Newbury Street's Matcha Block, and the Café That's Only Here Until Spring

"First-ever lease in my entire life. I don't even have my own apartment." David Chae said that to the Boston Globe in early June. He was 21, and he had just signed for a storefront at 222 Newbury Street, directly under Dirty Water Dough Company, in a space a bubble tea shop had recently left. The lease runs eight months. He described it as a way to test the market.

That café is byChae. As of Boston Magazine's October roundup, it is open and serving a mango sticky rice matcha topped with coconut cream. It is also the one spot in Back Bay's new cluster of matcha counters with an end date built into its paperwork. The landlord took the short lease because the previous tenant had moved out and the next one isn't expected until next spring. If you live a few blocks away, this fall and winter are the window.

An eight-month lease only happens when a street has almost no gaps

Short leases on Newbury exist because long ones are so hard to get. In a May 2026 Boston Magazine feature on the health of Back Bay, Matthew Curtin, executive managing director at Newmark, put Newbury's retail vacancy rate at around one percent. He also said foot traffic on the street was up 40 percent since 2023. The same piece cites a list of retailers waiting for space that runs as many as 40 deep, and tenants renewing early to hold their spots.

On a street like that, a storefront doesn't sit dark because nobody wants it. It sits dark for a few months between one signed tenant and the next. The Globe described the byChae deal as good for both sides: the landlord fills the gap, and Chae gets a Newbury address without a long-term commitment.

The timing fits the business, too. Before the lease, Chae had run well over 100 pop-ups. He served matcha from a truck starting in summer 2025, and he partnered with brands including Gap and Free People. In August, Boston Magazine listed the Newbury opening for August 8, alongside a residency at the Dig Inn in Kendall Square that ran through the end of that month. The storefront is one more location in a business that has always moved around.

The rest of the block took far longer to arrive

byChae went from signed lease to open counter in about two months. The tenants around it took much longer, and the dates show the difference in how each one got here.

1. April 2025. CHICHA San Chen, the Taiwanese tea chain, is open at Lyrik Back Bay, 400 Newbury Street, Suite 300, according to Boston Restaurant Talk.
2. June 2025. Boston Restaurant Talk reports that Nana's Green Tea plans to open in Back Bay.
3. December 2025. Mizu Matcha opens at 217 Newbury Street, per The Harvard Crimson.
4. Tuesday, July 14, 2026. Nana's Green Tea soft-opens at 175 Newbury Street, roughly a year after it was first announced. The grand opening follows that Friday.
5. Early June 2026 to August 2026. byChae signs its eight-month lease and opens at 222 Newbury, with August 8 as the reported opening date.
6. Next spring. Another tenant is expected to take over the byChae space. No name has been reported.

Nana's is the clearest example of the slow path. The Tokyo company started in 2001 and opened its first U.S. location in 2018. MassLive reported that Boston is its seventh U.S. location and second on the East Coast, after New York City. Its other U.S. cafés are in Pasadena, Seattle, Bellevue, Las Vegas and Honolulu. Its Boston café opened about thirteen months after the June 2025 announcement. byChae's lease was signed in early June 2026, and its reported opening date came about nine weeks later, at 222 Newbury, just past Exeter on the same street.

Four counters, four different visits

All four places serve matcha, but they're quite different visits. The differences also come down to where each one sits and what kind of lease it holds.

byChae, 222 Newbury Street. This is the most homegrown of the four. Chae buys matcha directly from farms in Yame, a city on Japan's Kyushu island known for its green-tea plantations. When the Globe interviewed him in June, he was ordering more than 220 pounds a month. His pop-up menu has included banana pudding, blueberry and hojicha cream flavors. He also said he planned to sell tins of matcha powder to take home once the café opened. No published hours were found during research, so check the byChae Instagram before you go.

Mizu Matcha, 217 Newbury Street. It sits five numbers from byChae, on the other side of the street, and works as a dessert parlor. You order at kiosks. The Crimson's April review describes matcha gelato in five levels of intensity, from pale spring green to deep forest green, plus hojicha, black sesame and taro. That spring, one scoop was $6.49 and parfaits started at $14.49. Seating is a single row of wooden tables, and hours are noon to 10 p.m. daily.

Nana's Green Tea, 175 Newbury Street. It is below street level, between Dartmouth and Exeter, and serves Japanese curry and rice bowls along with matcha. MassLive pointed to the Matcha Chocolate Crunch Frappe, the Matcha Mochi Parfait and the Matcha Soft Serve with Warabimochi. Hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

CHICHA San Chen, 400 Newbury Street, Suite 300. It's at the Massachusetts Avenue end of the street, inside Lyrik Back Bay. The brand dates to 1998, calls itself a tea house with teas brewed by Tea Masters, and offers tastings. Lyrik lists its hours as 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

One block over, Blank Street at 647 Boylston Street completes the loop. In February, Boston Magazine's writer saw a line of TikTokers there waiting for the shaken vanilla bean matcha, with Café Landwer next door.

If you're out on a weeknight, the hours decide the route. CHICHA closes first at 9 p.m., while Mizu and Nana's stay open until 10. For a late walk, start at the Mass Ave end and work back toward Dartmouth.

What the short lease tells you about 222 Newbury after spring

Chae has been open about where he wants to end up. He told the Globe he hopes to find a permanent home and sign a long-term lease in the South End, which he called his ideal neighborhood. "I think there's a great community growing there, and a strong global sense," he said. "Newbury is a little touristy." He also said he plans to keep running pop-ups around Boston and in Brooklyn, and to grow a wholesale business that sells matcha to other cafés and pop-ups in the area.

None of that reporting says where byChae will go when the 222 Newbury lease ends. Matcha is also spreading well beyond Newbury. The Globe cited U.S. matcha sales up 86 percent from 2022 to 2025. Chae said he had seen at least 10 new pop-ups appear in Boston in the few months before June. In July, Hoodline reported that Kyo Matcha plans a Boston café for 2027, but without an address, so it's too early to say whether it will land in Back Bay.

The next tenant at 222 Newbury hasn't been named in any reporting so far. On a street where Curtin put vacancy around one percent in May, the space will most likely be filled again soon after it empties. Until then, all four counters are within a short walk of each other, and the mango sticky rice latte is still being poured at 222 Newbury.

At MacKinnon & Co., we watch the storefront side of Back Bay as closely as the residential side, because short leases, long waitlists and a block's changing mix of tenants all affect what it's like to live a few doors away. If you'd like to talk through how Newbury's retail churn plays out around your building or your block, request a free neighborhood consult.