A new matcha café has opened at 222 N. 11th St. in Philadelphia's Chinatown, marking the Kyo Matcha chain's first Pennsylvania franchise. The shop opened in August 2026 on a stretch of 11th Street between Race and Vine streets, inside the space that once housed Vietnam Palace, and it arrives right as Chinatown is seeing a surge of new tea-focused storefronts compete for foot traffic.
The Philadelphia location is co-owned by Tom Kang, 34, and Danya Li, 30, along with Alex An, 32, and Jing Xiong, 31, according to reporting from Inquirer.com. Kang and Li met while studying hospitality at Temple University, and Kang separately owns and operates Stay at Luna, a set of roughly 10 apartment hotels clustered mostly around Chinatown — including the one that sits directly above the new café. An runs an international trading business, while Xiong works as a UX lead designer, according to the same report.
Kang told the outlet he became enamored with Kyo Matcha because of its high-quality matcha powder and its balanced beverage-and-dessert menu. The chain, also known as Kyoto Matcha, says on its own corporate materials that it sources its green tea directly from the Uji Matcha Supply Factory in Japan and operates under the brand mission “Let the Tea Return to the Forest.” Uji is widely regarded as Japan's premier historical matcha-growing region.
What's on the Menu, and What Isn't
Every drink at the Chinatown location is served cold — there's no hot menu at all — and customers can specify their preferred sweetness level. Kyo Matcha also offers a simple iced matcha without milk or syrup for purists, alongside matcha and ube crepes, cakes, and rolled desserts. The corporate office approves every menu item before it reaches customers, though the owners said they can still innovate within that framework while developing desserts tailored to Philadelphia tastes.
The café has hired older Chinese chefs who previously worked at dumpling stores or in retirement homes to help run the kitchen. Kang said he believes matcha's appeal cuts across generations and lifestyles, drawing younger customers, students, younger professionals, families, tourists, residents, and first-time drinkers alike. He added that creating a beautiful space and offering something different could draw more people to that part of Chinatown.
A Crowded Corner for Chinatown Tea
Kyo Matcha's arrival lands in the middle of what the Inquirer describes as a wave of beverage shop openings in Philadelphia's Chinatown, where more than a dozen tea-focused shops already operate. The new café opened the very same week as the Arch Street debut of Heytea, the global chain known for cheese-topped tea, which opened its first Pennsylvania storefront near Chinatown's Friendship Gate with buy-one-get-one promotions, according to Philly Grub. Heytea operates more than 4,000 locations worldwide and has built out enough of a Philadelphia footprint to recruit a Regional Store Operations Supervisor earning between $67,000 and $78,000 annually, per job listings reviewed on Indeed.
Kyo Matcha itself is far from a local upstart — the chain already has locations in Maryland, Pittsburgh, Virginia, Massachusetts, Spain, Vietnam, and Turkey, with the Chinatown shop marking its first Philadelphia franchise. The brand's growth hasn't stopped at Pennsylvania's border: Hoodline previously reported that franchisee Jaclyn Nguyen is planning two more Boston-area cafés, including a hand-whisked, traditional Japanese tea-house concept in Cambridge slated for late 2026 and another Boston location to follow in 2027.
Building a Brand From the Ground Up
Li acknowledged the difficulty of the undertaking, telling the Inquirer that starting a brand from scratch is very hard. That challenge plays out against a backdrop of older Chinatown dining history: the Kyo Matcha space itself sits where Vietnam Palace operated for decades before closing permanently in early 2020, after which the original building was demolished to make way for a seven-story mixed-use development, according to Rising Real Estate.
Kyo Matcha also isn't the first dedicated matcha spot in the neighborhood. Matcha Panda Cafe opened its original Chinatown location on North 9th Street in 2022 and has since expanded to a second Rittenhouse location on Chestnut Street, while Matcha Cafe Maiko opened in 2023. Together with the newer arrivals, they reflect a broader pattern the Inquirer frames as part of a wider wave of beverage franchise openings where tea sits at the center of the business.
Why the Matcha Boom Keeps Growing
The local rush mirrors a much larger global shift. The worldwide matcha market was valued at $5.1 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $8.9 billion by 2033, driven by expanding culinary and beverage applications, according to Grand View Research. In the U.S., the at-home matcha market alone grew from $130 million in 2023 to $200 million in 2025, with North America posting the fastest regional growth worldwide at nearly 8% annually, Forbes reported in June 2026.
That demand is running up against a slow-moving supply chain. Matcha leaves take four to five years to mature, and authentic ceremonial-grade matcha depends entirely on shade-grown tea cultivated in specialized regions of Japan, creating persistent bottlenecks as global demand outpaces what farms can produce. Culinary-grade matcha, which now accounts for more than half of the global market's share, has become the workaround — it's cheaper to produce and shows up widely in baked goods, desserts, and ready-to-drink formulations, which helps explain why cafés like Kyo Matcha lean so heavily on crepes, cakes, and rolled desserts alongside their drink menus.
For now, the Chinatown location is open noon to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, giving Philadelphia's newest matcha crowd — students, tourists, and longtime Chinatown residents alike — another spot to line up in a neighborhood that's quickly filling up with them.
