Hayaa Hyder takes matcha seriously. When she takes a sip of the creamy green drink, she’s searching for a very specific flavor profile. Not too milky. Not overly syrupy. She wants a cup that’s light, strong, and fresh.
Last December, Hyder’s hunt for the perfect matcha led her and her husband abroad.
After trips, tastings, and even personally grinding tea leaves into powder, the Morrisville resident finally found her dream matcha at a small farm in Japan.
The powder was exactly what Hyder was looking for to elevate Mazay ka Matcha, her mobile matcha cart.
Hyder founded the business in August 2025. Since then, she’s taken her forest-green cart across the Triangle for pop-up sales, local festivals, and vendor markets. She currently averages two to three pop-ups a week, each with a slightly different drinks menu, serving everything from Earl Grey and Thai tea fusions to specialty matchas inspired by South Asian confections including gulab jamun and pistachio kulfi.
Her bestselling Rasmalai Cloud and Rasmalai Latte matchas, named after the creamy dessert, are concocted with “rasmalai milk” with notes of saffron, cardamom, pistachio, and almond. Every syrup is homemade, and every drink is served in a cup adorned with a Mazay ka Matcha sticker.
Hyder, who is half Indian and half Pakistani, incorporates her culture as a crucial aspect of Mazay ka Matcha’s brand. Even the business’s name is in Urdu, with one of its Instagram posts translating mazay ka matcha to “delicious matcha”—or, more playfully, “a matcha full of fun.”
Matcha is a fine powder created with specially grown and carefully harvested green tea leaves, usually whisked with hot water before being added to drinks or desserts. Although the specific practice originated in China and matcha is primarily produced in Japan, tea is a quintessential cornerstone of many Asian cultures.
Hyder, 23, grew up in California surrounded by cups of chai.
“We obviously drink chai in the morning. We drink it at social gatherings. We drink it at night—my mom drinks before she goes to sleep,” she said. “I just liked the thought of mixing the two traditions.”
While chai was always a part of Hyder’s life, matcha became her drink of choice when she went to college in Dallas, where she worked as a barista. After graduating in 2023, she returned to California before she got married and moved to Morrisville.
In her early days in North Carolina, Hyder spent her time exploring the Triangle’s café culture to find matcha comparable to that at her favorite spots in Dallas and California. She didn’t have much luck. After paying $9 for an 8-ounce matcha so milky she couldn’t bring herself to drink it, she knew she could do better and began to experiment, concocting homemade syrups and creating her branding. Mazay ka Matcha was born.
Because of Hyder’s ties to the Triangle’s South Asian Muslim community, many of Mazay ka Matcha’s pop-ups are at Hyder’s local mosque or at her husband’s Morrisville-based restaurant, Hibachi Blue. Even as a vendor, Hyder enjoys selling matcha at events catered toward her community, such as Cary’s late-night Suhoor Fest during Ramadan, the Pakistani American Community of the Triangle’s Basant festival, and various pro-Palestine fundraisers.
Mazay ka Matcha has also set up at brand events, Morrisville’s Earth Day festival, and other community gatherings. Hyder said stand-alone Mazay ka Matcha pop-ups garner around 50 attendees, but when she brings the cart to larger multi-vendor events, she’ll often close out the day with more than 200 drinks sold.
These days, Hyder said, customers primarily discover Mazay ka Matcha via Instagram, through which she’s befriended other vendors and received praise from local content creators. At one event, she said, two attendees declared her matcha as the best in North Carolina.
“That warms my heart,” she said. “Like, wow. People actually do like what I’m giving them.”
Hyder’s current favorite Mazay ka Matcha drink is a “double Earl Grey matcha” with Earl Grey syrup, matcha cold foam, and green matcha salt. She’s also working on finalizing her website to implement drink and syrup pickup options and nationwide shipping on matcha powder.
Since many of her friends and family live in Texas or California, Hyder said she wants to give them the chance to make Mazay ka Matcha drinks themselves instead of waiting for her to visit.
When she does travel, she plans to host pop-ups in their cities. Her dream is a Mazay ka Matcha storefront, but that’s far into the future. Right now, Hyder is more focused on enjoying the process and organizing more pop-ups.
“I’m excited to see the new connections that I make and the new events that I’m able to vend at,” she said. “Honestly, it’s still so surreal to think that it’s gone this far.”
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