Japan Tea Farm Subscription Service "ChaaSS" — Sustainability Meets Sh

A 300-Year Tea Farm Legacy Inspires Japan's First Corporate Tea Field Subscription

A Hamamatsu-based startup called Blue Farm (ブルーファーム), founded in July 2021, is turning heads in Japan's tea industry with an innovative corporate subscription service called "ChaaSS" — short for Tea Field as a Service. The company manages approximately 10 hectares of tea fields primarily in the mountainous areas of Fujieda City, Shizuoka Prefecture — one of Japan's most historically significant tea-growing regions — and is now attracting contracts from major corporations across Tokyo, Aichi, and beyond.

What Is ChaaSS (Tea Field as a Service)?

ChaaSS is a B2B subscription model in which companies contract a designated tea field. Local farmers handle cultivation, and the harvested tea leaves are processed at a partner factory into bottled canned tea products. These are then provided directly to the contracting company's employees as a workplace beverage.

But the service goes well beyond simply supplying tea. Blue Farm installs IoT sensors on each contracted tea field to quantify and visualize the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction effects in real time. According to the company, tea fields can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately one-third compared to forests. The data is shared with contracting companies, allowing them to incorporate the environmental impact into their SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) reporting and ESG strategies.

Organic Certification and Abandoned Farmland Revival

Blue Farm has obtained Yuki JAS (有機JAS) certification — Japan's official organic agricultural standard, equivalent to USDA Organic — for its tea fields. The company avoids synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, reducing additional sources of GHG emissions common in conventional tea cultivation.

Many of the tea fields under Blue Farm's management were previously abandoned due to Japan's well-documented aging farmer population and lack of successors — a crisis particularly acute in Shizuoka, which accounts for roughly 35–40% of Japan's total tea production. By taking over uncultivated land and restoring it to productive use, the company directly addresses what industry observers describe as one of the most pressing structural challenges facing Japanese tea today.

The Founder's Mission: Reviving Japan's Tea Industry

CEO Daisuke Aoki (青木大輔, age 41) was born into a tea farming family in Fujieda City with over 300 years of continuous history. He studied regional revitalization at university and graduate school, then gained corporate experience in investor relations at a major telecommunications construction firm before earning an MBA during an approximately three-year stint in the United States. After returning to Japan and working in investment, he founded Blue Farm in 2021.

"It is my mission to do something about the tea industry," Aoki has stated. He developed the ChaaSS service in collaboration with Shizuoka University, which helped design the sensor technology used to collect field data. The service officially launched in February 2025, and as of early 2026, approximately 40 corporate clients have signed on — primarily large enterprises. Demand has grown so rapidly that Aoki reports the company is currently facing a shortage of available tea fields and is actively seeking to expand its land portfolio.

What This Means for the U.S. Market and Japanese Tea Importers

For American café owners and food & beverage buyers sourcing Japanese tea, this development signals a broader shift in how Japanese producers are repositioning tea — not just as a commodity, but as a premium, sustainability-certified, traceable agricultural product. The GHG reduction data, Yuki JAS organic credentials, and IoT-backed traceability that Blue Farm is building domestically reflect exactly the kind of provenance story that resonates with environmentally conscious U.S. consumers.

Aoki himself has signaled intentions to expand into international markets with high interest in sustainability, noting: "There are many people around the world who want to drink 'the world's most sustainable tea.' If we can reach them, I believe the day will come when there are no more abandoned tea fields."

As Japanese matcha and green tea continue to grow in the U.S. market, startups like Blue Farm are quietly laying the groundwork for a next-generation supply chain — one where the story behind the tea field is as valuable as the tea itself.

Key Terms

Yuki JAS (有機JAS): Japan's national organic certification standard administered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF). Products bearing this mark are grown without synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilizers and are audited by an accredited certification body — broadly comparable to USDA Organic in the United States.

SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals): A set of 17 global goals established by the United Nations in 2015, widely adopted by Japanese corporations as a framework for sustainability reporting.

Fujieda City, Shizuoka (静岡県藤枝市): A city in central Shizuoka Prefecture with a long tradition of tea cultivation, situated in one of Japan's premier tea-producing regions.