Matcha Maiden is the latest Melbourne-based company taking our city by storm. You’ll find it on cafe menus, in superfood smoothies over the road at Combi Cafe and even on the shelves of local stores like us, for you to take home and use in your own way.

We put Matcha Maiden on our shelves because the duo behind this company have a story to tell and are putting out a superior product we think people should be using. Whether you’re new to the matcha game or a green-tea fan already, we think you’re going to love Matcha Maiden’s green tea powder.

We sat down and had a (cyber) chat with Matcha Maiden to get to know the people behind the little brown bag of green tea powder. Thank you Sarah and Nic, for taking time out of your USA trip to chat with us.

Who are the faces behind the Melbourne brand, Matcha Maiden?

Matcha Maiden is just the two of us – a couple from Melbourne who decided to start a little “side project” which turned into a beautiful flourishing matcha family! Sarah started her working life in the corporate world as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at an international law firm. During her first few years, she grew to become an avid health fanatic devoted to combating the long hours and challenging nature of the legal profession. Nic leads an equally demanding but more entrepreneurial lifestyle running his own full-service creative agency, an aerial asset image capturing company and an enterprise software development venture. As a former international athlete, Nic is an equal health and fitness enthusiast leading this match(a) made in heaven to co-found Matcha Maiden late last year (which has grown so much that Sarah recently made the exciting jump to work in the business full-time)

What was it that made you both launch into the matcha tea business?

We discovered matcha on several of our overseas adventures – firstly in its traditional context in Japan and later in the USA in the health food arena. When we got home, we were surprised to find that Australia was a little bit late to the matcha party despite its very strong health food market. We were unable to find a product that was at once organic, reasonably priced and well branded – everything was either too expensive and not very palatable or too cheap and not very high quality. So we decided to find our own middle ground blend and started Matcha Maiden as a humble side project. It was a lovely excuse to spend more time together and keep us accountable in maintaining a strong focus on health and wellness in our busy lives. Quite unexpectedly, it has gone crazy and we’ve grown Matcha Maiden into a global matcha family of over 51,000 followers and 1000 stores around the world. We’re actually writing these responses from LA where we’re spending a few weeks visiting our USA matcha family. We’ve just hit Urban Outfitters and have a few more exciting announcements coming soon – stay tuned!

What are the benefits of using Matcha Maiden matcha in day-to-day life?

Matcha powder is relatively new to the mainstream market, but it’s actually been around for centuries. It is traditionally consumed as part of the Japanese tea ceremony and Zen Buddhist monks use it in their meditative practices. It seems fancy now that it’s a bit of a “buzz word”, but it’s actually simpler than you’d expect – it’s just pure green tea leaves stone ground into a fine powder. The difference with regular green tea is that instead of brewing leaves in hot water then throwing them out, with matcha you consume the whole tea leaf so don’t waste any green goodness! On top of that, matcha tea bushes are grown especially under cover which increases the chlorophyll and amino acid levels in the leaves further.

Matcha can have the nutritional value of up to 10 cups of regular green tea and up to 137 x the antioxidants of regular green tea!!! I KNOW! Where has it been all our lives!? Regular green tea is consumed for its positive effects on metabolism, energy, focus, immunity, clear skin and generally wellbeing so matcha being more concentrated can have more concentrated results. It is traditionally consumed as a tea but Matcha Maiden’s mission has been to revolutionise the way we think about it – it’s so versatile being in powdered form so why not use it as a superfood? It makes sense to go beyond tea and use it in smoothies, chia pudding, desserts, savoury dishes, even face masks! And people have responded really positively to this – everyday we’re blown away by the creations people come up with!

What is your favourite matcha recipe?

That’s a pretty hard one for a die-hard matcha lover like myself, but I’d have to say a matcha green tea smoothie or matcha green tea ice cream (both the banana-based healthy version and the super delicious slightly-less-healthy version).

When you’re not busy running your matcha empire, what do you love doing most in Melbourne?

Lately, it seems like we’re never not busy running the empire! It’s been matcha madness! But it’s such a wonderful business to have as it actually aligns with most of the things I love anyway. We love food, especially breakfast, so arrange most of meetings around breakfast hot spots in Melbourne. We also love yoga and fitness and are lucky enough to work with a lot of yoga and fitness studios as part of our collaborative marketing strategy. Just being out and about and visiting all different parts of Melbourne all day long is so energising and exciting after so many years at a desk all day! I couldn’t be happier!

You can find Matcha Maiden matcha powder in the ‘tea’ section in store. You can also go to the Matcha Maiden website for recipes and tips on how to use the powder as well as follow them on Instagram for daily inspiration.