Better late than never, Philz Coffee introduced matcha to their menus this week.
While the San Francisco-founded shop’s non-ceremonial grade, non-hand-whisked matcha might not hold a candle to that of the many specialty purveyors throughout the city, it’s a small green bright spot in an otherwise under-caffeinated summer news day.
Starting on Tuesday, Philz’s 80-plus California and Chicago locations now feature “layered” matcha blends, all of which can only be ordered as a 16-ounce iced drink. Unlike Philz’s iced coffee and tea drinks, the matcha blends are served in plastic cups, presumably to flaunt those layers and their hues of green and red.
The drinks — which includes matcha layered over sweetened oat milk; matcha layered with oat milk and strawberry puree; matcha layered with oat milk and strawberry puree with mint on top; and matcha layered with salted caramel and oat milk — were pushed into people’s social streams by an extensive influencer campaign.
In early 2020, Philz briefly rolled out matcha in a few stores, including one in Fremont. Jacob Jaber, who ran Philz for years after his father Phil founded the chain in the Mission in 2003, teased a broader matcha rollout on X nearly six years ago, well before the chain was acquired for $145 million by Los Angeles-based private equity firm Freeman Spogli.
That was so long ago, in fact, that Philz’s PR representative had to be reminded of Jaber’s post. Gazetteer SF’s questions went unanswered, so we’re still left wondering, what took Philz so long to jump on this very crowded bandwagon? And why now?
In a statement emailed to Gazetteer last week, Andy Mai, the company’s chief business officer, said: “Our top two requests from customers over the years have been a rewards program and matcha. With the successful launch of our Philz Rewards program last year, we turned our efforts to matcha.”
Philz has certainly been actively listening this year. This spring, CEO Mahesh Sadarangani ordered the removal of all flags from stores, including Pride flags, to create an “inclusive experience.” After a customer and community-led backlash, the company reversed the decision and contributed $30,000 to sponsor SF Pride.
Their matcha is sourced from Uji, Japan, and is prepared in batches of concentrate mixed with water. We tried all but the strawberry mint flavor. The strawberry was unsurprisingly very sweet, and the salted caramel was unsurprisingly offputting. The most we can say about the classic was that it is inoffensive, sweet, and chalky, not unlike Starbucks’ take on matcha. It is definitely drinkable.
On Tuesday afternoon, large groups of office workers made their teatime pilgrimage to Philz. In every group, one to two girlypops led the matcha charge with anticipation. They described themselves as Philz fans who were excited to have a matcha option for the afternoons. The verdict after six years of teasing? “Pretty good!”
