La Colombe is extending its canned latte franchise into matcha, launching three RTD Matcha Latte SKUs for national retail distribution this month — a category pivot that signals the Chobani-owned brand is moving deliberately beyond its coffee identity into adjacent functional beverages.
The lineup — Everyday Matcha Latte, Strawberry Matcha Latte, and Vanilla Matcha Latte — arrives in 11oz cans and will be available at major off-premise retailers nationwide alongside the brand's existing e-commerce channel. Each can delivers 65mg of natural caffeine and is positioned as a good source of protein, specifications that align with the better-for-you functional beverage shelf rather than the conventional tea or coffee set.
The Category Signal
The launch follows a sharp internal demand signal: matcha sales across La Colombe's owned café network have grown 188% since 2023, giving the brand meaningful depletions data before committing to an RTD format. That on-premise velocity is a credible demand proxy, and it's the same playbook the brand used when it translated its handcrafted Draft Latte® concept into what became a defining RTD coffee SKU more than a decade ago. For distributors and buyers, the café-to-can trajectory offers a cleaner volume story than a cold-start matcha launch from a brand with no existing equity in the segment.
The RTD matcha space has attracted a wave of entrants riding the same consumer tailwind — younger shoppers seeking alternatives to coffee's sharp caffeine spike who are drawn to matcha's naturally occurring caffeine profile and umami-forward flavor. La Colombe's positioning centers on ingredient differentiation: single-origin matcha sourced from Japan and farm-fresh, lactose-free whole milk from Michigan. The lactose-free dairy specification widens the addressable consumer base without requiring a plant-based co-pack, keeping the product in the traditional cold-chain dairy aisle while broadening its reach.
Route-to-Market Implications
For La Colombe's wholesale and distributor network, the matcha extension adds incremental SKUs to an existing shelf story without requiring a new route-to-market build. The brand's established presence in grocery, convenience, and specialty retail — built on the Draft Latte® platform — gives the new line immediate planogram consideration that a standalone matcha entrant would have to earn. The national retail rollout starting in September compresses the path from production to consumer considerably, though shelf velocity in the first 90 days will determine whether buyers give the line a permanent cold-box position or treat it as a seasonal test.
Niel Sandfort, Chief Innovation Officer at Chobani and La Colombe, framed the launch as a quality-standards move rather than a trend response: "We challenged ourselves to create a product with the highest quality ingredients that raises the bar for what consumers should expect from RTD matcha." The Chobani parent's supply-chain infrastructure and its focus on nutritious, accessible food products adds manufacturing and distribution scale that independent matcha RTD brands would struggle to match.
For beverage buyers and category managers, the La Colombe matcha entry is worth watching as a RTD functional beverage bellwether. If a brand with this level of retail penetration and distributor relationships can accelerate matcha's off-premise turns, it validates the category's durability beyond the café and social-media hype cycle. The better-for-you beverage segment continues to reward brands that pair functional credentials with credible ingredient sourcing — and La Colombe's Japan-sourced matcha and Michigan dairy supply chain checks both boxes.
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.
