How Ujien Elevates Tea While Preserving Its Storied Traditions

In 2022, Japan exported USD 178 million worth of tea, making it the ninth-largest tea exporter globally. Key export destinations include the United States, Taiwan, and Germany, with the US alone accounting for nearly half of Japan’s tea exports. Japan is famous worldwide for its green teas, including matcha, sencha, and hojicha. What makes Japanese tea unique, and why do you think it is so popular abroad, especially in the United States?

One thing I would like to mention is that ever since we had the great earthquake in East Japan in 2011, the export of Japanese tea has been quite difficult. The Japanese industry went through a hard time for five years, but after that, we started seeing a global health boom. That health-conscious trend helped us overcome these five to six years of difficulty. That was especially true in North America, where they placed a lot of focus on Japanese tea for its health benefits. Green tea has been known as a health product in Japan for a long time, but it started to attract attention globally around that time.

Japan doesn’t have a lot of obese people, and Japanese people tend to live long lives, so I think North Americans think Japanese people are healthy because they drink green tea. Also, in North America recently, you can’t be promoted at some companies unless you are fit, so that has been the recent trend and is part of the reason they are focused on their health. North America also doesn’t have public health insurance, so if you are not healthy, that’s going to be costly. That’s another reason why they are interested in Japanese green tea.

To build off some of the things you mentioned, Japanese tea is known for being very healthy. Can you elaborate on what makes Japanese tea, and more specifically the tea you offer, very healthy?

Among all the Japanese teas, we are seeing a special booming interest in matcha. Some foreigners actually think that Japanese people are drinking matcha every day, which is not at all the case. We sometimes find it a little uncomfortable. Many Japanese people actually drink matcha in Starbucks.

In reality, from my perspective, Japanese people don’t drink green tea that often. They prefer drinking water, but thanks to the PET bottles, the green tea culture in Japan has survived and thrived. Some Japanese tea shop owners don’t like PET bottles, but in my opinion, those bottles play a very important role in the Japanese tea world. Without those bottles, the Japanese tea culture would not exist or be as strong as it is today.

The biggest uniqueness of our business is not a particular product but the contribution to the culture. We actually make a lot of minor changes to the products over time depending on the trends, but the basic mindset and dedication to the Japanese tea industry have remained unchanged for the last 155 years. Our uniqueness does not lie in the products themselves but rather in the mindset and spirit. We really want to contribute to everyone’s health, and that’s the reason that we have been able to survive for so long.

What are your strengths in product development that allow you to adapt to all the changing trends within the industry?

The chairman and I both like traveling a lot. Whenever we travel, we do a lot of research on the culture of those countries, and we look at what drives the customs of those cultures. It is important for us to have the ability to capture those trends and bring them back to Japan. Of course, we do the same research in Japan. We do our best to think about how we can incorporate those trends with Japanese green tea.

Of course, not all tea variants are trendy, and we maintain a commitment to the base tea products that are not part of a trend while we continue to develop new products that are in line with the trends.

Which product would you say is the most trending product today?

I think that is hojicha and genmai. Sencha is the green tea that has always been the preference for serving important guests, but if we can change that kind of mindset or bias, then people may start serving hojicha or genmai. What’s most important is whether we can change the mindset, but it’s extremely difficult to change such a mindset, especially in a company that has been around for a long time.

We are always changing stereotypes, and when I talk to my staff members, I always use the example of Darwin’s theory of evolution. In that theory, you will not survive just when you are just strong; you can only survive only when you can adapt. For us to survive, we cannot just have a strong product; we need to adapt to the times and trends. This is our mindset and philosophy.

Talking about adapting to challenges and overcoming challenges, one of the biggest challenges that the food and beverage industry in Japan, and Japan as a whole, is experiencing is a shrinking market and an aging population. Because of this, many Japanese companies are looking to attract more tourists to stores to buy their products or are looking overseas to find new opportunities. With your spirit of always being able to adapt, what type of strategies are you using to overcome this shrinking consumer base and the fact that Japanese people are no longer drinking as much tea as they used to?

Before COVID-19, we were too focused on inbound tourists because we thought that the boom of inbound tourists would continue forever. After the pandemic, we realized we cannot just rely on the inbound tourist side, but we cannot just rely on the outbound side either. We have to pursue both so that we can continue to survive.

Speaking of the outbound side of your business, what kind of success have your products had internationally, and which countries do you think offer the most growth potential for your company?

What is good about the Gottas series is that when you open the lid, you can enjoy the same taste with the same aroma wherever you are in the world. Of course, since we make the tea leaves, we want to sell those, but that poses a really high hurdle because of the complexity of making tea and because the use of water is very important. I think water is the most important element for making tea. For example, in France, the water is hard, but in Japan, it is very soft. Hard water means a very good fragrance and soft water means a very good umami, so these are very different experiences. Therefore, soft water is absolutely necessary for Japanese green tea. That is why we are selling ready-to-drink tea.

Another issue is about making toasts with Japanese tea because somebody needs to make and serve the tea, so who is going to do that in other countries? Even in the Japanese embassy, they make the toast with wine or sake, but not with green tea, so that’s very disappointing from our perspective, especially since there are many people in the world who don’t drink alcohol, including me. If we can change this mindset and tradition, we could have a lot of success in the global market.

One fascinating aspect of the tea business is how products vary with the seasons. A notable example from your company is the Sencha Hakufuku Sempo tea, which is only available in autumn. My understanding is that this tea is carefully harvested in spring and aged at low temperatures, ensuring its unique flavor profile for the autumn season. How do seasonal changes influence the products you offer, and how do the flavors evolve each season?

I think the four seasons in Japan are the biggest attraction of the country. You can enjoy cherry blossoms in spring, green leaves in summer, red leaves in autumn, and snow in the winter. I think this is something that we should be really proud of, and it is the most attractive aspect of Japan. Japanese tea represents Japanese culture, so that’s why we think we should provide different teas for the different seasons.

We have a sakura or cherry blossom green tea product at the beginning of spring, and at the end of spring, we sell tea with new tea leaves. In summer, we have a cold brew with cold water, and in the autumn, when the season gets cold, we sell aged tea leaves. Since we want to reflect the Japanese culture in our products, I think that it’s our responsibility to reflect the seasonal elements in those products.

Do you have a favorite seasonal tea?

I like the sakura green tea. Typically, when you see green tea with cherry blossom flavor, they just add the flavor artificially, but in our case, we use the young cherry blossom leaves together with the tea leaves.

Beyond your tea business, you also expanded into the confectionery industry in 2006 with the launch of the sweets workshop Cha No Iro, a collaboration between tea masters and pastry chefs. This marked a significant step in the production and sale of sweets, including fresh chocolate and ice cream. Today, you offer a diverse range of confections such as matcha and hojicha sweets, fresh chocolate, tea leaf cookies, and more. What are the main synergies you can generate between your confectionery and tea business, and is this a growing area of your business?

Looking back at our history a bit, I mentioned the difficult period after the earthquake, but way before that we also had a really difficult time across the industry for green tea and we thought that the Japanese tea culture may disappear sometime soon. Nevertheless, we had the fighting spirit and mindset to revive the tea industry in Japan. We thought we might survive if we developed a kind of confectionery using matcha, so that was the starting point.

Before that, most of the tea companies had the belief that the best thing to serve the guests was tea made with tea leaves. We decided to develop confectionery using matcha, and some people questioned that, but we thought that was one way for us to survive as an industry, and I think that generated a very good synergy with traditional tea.

What is your most popular confectionery product?

Fresh chocolate, especially the Mounteblanco soft ice cream.

Despite the rise in e-commerce, stores still play an important role in all industries. You have a store here in Osaka and a location in Ginza in Tokyo as well. You also opened a store in Hong Kong in 2017. Why did you decide to open a location in Hong Kong, and what role do these physical locations play in creating a community around your company?

Our philosophy for the business is quite abstract, but that is connection or networking, and often a connection or network with people that drives us to do something new. We had a very good connection with a customer in Hong Kong at that time, and that customer was really passionate and enthusiastic about collaborating. We were not really looking at any specific country or region, but that connection was an impetus to act.

So, whenever I see people who are really reliable and if those people are passionate about collaborating with us and distributing our product, then we decide to collaborate. That is also linked to our spirit or mindset, but we are not very particular about which country we would like to go to. Instead, we would like to find reliable partners who are really enthusiastic about distributing Ujien. I think that is the path for us to expand Japanese green tea in the global market, regardless of the country.

Speaking of networking, we have seen in many interviews the importance of partnerships both from a product development perspective and for opening new markets. You work with bakers to develop your confectionery range and open your overseas stores. Can you tell us more about the role partnerships play in your business, especially in terms of overseas expansion and product development? Are you currently looking for any new international partnerships?

If you ask me whether we are looking for new partnerships, the answer is always yes. The most important thing for product development is localization. As I mentioned earlier, different countries have different water, different cultures, and different appetites or preferences.

When tourists come to Japan, they enjoy typical or traditional Japanese food and beverages as part of their travel experience, but that doesn’t mean the same product can be popular in their home markets. When we entered the Hong Kong market, we had pride in our products and shops, so we wanted to bring the existing shop or the current product lineup as they were to Hong Kong. We wanted to transfer exactly the same recipe to Hong Kong, but as we talked with our trusted partner there, many times we started realizing that enjoying tea in a different country is just a one-time travel experience, so in order for us to expand or survive in the Hong Kong market, the shop needed to be part of the daily life of those consumers. A daily taste is very important for customers in Hong Kong.

Talking about your shops, what kind of experience can customers expect when they visit one of your locations?

The shop in Omotesando of Tokyo is just a small shop providing some sweets, but if you come to the shop in Osaka, what we want to boast about is that you can see many employees from different countries working there. In fact, there are people from twenty different countries, including Vietnam, France, and Argentina. This is really rare, especially among the historical companies in Japan.

The experience we can provide customers there is not only to buy the tea but also a comfortable atmosphere where they can feel at home and hear their mother tongue. That’s because when we visit France, we want to be greeted in French and experience the foreign language, but when we actually buy something, we want someone to explain things to us in our own language. Once customers have a comfortable experience at the shop, they buy more, so my approach to omotenashi or hospitality is to have an authentic shop, but one where you can find rich diversity inside.

Ujien is celebrating its 155th anniversary. Please imagine that we will come back in five years for your 160th anniversary to interview you again. What dreams and goals would you like to achieve over the next five years for your company, and how would you like your company to be seen in the eyes of our readers?

We would like to be a company that may not be strong but is persistent, resilient, and adaptable, even through the hard times. We would also like to extend our connections with reliable people so that we can find even more partners in many countries. We would also like to contribute to people’s health, not just in Japan but worldwide.

To read more about Ujien, check out this article about them

For more information, please visit their website at: https://www.uji-en.co.jp/