On the morning of May 9, a line formed at the corner of Raymond Avenue and Holly Street for a cafe most of the country had never heard of. Nana's Green Tea, a Tokyo-born chain that opened its first shop in the Jiyugaoka neighborhood in 2001, had picked that exact intersection, a block from the Memorial Park Gold Line stop, for something the company had never done in the United States: run a location itself.
Every prior Nana's on American soil, from Seattle to New York to Las Vegas, had been built and operated by a franchisee. Old Pasadena is the first one the parent company, Nanaha, decided to run directly. That distinction sounds like a footnote. It isn't. A franchise location is a bet that a local operator understands the market well enough to be trusted with the brand. A company-operated flagship is a bet the corporation makes on the market itself, with its own money and its own quality control, before it hands the keys to anyone else. Nana's chose five blocks of Old Pasadena to make that bet first.
What the flagship actually got that other locations didn't
The clearest evidence of how seriously Nana's is treating this spot isn't the ribbon-cutting. It's the menu. According to Time Out's write-up of the opening, the Raymond Avenue location is the only Nana's in the country serving rice bowls and full savory plates, dishes like chicken soboro don and pork katsu curry, alongside the matcha lattes and parfaits every other U.S. location carries. Franchised outposts got the dessert case. Old Pasadena got the full kitchen.
That's not a coincidence of real estate availability. It's a decision about how much of the brand this particular neighborhood could support on a given Tuesday, not just a Saturday tourist crowd. The matcha itself comes through a sourcing relationship with Yamamasa Koyamaen, a Kyoto tea producer with more than a century and a half of history in the Uji region, the same partner the brand uses globally. Nothing about the ingredients changed for Pasadena. What changed was the company's confidence in how much of its full concept the neighborhood could absorb.
The shop keeps longer hours than a typical mall kiosk too: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 to 11 on Friday, and 10 a.m. openings on weekends. If you're looking for parking, there's a structure on Raymond two blocks north of the cafe, which matters more than it sounds like it should once you've circled Holly Street twice on a Friday night.
The scene Nana's walked into wasn't empty
Here's what the coverage of the opening tends to skip. Nana's didn't invent a matcha audience in Old Pasadena. It walked into one that had already been arguing over sourcing details for a year.
A few blocks away, Motto Tea Cafe has been serving Kyoto Uji matcha and Japanese genmaicha alongside its souffle pancakes for years, tucked on the path most people use to reach the Pasadena Convention Center. At some point Motto did something a business only does when it senses real demand for specialization: it split. Kissa by Motto opened just behind the original restaurant, carved out as its own space devoted purely to specialty coffee and dessert, leaving Motto proper to hold the matcha and pancake identity on its own. That's a business deciding one roof wasn't enough anymore.
Inside One Colorado, Milli Matcha opened in 2026 built entirely around the idea of matcha as a slowed-down ritual rather than a to-go order, down to branding itself around the phrase "be the ceremony." A few doors over on Fair Oaks Avenue, Mammoth Coffee Roasters relocated its cult following from Mammoth Lakes, a shop whose origin traces back to a high school marching band fundraiser, to open its first Old Pasadena address at 183 N. Fair Oaks. And Coffee & Plants set up in Old Town as the neighborhood's fully plant-based matcha and espresso bar, sourcing house-made plant milk daily.
None of these businesses needed Nana's to arrive. They were already competing with each other on the kind of detail that only matters to a market that's paying attention: which tea producer, which region, which grade of matcha, which format. That's the context that made Old Pasadena worth a direct investment instead of a franchise handoff. The neighborhood had already proven it would notice the difference.
A short walk, if you want to compare it yourself
If you live within the core blocks of Old Pasadena, the entire cluster is walkable in one loop, and comparing them side by side is its own kind of local knowledge.
| Spot | Where | What actually sets it apart |
|---|---|---|
| Nana's Green Tea | 45 N. Raymond Ave, at Holly St. | Only U.S. Nana's location with rice bowls and curry on the menu |
| Motto Tea Cafe | Near the Convention Center edge of Old Pasadena | Original Uji matcha and savory pancake menu, running for years |
| Kissa by Motto | Tucked behind Motto Tea Cafe | Spun off from Motto to focus purely on coffee and dessert |
| Milli Matcha | 20 Union St., inside One Colorado | Built around matcha preparation as ceremony, opened in 2026 |
| Mammoth Coffee Roasters | 183 N. Fair Oaks Ave | Mammoth Lakes roaster's first Old Pasadena address |
| Coffee & Plants | Old Town Pasadena | Fully plant-based matcha and espresso bar |
If you're willing to extend the walk a few more minutes east into the South Lake Avenue corridor, the Burlington Arcade adds two more entries worth knowing about: Bu Pastry Bar, a French pastry counter with an Asian-inspired rotating menu, and Mandarin Coffee Stand, which switched its tea and matcha sourcing to Kettl this past winter, a supplier known for direct relationships with individual Japanese farms rather than bulk import. That's technically a different business district than Old Pasadena proper, but it's close enough that most residents treat it as part of the same morning circuit.
What this actually tells you about the neighborhood
The easy version of this story is "Old Pasadena got a new matcha spot." The version that's actually useful if you live here is different: a company with nearly ninety locations worldwide looked at a handful of blocks around Raymond and Holly and decided this specific stretch had earned something no other American market had gotten yet. Not because the demographics penciled out on a spreadsheet somewhere, but because the businesses already here, Motto splitting into two concepts, Milli Matcha building a whole identity around slowing down, Mandarin switching suppliers over sourcing details most customers wouldn't ask about, had already shown a level of specificity that made the bet make sense.
That kind of density doesn't show up in a chain's site-selection deck as a line item. It shows up as a hunch that gets confirmed the first time corporate walks the block. For residents, the payoff isn't abstract. It's a five to seven minute walk that now includes a genuine range of matcha and coffee options built by people competing hard enough to specialize, which is a different thing than a neighborhood that simply has a lot of cafes.
Old Pasadena didn't become a matcha destination this spring. It got recognized as one it had already spent a year building.
If this is the kind of neighborhood detail you want close by every morning, not just read about, Shahe Seuylemezian can walk you through what it actually looks like to live inside these blocks of Old Pasadena. Schedule a private tour to see it firsthand.
