matcha people is not really about matcha influencers.
it is about people who have somehow made matcha fit into the normal, weird, specific rhythm of their actual lives. people who drink it before work, between errands, after class, on set, in traffic, at their desk, or wherever the day starts becoming a little too much.
for aoon rizvi, the story starts somewhere much smaller than a cup.
he spends his days looking at things too small for the human eye to see.
literally.
aoon is a chemist with a PhD, and his job is the kind that sounds fake until you say it slowly. he works with microscopes worth millions of dollars, powerful enough to see things at the scale of individual atoms.
that is not small in the normal sense. that is small in the everything-is-made-of-this sense.
which is also probably why the job makes a certain kind of perfect sense for him. if you were the kind of kid who heard everything is made of atoms and thought that was the most interesting sentence anyone had ever said, this is basically the adult version of staying committed to the bit.
while other people were maybe pretending to listen in science class, aoon was apparently built for the version of life where molecules, microscopes, and invisible structures are not just concepts, but the whole point.
and to be fair, it is a pretty cool point.
there is something deeply satisfying about a job that lets you look past the surface of things. not metaphorically. actually. zooming past what the eye can see, down into the architecture of matter itself, using equipment so advanced it sounds closer to science fiction than office life.
if you want the beverage-world version of that chemistry rabbit hole, what matcha is made of is basically the same instinct pointed at a cup instead of a microscope.
but outside the lab, the obsession shifts.
these days, one of the things occupying a lot of his non-atom-related attention is road cycling.
not the casual kind. not the nice-weather, short-ride, back-by-noon kind.
the kind where weekends become longer, faster, and more painful on purpose.
he has been riding around LA, joining cycling groups, stretching out routes, and generally making life harder for himself in the way hobbies sometimes do when you accidentally start loving them too much.
which tracks. if your work already involves precision, focus, and an unusual tolerance for intensity, it makes sense that your time off would not immediately turn into total stillness. sometimes the brain wants one challenge, and the body asks for another.
and then there is matcha.
he first tried it at Starbucks in 2020.
he hated it.
which is a useful detail, because not every matcha story needs to start with immediate devotion and life-changing clarity. sometimes the first sip is just bad. sometimes the drink does not land. sometimes your reaction is basically no thanks, absolutely not, please get this away from me.
that was aoon.
then things changed a little.
he found an order with chai syrup.
and from there, matcha became less of a hard no and more of a slow conversion. not because it suddenly stopped tasting like itself, but because he started liking it for what it actually tasted like.
that part feels important.
a lot of people try matcha once and decide the story there. too grassy. too weird. too earthy. too different from what they expected. but sometimes the taste just needs a second route in. for aoon, that route happened to involve chai syrup. after that, the drink opened up. slowly, he started getting closer to matcha itself, rather than just the version softened by something else.
if that first-sip problem sounds familiar, the whole “wait, what does matcha taste like?” question is worth answering before writing the drink off completely.
now his take on matcha is refreshingly uncomplicated.
he has one rule:
there are no rules.
add whatever you want. make it however you like it.
it is hard to argue with that.
for every beverage world that tries to become a strict religion, there is something nice about a person who just says make the drink in a way you will actually enjoy and move on with your day. milk, ice, syrup, chai, whatever works. the point is not to perform purity. the point is to like what you are drinking.
for him, matcha is usually an iced midday drink.
something mellow.
something to reach for when he does not want to be completely wired.
that might be one of the more relatable matcha use cases in existence. not a dramatic morning transformation. not an all-caps productivity obsession. just a steadier kind of energy in the middle of the day. enough lift to keep going, without feeling like your thoughts are trying to overtake your body.
for people who want the iced version without the whole whisk-and-powder situation, the easiest starting point is probably a matcha latte at home, made cold and adjusted however you want.
the rest of his story stretches further than just LA.
aoon was born in Pakistan, raised in the UAE, and later moved to America.
now he is a scientist in Los Angeles, balancing a life that somehow manages to include atom-scale research, cycling groups, and iced matcha with no rules attached.
which is a pretty good combination, honestly.
there is also something very Matcha People about the shape of it. the way matcha does not arrive as the main character, but becomes part of a life that is already specific, layered, and moving in several directions at once. it fits between things. between lab work and long rides. between one country and another. between the intensity of science and the smaller rituals that make a day feel better.
so yes, he spends his days looking at things too small for the human eye to see.
but somewhere between studying atoms and riding bikes, he became a matcha person.
this is aoon rizvi.
matcha people.
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— mujtaba, founder