Latest news with #BlankStreetCoffee
Metro
11-07-2025
- Business
- Metro
Japanese food is about more than trends — big brands are getting it wrong
From ramen to sushi, plenty of delicious Japanese dishes have become staples on restaurant menus across the UK over the last few years. But most recently, Brits have become obsessed with sweet treats from the country in East Asia, with matcha and mochi popping up everywhere, in part thanks to brands like Blank Street Coffee and Little Moons. Blank Street started life as a coffee cart in Brooklyn in 2020, but now has 74 locations across the US and UK and is valued at a cool $500 million (£368,000,000). Its success can be credited, in part, to the launch of their blueberry matcha, which was created by a mixologist in London in 2023. The sugary drink went viral online and inspired the brand to double down on flavoured green tea drinks – which now account for 50% of the business. The menu currently includes White Chocolate Matcha, Strawberry Shortcake Matcha, as well as classic Iced Matcha Tea or Latte. Meanwhile Little Moons, a brand founded by siblings Vivien and Howard Wong in 2010 and inspired by the food they grew up eating with their Asian parents, is now an ice cream mochi empire, worth a whopping £50 million (a revenue that jumped by £40m in the last two years alone). Mochi is made using a short-grain glutinous rice called mochigome, which is steamed, pounded and moulded into a stretchy dough that can be flavoured and wrapped around a filling. Traditionally they are filled with anko, a sweet red bean paste, but Little Moons put a British spin on this by wrapping their mochi around balls of ice cream in flavours like chocolate and salted caramel and strawberries and cream. Recently they've also jumped on the Dubai chocolate trend and launched a Dubai Moons collaboration with Choco Fruit UK. Vivien claims she and her brother founded the company after spotting a 'shift' in the way people in the UK were consuming Japanese food. She recently told Forbes: 'We had always loved the traditional Japanese mochi our parents made with red bean paste, and on our travels in Japan and the US, we discovered mochi filled with ice cream. That was the 'aha' moment: what if we gave mochi a modern British twist by using ice cream as the filling?' And these aren't the only brands putting a British twist on Japanese treats. If you've been on social media lately, you will have seen photos of the viral M&S Red Diamond Strawberry & Creme Sandwich. The retailer confirmed to Metro that their first-ever dessert sandwich was inspired by the 'cult sweet Japanese sandos' sold in convenience stores across Japan. Sando means sandwich in Japanese, but it also refers to a specific style of sandwich in Japan that's made with soft, pillowy milk bread (shokupan). Classics include the egg salad sando, katsu sando and fruit sando usually filled with whipped cream and large slices of fruit. Marks & Spencer has put its own spin on the latter with its sandwich, which is made with a brioche-style sweet bread, whipped cream cheese and creme fraiche and Red Diamond Strawberries. A spokesperson for M&S said: 'We're constantly inspired by food cultures and food trends from around the world, whether it's a subtle influence or a more direct nod, we love putting our own unique and innovative spin on products to make them feel right for our customers.' Thus far, the sandwich has proved so popular with customers, it's even outselling water, with hundreds of thousands of the sandwiches dropping into 800 Foodhalls across the UK every morning this week. Production has even had to be increased to keep up with the demand. However, not everyone is on board with the way brands are turning traditional Japanese dishes into trends. 'It's no secret that Japanese desserts are having a moment,' Marcin Chanek, the head chef at Marugame Udon, tells Metro. He's thrilled to see a rising interest in Japanese flavours, but like several other chefs, he has concerns about whether the history and art of the cuisine is actually being taken seriously. 'Whilst it's exciting to see Japanese desserts go viral, it's important to respect the roots of Japanese cuisine and know how it's meant to taste when it's done right. 'That doesn't mean there's no room for innovation, as Japanese food has always evolved but we think it's important to maintain a boundary between creativity and caricature.' Leonard Tanyag, the executive chef at LUNA Omakase feels similarly, stating that Japanese desserts are 'special', not just because of the rare ingredients they contain, but because of the 'blend of artistry and discipline' that goes into creating them. 'In Japan, the best desserts are found in cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, but my personal favourite is from a particular part of Hokkaido: a matcha cheesecake made with Wagyu milk. It's unlike anything you'll find elsewhere in the world because of the delicate balance of sweetness, the aesthetics, and the deep respect for seasonality and precision that defines traditional Japanese patisserie,' he explains. 'Unfortunately, when big brands try to replicate this abroad they often focus on the look rather than the craft. It might photograph well, but the taste just isn't quite right.' Leonard puts this error down to three things: mass production, a misinterpretation of ingredients and a lack of seasonal focus. And the latter is key. He claims the brands that 'do it better than others' are the ones who are 'genuinely invested' in seasonal flavours and traditional Japanese techniques. More Trending The chef continues: 'We're seeing other Japanese-inspired trends gaining momentum too, from mochi doughnuts and yuzu-infused pastries to the growing popularity of kinako, hojicha, and kuromitsu in Western menus. But again, the success comes down to how much respect is paid to the original craft. Happy Sky Bakery, 94 Askew Road, W12 9BL Happy Sky is a Japanese artisan bakery known for its breads, pastries and of course, sandos. The menu features dishes ike orange and matcha cheesecake croissants, mochi croissants and sandos. Toconoco, 28 Hertford Road, N1 5QT As well as a number of rice and noodle dishes, Toconoco has several sweet treats on the menu, inclduing a daily cheesecake, matcha blondies, red bean buns and mochi. WA Cafe, locations in Ealing Broadway, Covent Garden and Marylebone This Japanese patisserie is serving up edible works of art, with a selection of fluffy cakes, pastries and buns. They also sell loaves of shokupan, as well as souffle cheesecake, and matcha drinks. 'What brands often get wrong is assuming that Japanese food is all about minimalism or novelty. In reality, it's deeply rooted in omotenashi (hospitality), seasonality, and an incredible attention to detail. Without that, you lose the soul of the dish.' He adds: 'If brands want to do better, they need to look beyond Instagrammable plating and actually collaborate with Japanese chefs or artisans. View More » 'It's not just about trends, it's about cultural understanding. And when done right, the result isn't just more authentic, it's far more meaningful, memorable, and delicious.' Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ MORE: Two courses and a glass of prosecco for £18 at Prix Fixe Brasserie : 10 unmissable Time Out deals MORE: Tiny detail on certain McVities and KitKat packets reveals a surprising 'secret' MORE: We found one of the best deals on London's seafood scene – £1 oysters Your free newsletter guide to the best London has on offer, from drinks deals to restaurant reviews.
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Do You Build a $500 Million Coffee Chain? By Selling Matcha to Teens.
At 3:30 p.m. on the Upper East Side of New York City, Emma and Maddie, both 12 years old, are sipping matcha lattes at their usual after-school hangout: Blank Street Coffee. As the name suggests, Blank Street made its name in coffee—launching in 2020 with a Brooklyn cart, and then, with the backing of millions in venture capital, rapidly expanding with stores across the city and beyond. Coffee snobs balked at the brand: The chain's automated espresso machines and aggressive expansion plan struck them as inauthentic to cafe culture. But now the company has caught a fresh stride by leaning into sugary, colorful, caffeinated, TikTok-friendly green tea. The Biggest Companies Across America Are Cutting Their Workforces Microsoft Plans to Cut Thousands More Employees All the Hollywood Action Is Happening Everywhere But Hollywood The Fed Waits Out the Tariff Economy The Path to Record Deficits There are a variety of flavors—among them, strawberry-shortcake matcha, blueberry matcha, white-chocolate matcha. New this month are a rocky-road latte and cookies-and-cream matcha. 'At first I didn't like it, but now I do,' Emma said of her $7 iced green drink, smiling through her braces. The sixth-grader said she charged the drinks to her parents' credit card once or twice a week. 'The matcha part isn't sweet, but the part with the syrup and stuff at the bottom is good.' 'I used to walk by here and not know what it was, but I heard about it from TikTok so I stopped in,' added Maddie. 'It's become a trend. A lot of the high-schoolers order it at school.' Blank Street joins many brands, including Sephora and Stanley, that have been propelled to a broader cultural relevance because of teen customers. The craze now has teens and Gen Z customers proudly sipping matcha and posting about brightly colored drinks that measure high in sugar and even higher in clout. The company now boasts a $500 million valuation, a large number for a coffee chain that isn't Starbucks. 'I see people all the time in class with a Blank Street cup,' said Cooper, a 15-year-old ninth-grade private-school student. He said the coffee chain had invaded his New York City classrooms this past fall. He estimates he patronizes Blank Street four times a week. Blank Street co-founders Vinay Menda, 32, and Issam Freiha, 29, say they didn't set out to capture the wallets of Sephora teens. They are college friends who started the coffee chain after working together in venture capital. Freiha is originally from Lebanon and Menda from Dubai. The duo researched trendy Asian coffee chains and decided to try a similar approach in the states. (A third co-founder, Ignacio Llado, joined in 2022 to expand Blank Street to the U.K.). They realized they could hit it big with flavored matcha two years ago after a mixologist on their London team created a blueberry drink that went viral. Since then, Blank Street has been doubling down on new matcha beverages, rolling out a few every season. Matcha now accounts for approximately 50% of the business, Menda said. 'Matcha is amazing for mixology,' said Freiha from the company's Brooklyn offices one recent morning. 'It's something we can build way crazier, amazing flavors. We've barely scratched the surface.' Blank Street raised $25 million in a Series B round of funding at the end of May, bringing its total funding amount to $135 million, a spokeswoman for the company said. The company says it is profitable. It earns an estimated revenue of $149 million annually, a person familiar with the business said. It has plans to eventually expand its 90 global stores to locations such as Miami and Los Angeles. 'The influencers are all drinking it, like it's just a part of their lives, so you feel like you got to try it,' said Madison Ginsberg, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida. To help its marketing team think about customers it serves, global creative director Mohammad Rabaa says his team creates fake personas with character-building mood boards around each new matcha drink, to 'market it in a hyper-specific way.' Blank Street's strawberry-shortcake matcha persona is, for example, 'an East London Girl who listens to Katseye,' Rabaa, 29, said. 'The Aries latte is someone who hangs out in McCarren Park, is from Brooklyn and feels, to me, more Charli [XCX].' A new cookies-and-cream matcha drink is 'a Lower East Side Dimes Square boy.' The team hasn't decided what kind of music the character listens to yet. The company has had huge success with some flavors, like banana-bread matcha. Others haven't done as well, like a grapefruit cold-brew spritz Freiha described as 'the most rogue one we've ever done.' (The character for that one was 'a Dua Lipa listener who does summer in the Amalfi coast. Very bougie,' Rabaa said.) In other words, Blank Street is trying to sell a lifestyle. 'You're not just getting matcha, you're getting a vibe,' said Alexis Taliento, a 23-year-old Brooklyner. Taliento said she preferred Blank Street to Starbucks, whose menu she finds overwhelming. 'Blank Street is clean, new, fresh. It's super aesthetic.' Adri Thomas, a 22-year-old public-relations professional originally from Chicago, said she associated Blank Street as a hot New York spot because she had heard about it from YouTube vloggers. When she moved to New York last year, 'Blank Street was literally one of the first places I went, before I even had any of my furniture.' A Blank Street matcha drink can have 25 grams of sugar—just at the daily suggested limit for women by the American Heart Association. Maddi Klancher, 23, works in financial technology and said she bought matcha from Blank Street four to five times a week, mainly out of convenience. She has had better matcha from other places, she said, but at $7 a drink, Blank Street has lower prices. Blank Street has an invite-only membership, where baristas give customers access to pay $22 a month for up to 14 drinks a week. The program has a long wait list and has fueled online frenzy. Maddie Kane, a clean-energy researcher in New York, said she had jumped the line by gifting herself a membership through the website, a loophole that's since closed. 'I hacked my way into it,' Kane, 25, joked. Alessandro, 16, said she'd always thought matcha was 'disgusting,' but enough peer pressure from friends had convinced her to try Blank Street's. 'Strawberry shortcake tastes like a cake,' she said. 'I had a headache after.' Write to Chavie Lieber at Stablecoin Legislation Will Juice Demand for Treasurys—to a Point Fed Holds Rates Steady and Keeps Door Open to Cuts Waymo Wants to Bring Its Robotaxis to New York City QXO Proposes $5 Billion Acquisition of GMS What UnitedHealth Can Do to Revive Its Battered Stock
Mint
19-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
How do you build a $500 million coffee chain? By selling matcha to teens.
At 3:30 p.m. on the Upper East Side of New York City, Emma and Maddie, both 12 years old, are sipping matcha lattes at their usual after-school hangout: Blank Street Coffee. As the name suggests, Blank Street made its name in coffee—launching in 2020 with a Brooklyn cart, and then, with the backing of millions in venture capital, rapidly expanding with stores across the city and beyond. Coffee snobs balked at the brand: The chain's automated espresso machines and aggressive expansion plan struck them as inauthentic to cafe culture. But now the company has caught a fresh stride by leaning into sugary, colorful, caffeinated, TikTok-friendly green tea. There are a variety of flavors—among them, strawberry-shortcake matcha, blueberry matcha, white-chocolate matcha. New this month are a rocky-road latte and cookies-and-cream matcha. 'At first I didn't like it, but now I do," Emma said of her $7 iced green drink, smiling through her braces. The sixth-grader said she charged the drinks to her parents' credit card once or twice a week. 'The matcha part isn't sweet, but the part with the syrup and stuff at the bottom is good." 'I used to walk by here and not know what it was, but I heard about it from TikTok so I stopped in," added Maddie. 'It's become a trend. A lot of the high-schoolers order it at school." Blank Street joins many brands, including Sephora and Stanley, that have been propelled to a broader cultural relevance because of teen customers. The craze now has teens and Gen Z customers proudly sipping matcha and posting about brightly colored drinks that measure high in sugar and even higher in clout. The company now boasts a $500 million valuation, a large number for a coffee chain that isn't Starbucks. 'I see people all the time in class with a Blank Street cup," said Cooper, a 15-year-old ninth-grade private-school student. He said the coffee chain had invaded his New York City classrooms this past fall. He estimates he patronizes Blank Street four times a week. Blank Street co-founders Vinay Menda, 32, and Issam Freiha, 29, say they didn't set out to capture the wallets of Sephora teens. They are college friends who started the coffee chain after working together in venture capital. Freiha is originally from Lebanon and Menda from Dubai. The duo researched trendy Asian coffee chains and decided to try a similar approach in the states. (A third co-founder, Ignacio Llado, joined in 2022 to expand Blank Street to the U.K.). They realized they could hit it big with flavored matcha two years ago after a mixologist on their London team created a blueberry drink that went viral. Since then, Blank Street has been doubling down on new matcha beverages, rolling out a few every season. Matcha now accounts for approximately 50% of the business, Menda said. Blank Street raised $25 million in a Series B round of funding at the end of May, bringing its total funding amount to $135 million, a spokeswoman for the company said. The company says it is profitable. It earns an estimated revenue of $149 million annually, a person familiar with the business said. It has plans to eventually expand its 90 global stores to locations such as Miami and Los Angeles. 'The influencers are all drinking it, like it's just a part of their lives, so you feel like you got to try it," said Madison Ginsberg, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida. To help its marketing team think about customers it serves, global creative director Mohammad Rabaa says his team creates fake personas with character-building mood boards around each new matcha drink, to 'market it in a hyper-specific way." Blank Street's strawberry-shortcake matcha persona is, for example, 'an East London Girl who listens to Katseye," Rabaa, 29, said. 'The Aries latte is someone who hangs out in McCarren Park, is from Brooklyn and feels, to me, more Charli [XCX]." A new cookies-and-cream matcha drink is 'a Lower East Side Dimes Square boy." The team hasn't decided what kind of music the character listens to yet. The company has had huge success with some flavors, like banana-bread matcha. Others haven't done as well, like a grapefruit cold-brew spritz Freiha described as 'the most rogue one we've ever done." (The character for that one was 'a Dua Lipa listener who does summer in the Amalfi coast. Very bougie," Rabaa said.) In other words, Blank Street is trying to sell a lifestyle. 'You're not just getting matcha, you're getting a vibe," said Alexis Taliento, a 23-year-old Brooklyner. Taliento said she preferred Blank Street to Starbucks, whose menu she finds overwhelming. 'Blank Street is clean, new, fresh. It's super aesthetic." Adri Thomas, a 22-year-old public-relations professional originally from Chicago, said she associated Blank Street as a hot New York spot because she had heard about it from YouTube vloggers. When she moved to New York last year, 'Blank Street was literally one of the first places I went, before I even had any of my furniture." A Blank Street matcha drink can have 25 grams of sugar—just at the daily suggested limit for women by the American Heart Association. Maddi Klancher, 23, works in financial technology and said she bought matcha from Blank Street four to five times a week, mainly out of convenience. She has had better matcha from other places, she said, but at $7 a drink, Blank Street has lower prices. Blank Street has an invite-only membership, where baristas give customers access to pay $22 a month for up to 14 drinks a week. The program has a long wait list and has fueled online frenzy. Maddie Kane, a clean-energy researcher in New York, said she had jumped the line by gifting herself a membership through the website, a loophole that's since closed. 'I hacked my way into it," Kane, 25, joked. Alessandro, 16, said she'd always thought matcha was 'disgusting," but enough peer pressure from friends had convinced her to try Blank Street's. 'Strawberry shortcake tastes like a cake," she said. 'I had a headache after."
Wall Street Journal
19-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
How Do You Build a $500 Million Coffee Chain? By Selling Matcha to Teens.
At 3:30 p.m. on the Upper East Side of New York City, Emma and Maddie, both 12 years old, are sipping matcha lattes at their usual after-school hangout: Blank Street Coffee. As the name suggests, Blank Street made its name in coffee—launching in 2020 with a Brooklyn cart, and then, with the backing of millions in venture capital, rapidly expanding with stores across the city and beyond. Coffee snobs balked at the brand: The chain's automated espresso machines and aggressive expansion plan struck them as inauthentic to cafe culture. But now the company has caught a fresh stride by leaning into sugary, colorful, caffeinated, TikTok-friendly green tea.
The National
30-05-2025
- Business
- The National
Byres Road cafe owners fear soul of street lost to coffee chains
It comes as the Blank Street Coffee chain opened up on the popular shopping street – despite planning permission being refused. Blank Street joins the likes of Pret-A-Manger, Black Sheep Coffee and Starbucks, which are all sandwiched between small businesses. The four big corporate chains are located in the most accessible part of Byres Road – closest to Hillhead Subway station. READ MORE: Glasgow Film Theatre board members resign after Israeli boycott decision At newly established Level 11 Coffee Hub and Café Swiss, which has been open for nearly a decade, senior staff are worried. Yasmin, the Café Swiss manager, was taken aback by the sight of coffee chain cups on Byres Road. 'I'm quite surprised how many people I've seen with it,' Yasmin said. She spoke of the team's relationships with regular customers and added: 'I think that's actually what's kept us going for so long. 'You're never going to get that kind of connection with someone in a big chain.' Meanwhile, Café Swiss barista Noah shared that during a break he had counted 23 chain labelled cups outside in a 10-minute period. Yousef, the co-owner of Level 11, went on: 'I am part of that community that actually go and support small businesses. 'We get a lot of our customers that come here just for that reason. 'The first time, we show them who we are and what we offer, and the effort we put into our product. 'I know my support and another person's support, is actually going to support the business.' Yousef expressed concern over how some chains have removed the social element of a coffee shop, introducing screens to take orders rather than members of staff. 'They've got the screens, there's basically no socialising,' he said. 'The best part of being here is socialising.'
