Early in his career, Founder Rashad Rastam worked in the coffee industry since he was 16 and his way of moving up the ladder was based upon a processed and on-the-go lifestyle. This way of living began to catch up with him, and he developed and inflammatory condition, ignored all the symptoms and experience burnout. After meeting with multiple doctors and specialists, it became clear to him that his diet was the culprit. Wholesome, organic food would soon turn his health around as well as listening to himself and going a path that brought him back to life.

Taking a break from working in coffee, drinking coffee, he dissociated himself from coffee and turned to matcha. He would make matcha everyday, day and night. Rashad then created the Wear Many Hats podcast. During that time, he set out to go on the Wear Many Hats World Tour with the mindset of finding a way to expand his matcha journey further. While in Malaysia, where his parents are from, he went to a cafe in a hip neighborhood in KL, asked the barista about ordering a matcha and she then connected him to a friend that has his own brand of matcha. Later that night, I went to a show he performed music at and we became fast friends after. He shared with me his contact and I flew to Japan the next month, with Japan concluding the Wear Many Hats World Tour.

USA introduced Rashad to Matcha while working in cafes but learning about it's background is from his partnerships and collaborators in Japan. The energy he got from drinking matcha, hojicha.. green tea in general is unlike any coffee drink. After learning more about the history and health benefits of green tea, he began to explore more deeply. Most matcha companies offered little-to-no visibility into where their matcha actually came from. The matcha was grown on a farm, sent to a distributor, often blended with matcha from other farms, making it basically impossible to identify the original source.

Rashad had a vision to source high quality, organic matcha with a transparent supply chain and environmentally sustainable practices. He began importing matcha from Japan, taste testing over 100 varieties. On a trip to Japan, Rashad met a farmer whose sustainability practices were inspiring—tea leaves were shaded beneath solar panels that generated power for nearby towns. Additionally, he managed the entire process of making matcha in-house, never losing sight of the tea. This was the beginning of Matsar's single-origin line… and our ceremony of Matsar.