For those unfamiliar with Matcha...how?!? 

Kidding of course, but please allow us to help change that. 

So, what is Matcha?

In short, Matcha is finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea leaves.

Unlike green tea however, it's grown in the shade (before harvested), steamed, then dried and ground into a fine powder. All this ultimately leads to you getting nutrients from the entire tea leaf when consuming, thus all the benefits.

Enter, Energy:

Matcha provides a clean, consistent energy, without the jitters.  This is largely due to it’s high concentration of flavonoids & L-theanine.  You don't have to know what these compounds are, just that they're known to increase the brain’s alpha frequency band and produce relaxing effects by raising serotonin, GABA, and dopamine levels.  All good things!

Enter, Antioxidants:

As mentioned, since Matcha is made from the entire leaf, it's richer in antioxidants, with studies showing that it contains up to 130x that found in regular green tea.  Several studies in particular have shown this high antioxidant content can lead to the prevention of cell damage caused by free radicals and even help prevent chronic disease.

Enter, Alertness & Focus: 

Other research shows that Matcha can improve focus, memory and alertness.  Yes, this is largely due to it's caffeine content, but the differentiator here is that aforementioned compound L-theanine, which helps prevent those jitters and caffeine crash often associated with coffee.  Instead, this energy boost is associated with a calm yet alert feeling.

Summary:

With Matcha, you’re drinking the whole tea leaves, and therefore getting the most bang for your buck.  You should expect an overall positive effect on your mood, energy & well being.  Who doesn't want all that?

Most of the successes I've had in my life have come from identifying a trade-off and making a choice.  Too many choices or trying to have it all has more often than not led me to confusion and/or inaction.  It's been a great struggle for me at varying parts of my life.

This knowledge however has forced me to give a great deal of attention toward condensing wherever possible and striving to 'do less'.  This is an everyday practice that has helped me even out the ratio of activities to actual meaning and progress.  There's a new question that I've been asking myself -- "what's important now?".  So far, it's helped a ton in allowing me to center my focus and move things forward.

Ultimately, this choice overwhelm is why I started Favor in the first place.  The health and wellness market is filled with trends, cure-alls, fancy functional name sets and fads that often conflict with each other.  And business wise, there are countless sales channels to pursue, productivity apps for optimal work and third party services that we could potentially benefit from pursuing.  Luckily, I've been able to harken back to this question and focus on only what's necessary and important right now.

Don't get me wrong, the answer has required a ton of trial and error.  I've had to continually and systematically identify and remove things that aren’t aligned with the Favor purpose or may actually be holding us back instead of helping.  With this however, has come greater clarity that I hope will continue to lead to progress for us.  And ultimately, that's what it's all about - minimum viable progress:  identifying the next goal or milestone and what we can do right now to prepare for it.  

Less but Better is not only how I plan to move Favor forward but it also ties directly into our mission.  We want to provide people with a trustworthy daily health boost in the simplest way possible.  Less but better in this sense speaks not only to our ingredients ingredients and quantity, but also our packaging and messaging.  We want to identify the benefits that people are getting from drinking our shots and take out anything that is not contributing to them.   Sounds simple enough!