Our First U.S. Trade Show: A Japanese Tea Family in New York

A few years into building our U.S. operation, I packed a suitcase full of tea and flew to New York City for the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show. The Japanese government, through its trade-promotion arm, had organized a Japan Pavilion at the event, and we were given a small booth to introduce Sugimoto tea to American buyers. It was our first major U.S. trade show, and I came home from it with a clear picture of what we were trying to do in the US.

A buzzing Japan Pavilion and an unexpected conversation from Paris

The Japan Pavilion was busy from the moment the doors opened. A long row of producers had come over from all over Japan with everything from rice and miso to specialty soy sauces and confections. Buyers, chefs, and importers worked the aisles. For someone used to running a small and quiet U.S. office, the energy was electric.

We had brought our sencha, our matcha, and a few samples for buyers to take with them. I spent the first morning brewing one cup at a time at the booth, talking with anyone who stopped at the booth, and noting what people actually responded to. The pattern was clear within an hour: a careful, properly brewed cup of green tea — something most American buyers had never been served — opened a longer and more productive conversation than any pitch deck could.

The most memorable conversation I had that week was not with an American buyer at all. A man stopped at our booth, tasted our sencha, and introduced himself as the owner of a high-end Japanese-tea cafe in Paris. Premium Japanese tea, he told me, was quietly booming in Paris — a city that takes its food culture seriously and that, in his words, has a deep appetite for the real thing. His customers were not looking for cheap, commodity. They were looking for honmono — authenticity.

I had not expected to learn about the future of Japanese tea in America from the owner of a tea cafe in Paris. But the conversation stayed with me.

A New York sushi chef on what Americans want now

A few aisles over, I struck up a conversation with a sushi chef working at a respected restaurant in Manhattan. Sushi has been a household word in the U.S. for a long time by then, but he told me something I keep coming back to: more and more of his customers were asking for proper nigiri — well-cut fish on lightly seasoned rice — instead of the rolls that built the first sushi wave in America.

It was the same pattern. Americans who had been introduced to a category through its accessible version were starting, in real numbers, to ask for the version closer to the source.

That is the moment we are in. People who started with matcha lattes are asking what good matcha actually tastes like. People who drank bottled green tea are asking what brewed sencha is supposed to taste like. People who learned to like sushi through California rolls are now sitting at counters where the chef hands them a single piece of fluke. The cafe owner from Paris and the chef from New York were describing the same shift in two different cities — a market maturing.

Japanese tea in America, honestly

should be candid about the harder side of what I saw at that show. Most green tea sold in the U.S. today is Chinese green tea, not Japanese. The reason is simple: Chinese green tea is cheaper, and a lot of American buyers came to green tea through health-benefit messaging, not through flavor. When the conversation is about catechins and antioxidants in the abstract, the cheaper leaf wins the shelf.

Our job, as a small Japanese tea producer, is not to argue against that. It is to put a better tasting cup in front of more people, and let the tea do the work. That means showing up — at trade shows like this one, in supermarkets, in matcha-focused cafes, on kitchen counters. It means being clear about what makes Japanese green tea different: umami rich, sweet rather than smoky, third-generation craft from a place — Shizuoka — that grows about 40% of all the tea in Japan.

It also means putting faith in the future. The cafe owner in Paris had not built his business with cheap tea. He had built his business by serving good tea, beautifully, to people who walked in curious. The chef in Manhattan was not lecturing his diners; he was simply cutting fish well, and his diners were noticing. Both of them were doing the same thing: betting that quality, giving customers time, letting the product make its own case.

The dream I carried home from New York was that someday in this country, "green tea" will simply mean something to be savored and appreciated, not sought out for vague health benefits alone. We are not there yet. But the cafe owner in Paris is not wrong, and the sushi chef I met is not wrong. We will all play our part, believing in what we do, and sharing something real and close to our heart with the people.

— Kyohei Sugimoto
Owner, Sugimoto Tea Company (USA)
Three generations from Shizuoka, Japan

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What is the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show?
A1: It is one of the largest annual trade shows for the U.S. restaurant and food-service industry, held each spring in New York. Producers, importers, and buyers gather to introduce ingredients and equipment to chefs, restaurants, and retailers. The event regularly hosts a Japan Pavilion organized through Japanese trade-promotion programs to help Japanese food producers reach American buyers.

Q2: Why is most green tea in the U.S. Chinese rather than Japanese?
A2: Chinese green tea is generally lower in price, which gives it a structural advantage on U.S. supermarket shelves. American consumers also came to green tea largely through health-benefit messaging, where flavor is a secondary concern. Japanese green tea, which is steamed rather than pan-fired and tends to be sweeter and more delicate, has historically had a smaller share but is growing.

Q3: How is Japanese green tea different from Chinese green tea?
A3: Japanese green tea is steamed shortly after harvest, which preserves the leaf's bright color, fresh aroma, and amino-acid sweetness. Chinese green tea is typically pan-fired, which produces a more toasted, sometimes smoky flavor. Sencha, matcha, and gyokuro are all Japanese-style steamed teas; longjing (dragonwell) and many Chinese green teas are pan-fired.

Q4: Is premium Japanese tea actually growing in the West?
A4: Yes. Specialty Japanese tea has been gaining ground in U.S. cities and Paris over the past decade. The growth has tracked broader interest in authentic, traceable food and the maturing of consumers who entered through accessible products and are now seeking higher-quality versions.

Q5: Where does Sugimoto Tea come from in Japan?
A5: Our family is based in Shimada, Shizuoka Prefecture, the historic heart of Japanese green-tea production. Shizuoka grows roughly 40% of all the tea in Japan. Our company was founded in Shizuoka in 1946 by my grandfather and is now in its third generation, with the Japan operation run by my older brother and the U.S. operation based in Redmond, Washington.