Philz Coffee is moving into the fast-growing matcha segment with a four-drink iced lineup, now available at all 80-plus locations across California and Chicago and orderable through the Philz app.
The Oakland-based chain's entry into matcha follows the rollout of its Philz Rewards loyalty program last year. Andy Mai, Chief Business Officer at Philz Coffee, said customer demand drove both decisions. "Our top two requests from customers over the years have been a rewards program and matcha," Mai said. "We wanted to introduce it in a way that feels unmistakably Philz."
The Menu and Pricing
All four drinks are 16-ounce iced beverages built on matcha sourced from Uji, Japan, layered with sweetened oat milk as the default base. The lineup: Iced Matcha at $6.50; Strawberry Matcha, Strawberry Mint Matcha, and Salted Caramel Matcha each at $7.50. Customers can adjust sweetness level and swap to 2% milk at no extra charge — keeping to Philz's established made-to-order model where baristas confirm each drink before handoff.
The price architecture sits squarely in the premium dispensed-beverage tier. For context, the National Coffee Association's 2025 tracking placed ready-to-drink and café-style matcha among the fastest-growing cold beverage subcategories, with volume up double digits year-over-year as younger consumers shift spend from espresso-based drinks toward green tea formats.
Channel Relevance
For convenience and foodservice operators watching the matcha wave, Philz's move signals that the category has matured enough to support a full tiered menu rather than a single LTO. Chains from Dunkin' to regional café groups have added matcha SKUs over the past 18 months, and c-store foodservice programs — particularly those with bean-to-cup or barista-staffed dispensed beverage stations — are increasingly being asked to compete in the same daypart.
Philz operates its own roasting facility in Oakland and distributes bagged coffee through select grocery retail and Philz K-Cup pods, giving the brand exposure beyond its café footprint. The matcha launch, however, is café-only for now, leaning on the personalization and barista-crafted positioning that differentiates it from self-serve formats.
Orders can be placed ahead through the Philz app, which also hosts the Philz Rewards program — a combination that mirrors the loyalty-plus-mobile-order stack that convenience foodservice operators have been building out to reduce forecourt-to-counter friction. Operators tracking dispensed beverage category trends will note that customization depth — sweetness, milk type, flavor layering — is increasingly a retention lever as much as a menu feature.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
