GUIYANG, June 26 (Xinhua) — The unlikely success of an on the spot noodle system is including a extra diversified taste to the present matcha growth in southwest China’s mountainous Guizhou Province — the most recent product to take action.
In May, a candy potato on the spot noodle product from Sinan County in Tongren grew to become a client hit after including a matcha taste to its conventional sour-and-spicy system. Made primarily from native candy potatoes and blended with matcha powder produced in Tongren, the product saved its acquainted spicy-sour style, whereas utilizing matcha’s contemporary aroma to chop by means of greasiness.
Noodle customers responded rapidly, the product drawing greater than 200,000 orders in its first month, producing over 6 million yuan (about 880,000 U.S. {dollars}) in gross sales. During a trial sale at a matcha retailer in Tongren over the May Day vacation, 100 containers bought out in at some point.
For Guizhou, the noodles are greater than a viral product. The product exhibits how matcha, a finely floor inexperienced tea rooted in China’s conventional tea tradition, is being became a broader enterprise spanning packaged meals, retail cabinets and tourism spending.
Behind that, client demand is a mature provide chain that has helped flip Guizhou into one of many world’s key matcha manufacturing bases. Data from the China Tea Marketing Association confirmed that China’s matcha output exceeded 12,000 tonnes in 2025, accounting for about 60 % of worldwide manufacturing.
Gui Tea Group, a Tongren-based firm, bought greater than 2,500 tonnes of matcha in 2025, with output worth exceeding 500 million yuan. The group says its merchandise have been exported to greater than 50 international locations and areas, together with the United States, Japan and Indonesia.
The success of the noodles exhibits how Guizhou producers are wanting past conventional tea consumption. Backed by sturdy native manufacturing capability, firms are testing matcha in a wider vary of meals, turning a as soon as area of interest tea powder into an ingredient for snacks, desserts and packaged merchandise.
In July 2025, Gui Tea Group accomplished a matcha-themed meals manufacturing base. According to Li Yun, retail gross sales director of the corporate’s matcha division, its “Guigui Matcha” manufacturing unit is supplied with 4 manufacturing strains overlaying 5 classes: chocolate, cookies, preserved fruit merchandise, snacks and powdered drinks.
The product lineup has expanded from simply over 10 gadgets to greater than 30. Li stated Gui Tea Group’s whole retail gross sales reached 100 million yuan in 2025, together with about 30 million yuan from matcha meals merchandise. The firm goals to triple its retail gross sales to 300 million yuan in 2026.
The momentum has continued into this 12 months. In the primary 5 months, Gui Tea Group’s matcha meals gross sales approached 50 million yuan, whereas whole retail gross sales had already surpassed 100 million yuan.
“More consumers are coming to Guizhou specifically for matcha-related experiences, and matcha drinks and foods on the market are becoming increasingly diverse,” Li stated.
At the foot of Mount Fanjingshan, a UNESCO-listed world heritage web site in Tongren, the pattern has taken bodily kind. A specialty retailer known as Fumo Matcha opened on May 23, providing greater than 20 matcha merchandise, from ice cream and milk tea to craft beer, noodles and jelly.
The retailer’s founder, Wu Li, is a Tongren native. She stated she had tried matcha meals elsewhere in China earlier than realizing that a lot of the matcha powder used within the home market got here from her hometown. That discovery led her to return and open a store linking manufacturing bases extra immediately with customers.
Since opening, the shop has recorded peak day by day income of 15,000 yuan, with out-of-town vacationers making up about 80 % of buyer visitors.
“The recent matcha craze has helped bring renewed attention to China’s long-standing powdered-tea traditions, including the ‘diancha’ culture, or tea whisking, of the Song Dynasty (960-1279),” Wu stated.
Wu stated she hopes extra folks will perceive matcha’s historic roots: it isn’t an imported commodity, however a standard Chinese tea product with deep cultural heritage.
Major retailers are additionally shifting in. In April, Walmart launched a “matcha season” product marketing campaign below its private-label meals model Marketside, introducing dozens of things throughout baked items, snacks, dairy merchandise, drinks and ice cream. The merchandise use matcha sourced from high quality manufacturing areas, together with Tongren in Guizhou and Jingshan in east China’s Zhejiang.
But utilizing matcha in mass-produced baked items shouldn’t be so simple as including tea powder to the recipe.
Liu Hai, deputy normal supervisor of Gui Tea Group, stated making use of matcha to baked items is technically demanding. High-temperature baking can simply have an effect on the colour of matcha, whereas the ingredient additionally must mix nicely with flour, cream and different supplies utilized in meals processing. To make matcha extra appropriate for various merchandise, the corporate has adjusted grinding fineness, improved color-protection strategies and developed low-temperature grinding strategies to cut back chlorophyll breakdown throughout baking.
In addition, Liu stated the corporate has developed a physicochemical mapping system that matches totally different growing older levels and grinding mesh sizes with particular software situations, serving to pave the best way for wider industrial and retail use of matcha.
For Guizhou, matcha is turning into greater than a specialty agricultural product. It is rising as a platform for “matcha-plus” progress, linking tea manufacturing bases, meals factories, retail shops and vacationers by means of a taste rooted in Chinese custom and newly in style with younger customers.