The Major Japanese Brand Behind Costco's Green Tea

We often don't know the brands behind private labels until a product recall makes it evident (which is how we know the brand behind Walmart's Great Value bread as well as the brand behind Simply Nature Frozen Spinach Bites at Aldi). However, the Japanese brand behind Costco's Kirkland Signature Green Tea is listed right on the box. The company, Ito En, is a staple green tea brand in Japan. In fact, it's the biggest green tea brand in the world; selling its products in over 45 countries. 

Its flagship Oi Ocha bottled green tea can be found in convenience stores and vending machines globally, and its various powdered teas and tea bag products take up entire aisles in some supermarkets. When we're in Japan, my boyfriend lives on Oi Ocha (I'm more of a Pocari Sweat person), and we always have a few Ito En products at home. At the moment, we have roasted rice green tea bags (genmaicha), powdered green tea, and some matcha-iri sencha tea bags (which may very well be the exact same product as the Kirkland Signature version only in different packaging).

What's notable about Kirkland Signature Green Tea is that it's a mixture of both loose-leaf sencha tea and powdered matcha tea (the sencha tea leaves are coated in a small amount of matcha powder). This gives you a "best of both worlds" product that combines the intense, earthy flavors of matcha with the fresh, citrusy notes of sencha.

Ito En sells teas in various forms and flavors, such as green tea, matcha, roasted rice tea, fruit teas, and roasted green tea. The company also owns a Jasmine tea brand, a rooibos tea brand, and the Japanese licensing agreement for Tully's Coffee, which has more than 800 brick-and-mortar locations in Japan. In the United States, Ito En products can be found at Walmart and Target as well as online through Amazon and Ito En's own website, among others.

In Japan, Ito En runs its own retail stores and tea rooms, where it sells premium tea products and a wide range of tea-based drinks (like matcha lattes) and desserts (like matcha soft serve). The stores have a modern-traditional Japanese aesthetic with beautiful decor that really suits the product (I've been to a few of them).

The brand also has a global partnership with Japan's most famous baseball player, Shohei Ohtani (of the Los Angeles Dodgers). There's even a range of 63 special Oi Ocha bottle designs covering every one of Ohtani's home runs in 2025 (and a downloadable sheet to help people keep track of the bottles they've collected).