Susumuya

Susumuya opened its first retail shop in Kagoshima's Kamiueno-cho in 2012, founded by the fourth generation of a Kagoshima tea-wholesaling family whose business had already run for roughly a hundred years before the retail brand launched. That wholesale background shows in how the shop works: sourcing, roasting and blending are all handled in-house rather than bought pre-processed, with a focus on single-origin, single-farm teas from Chiran and Kirishima, two of Kagoshima Prefecture's best-known tea-growing districts, chosen to preserve the sweetness particular to the region's leaf. The shop expanded to Tokyo's Jiyugaoka in 2016, opening a second location that doubles as a café serving tea alongside Japanese sweets, and later added a store inside a Kagoshima shopping center. In 2015 the company launched a companion brand, Susumuya tea implements, designing brewing tools with an outside designer rather than selling only leaf. Susumuya also runs its own tea school, teaching proper brewing technique directly to customers rather than assuming it's already understood — a deliberate extension of a wholesaler's product knowledge into the retail side of the business, aimed at customers who want to actually taste the difference a single-origin, well-brewed Kagoshima sencha makes.