From Green Powder to Our Best-Selling Drink: The Story of TNF Matcha

When we started TNF Cafe in 2019, matcha was not on the menu. It felt like a trend — the kind that comes and goes. We were wrong to wait so long.

The First Batch

In early 2021, our head barista Hafizah came back from a trip to Kyoto with a small tin of ceremonial-grade matcha. She made us all a cup one morning before opening. That was the moment everything changed.

Nothing we had tasted before — not the grocery-store matcha, not the powdered mix from bubble tea shops — came close to what ceremonial grade tasted like. It was smooth, slightly umami, with a clean vegetal sweetness and none of the bitterness we associated with green tea.

Building the Menu

We spent three months testing recipes before we launched our matcha series. The challenge was pairing the delicate flavour with milk without losing the matcha character. Full-cream milk was too heavy. Skim milk too watery. We eventually landed on a precise ratio using fresh local milk that complemented rather than overwhelmed the matcha.

Our Dirty Matcha — an espresso shot poured over a cold matcha latte — came from a happy accident. A customer asked us to add a coffee shot to their matcha one afternoon, and the combination was revelatory. That drink alone is now responsible for a third of our matcha orders.

Where We Source From

We import our ceremonial-grade matcha directly from Uji, Kyoto Prefecture — the epicentre of Japanese tea culture. Our supplier is a fourth-generation tea farmer who still hand-picks the first-flush leaves each spring. It costs significantly more than commodity matcha, but it makes our drinks unmistakably better.

Try our Matcha Series the next time you visit. We promise you will taste the difference.