Jenki
Claudia and Otto Boyer founded Jenki in 2020. The name comes from genki, the Japanese word for life force, and the idea was simple. Build a brand around proper ceremonial-grade matcha as a serious alternative to coffee. Same caffeine, different feeling. Calmer, more focused, longer-lasting. Five years later Jenki has become the matcha brand in London, named Matcha Brand of the Year in 2025, serving over 750 cups a day across five locations.
The aesthetic is everything. Interiors designed by New York-based designer Ruby Kean, built around a green and blue palette pulled from premium Uji matcha. Minimalist but warm. Japanese references handled with respect rather than pastiche. Every store feels like a single thought. Matcha is whisked to order at the bar in front of you. Single-origin, sourced from one family farm in Uji. The whole brand is built on the kind of attention to detail that you either commit to entirely or don't bother with at all.
We programme music across the Jenki estate. Matcha is a different drink to coffee, and the room around it should feel different too. The energy is calmer. The pace is slower. People come for the ritual as much as the drink. Our soundtrack reflects that. Considered, atmospheric, unhurried. Nothing percussive enough to undercut the quietness, nothing soft enough to disappear into wallpaper. The kind of music that makes the act of drinking matcha feel like the deliberate, mindful thing the brand has always positioned it as.
The locations themselves vary, and the programming follows. Spitalfields and Borough are weekend market spaces with their own ambient noise. Selfridges sits inside a department store with its own programmed soundtrack. Covent Garden is permanently busy. Canary Wharf is a weekday lunch crowd. We schedule each store individually, with energy curves that match the rhythm of the location and the customer who's actually walking through the door at that hour. Same brand, calibrated differently in each room.
