Chef Jeffrey Hayden earned his chops in the kitchens of wd-50 and Chicago’s celebrated Alinea before turning his obsession to matcha. He tasted fresh matcha on seven family farms across Kyoto, Kagoshima, and Shizuoka to source the shade-grown matcha behind every cup we pour.
Chef Jeffrey Hayden’s career has always revolved around the simple question “How can a taste make people feel alive and connected?” He first pursued that question as a freshman in Yale’s psychology program, intent on studying wellness and human connection. Then came an odd flash of insight: he realized he could identify, from memory, the exact shelf position of every product in his local supermarket. That uncanny recall nudged him toward the Culinary Institute of America, where a campus visit by Anthony Bourdain convinced him that greatness belongs to those who carve their own eccentric path.
Apprenticeships followed at wd-50 in New York and, most memorably, at Alinea in Chicago, a three Michelin star restaurant revered for its innovation and artistry. Jeffrey calls it his crash course in “what absolute excellence looks like,” a season so accurately lampooned on The Bear that he “laughed out loud and broke into PTSD sweats at the same time.”
Yet it was the West Coast that unlocked his voice. In San Francisco he opened Del Popolo as their executive Chef, building a food culture from scratch and championing hyper-local purveyors who could shorten the journey between farm and plate.
A restless streak led Chef Jeffrey to catch the entrepreneurial bug and he started making drinks on a pop-up food truck. The crowds loved iced matcha and he became passionate about making the best drinks using his chef-driven finesse.
In 2025 he partnered with a crew of Seattle entrepreneurs to create a grab-and-go matcha-and-coffee bar in South Lake Union’s beautiful Ayer Building. Faced with a global matcha shortage and unwilling to compromise quality, Jeffrey boarded a plane to Japan, spending ten whirlwind days on seven farms across Kyoto, Kagoshima, and Shizuoka. Through a trusted Shizuoka partner, he secured a year’s supply of shade-grown leaves, harvested from mist-kissed hillside estates beneath Mt. Fuji and refined with centuries-old Japanese craftsmanship to anchor his drink program.
