Most beverage stories focus on flavor and branding. Fewer talk about the unglamorous side: forecasting with almost no history, avoiding stockouts, managing ingredient risk, and doing all of that with a “stack” that’s mostly spreadsheets.

That’s where CHUH Matcha is today.

Tether co-founder Gary Sahota sat down with Andrew Schundler, founder of CHUH Matcha, a RTD matcha latte brand based in Maine, now sold in dozens of retailers across the U.S. In just a couple of months, Andrew and his wife have moved thousands of cans, added a second distributor, and are learning in real time what it takes to run a young beverage business.

This post pulls out practical lessons for early-stage CPG founders from the interview (below).

From “breaking up with coffee” to a RTD matcha brand

CHUH started with a simple personal problem: coffee wasn’t working anymore.

“I broke up with coffee… I was tired of the jitters and that 2pm crash.”

Matcha became Andrew’s replacement—steady energy, no crash. But on the road, there wasn’t a convenient, great-tasting matcha option that wasn’t loaded with sugar or extreme caffeine.

That gap became CHUH Matcha: canned matcha lattes manufactured with a co-packer, sold both online and through retail.

Two facts define the ops reality:

The product relies on a sensitive, high-quality ingredient (matcha).
The main use case is on-the-go consumption, which pushes the brand toward physical retail.

Retail-first demand makes forecasting much less forgiving

Andrew launched CHUH expecting to be DTC-first, but the market quickly pushed them the other way.

“We launched with the idea that we would focus on D2C… and what’s happened is that’s been flipped on its head where we’ve seen the retail demand spike. Almost all B2B, almost all retail.”

DTC can sometimes put a marketing spin on a stockout, but retailers don’t see it that way:

Every cold case facing needs to be full.
Distributors expect “we want that by end of week”, not “we’ll have it in three weeks.”

That has forced CHUH to:

Look at inventory and demand weekly, if not daily.
Treat product availability as core to their brand promise.
Adapt quickly when new distributors or stores change the demand curve.

This lines up strongly with what we’ve written about previously: once a food or beverage brand has real-world distribution, demand planning is no longer optional infrastructure. (Why Modern Food & Beverage Brands Need Demand Planning →)

Forecasting with a 5-week lead time & chaotic early growth

CHUH uses a contract manufacturer and needs about 4–5 weeks of lead time for production. Thankfully, most ingredients arrive in 1–3 weeks, under normal conditions.

The goal: never drop below 30–40% inventory so they can respond to surprise pallet orders without going out of stock.

The challenge: they’re only a couple of months into sales with very little history and fast growth. One big order can completely change the month.

“We’ve been using spreadsheets and automation to review data from the past 30 days and use that to determine our inventory moving forward… and that has already proven to be a poor model.”

The pattern is common:

Trailing 30-day averages break quickly during early growth.
Planning has to be anchored on lead times + scenarios, not just history.
Brands need at least a one-lead-time view into the future, even if it’s imperfect.

Ingredient risk: When your hero input becomes the bottleneck

CHUH’s most important ingredient (matcha) is also its biggest operational risk.

Matcha demand is surging globally.
The 2024 Japanese harvest was weak, creating a shortage.
Tariffs and supply pressures have pushed CHUH’s cost per kilogram up by roughly 50%.
Lead times from their main supplier have gone from weeks to potentially 4–5 months.

“When we first ordered… we got it within weeks. Now they’re saying we might get it by mid-January.”

Matcha’s long shelf life (often up to ~24 months, with proper storage) creates a tempting decision: buy a lot now to lock in supply and price, or conserve cash and accept more risk.

“Do we want to commit to buying 200kg of matcha? Are we sure that we have the runway in the next 12 months to sell all that?”

The strategy CHUH is moving toward:

Shift from one primary supplier to at least two qualified suppliers.
Make sure the second supplier passes flavor and quality testing.
Use longer shelf life to buffer risk without overextending cash.

If your business effectively revolves around one ingredient, that ingredient needs its own strategy: supplier diversity, explicit lead-time assumptions, and scenarios for price/availability shocks.

The current founder stack: powerful, but fragile

Asked what software runs CHUH, Andrew keeps it simple:

“The founder stack is mostly Excel spreadsheets.”

Today, it looks like this:

Shopify for DTC and tracking inventory in New Jersey.
A warehouse in Maine serving retail (and a second one for DTC orders), all tracked manually via spreadsheets.
QuickBooks for accounting.
Custom Excel models (built with an advisor) to:
- Look at sales over the last 30 days.
- Compare that to stated on-hand inventory.
- Estimate how many weeks of stock remain.

A key risk: a lot of knowledge lives only in Andrew’s head.

“A lot of that understanding of what’s where is just in my head… amnesia would be a really bad piece to the business at this point because we’re not automated.”

The progression here is very typical:

Spreadsheets everywhere – fast and flexible early on.
Multiple warehouses, distributors, and channels – the logic gets fragile and person-dependent.
The need for real systems (demand planning, inventory, POs) becomes unavoidable.

Spreadsheets are a great start. They just shouldn’t remain the only system of record as you scale.

The missed opportunity: feedback data that never gets captured

CHUH has been running a lot of tastings and sampling events. Right now, feedback is mostly anecdotal.

“I could give you an answer, but it would be a very subjective answer… we’re not aggregating all that data into one spot.”

What’s missing is a lightweight way to capture:

What people like about each flavor.
What they consistently critique (sweetness, strength, etc.).
Whether patterns differ by channel or geography.

The fix doesn’t need to be complex:

A simple shared form or spreadsheet for each sampling event.
Standard questions (“What did people love?”, “What did they dislike?”, “What did you hear more than once?”).
A regular habit of reviewing that data before making product or messaging decisions.

For young brands, structured feedback is an easy lever most teams don’t pull.

Low-cost, high-impact marketing: focus on the people at the shelf

If Andrew had an extra five hours per week, he’d split it between content and relationships:

More marketing and social media – content creation and community engagement.
More time in stores and at events – talking to staff, owners, and customers.

“If we can get people who are not us telling other people it’s great, that’s how you’re going to grow your awareness and reach.”

In practice, that looks like:

Visiting accounts in person.
Giving product to store staff.
Educating them on CHUH, who it’s for, and why it’s different.
Turning them into advocates, not just people who restock shelves.

For early-stage brands without big paid budgets, this is a simple, high-ROI lever:

Every engaged store associate is a tiny always-on sales channel standing next to your product.

Key takeaways for early-stage CPG founders

CHUH is still early, but there’s already a clear playbook forming:

Follow demand, not the launch deck. CHUH expected DTC; the pull from retail forced a shift in how they plan.
Plan at least one full lead-time ahead. With 4–5 week production lead times, you need forecast discipline even with limited history.
Treat key ingredients as strategic. Build a sourcing plan, not just a purchase order.
Use spreadsheets, but don’t trap yourself in them. Great early, fragile later.
Segment demand by store type. Not all doors are created equal.
Capture feedback systematically. Sampling is valuable only if the insights are retained.
Invest in the people closest to your product. Store staff can be more powerful than another ad campaign.

For a deeper dive into how these themes generalize into a broader demand planning framework for food and beverage brands, you can read:
Why Modern Food & Beverage Brands Need Demand Planning →

About CHUH Matcha
CHUH Matcha is a ready-to-drink matcha latte brand founded by Andrew and his wife in Maine, now available online and in retailers across the U.S. Learn more at chuhmatcha.com.

About Andrew Schundler
Andrew is the founder of CHUH Matcha and a first-time beverage operator navigating forecasting, supply chain risk, and growth in real time. You can find him on LinkedIn.

CPG Brand Highlights: CHUH Matcha