from previous harvests. Obsessive artisanal farmers only harvest once a year, in contrast to matcha farmers who are trying to maximize yield and thus harvest two and even three or more times annually.

It’s important to blend previous vintages with current vintages for consistency and taste. We want our signature blends to taste similarly year in and year out, so we blend accordingly. Matcha also develops deep flavor profiles that tend toward the sweet and umami laden when harvests are artfully combined.

This is why our matcha tastes so good.

Obsessive Customer Care

While it might sound ridiculous to the cynical, we really do treat people like family. We invite customers to Breakaway HQ, visit customers everywhere, write personal notes, call customers up. We solve logistical issues, make shipping miracles happen, create special gifts, and really make an effort to delight, to overdeliver. Got a logistical challenge for us? We love them — try us!

We try to bring out the best in people by being OUR best. It’s incredible how simple this idea is, and how well it actually works. Our tribe of matcha drinkers are some of the kindest, most interesting people walking the earth.

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