Laguna to Miami

Azure is named after a street in Laguna Beach, and a lookout point above it that's belonged to us, in the way a place can belong to you without owning a square foot of it, since 2020. That's the coastline the brand was actually built on. Not built as a metaphor. Built as the literal place two people stood, most days, when everything else was uncertain and that view wasn't. That same grounding instinct is what eventually shaped the matcha omakase experiences Azure now runs in Miami: slow, deliberate, whisked to order.

This is the story of that coastline, and the other one, the one that moved the whole thing east.

Key Takeaways

• Azure Matcha is named after a street in Laguna Beach, where co-founders Miya Lapin and Sameer Ghai grew up and first built the rituals behind the brand.
• The brand started as a side project in the margins of corporate work, growing from text-message matcha experiments into pop-ups and a full product line.
• Miami became Azure's base, offering pop-ups across the city, a residency at Aventura Mall, and the first local matcha delivery in August 2026.
• Matcha tins are available to order online starting November 16, 2026 via the website and TikTok Shop, and in person at our New York launch party on November 12.

The one that started it

Sameer and I grew up around Laguna. Best friends since high school, which means our whole sense of what a good day looks like was shaped by that Southern California coastline: the light in the late afternoon, the way the cliffs cut the water into little private coves, the specific quiet of a place people drive hours to visit and we just called home.

In 2020, that lookout point became something more than scenery. The world had gone strange and small, and a spot like that, open, unbothered, exactly the same as it had always been, mattered more than it would have in an ordinary year. We went there often. Not for any particular reason beyond needing somewhere that still felt like itself.

Azure comes from that street name, but it also happens to mean blue, in one form or another, across a dozen languages, which we didn't plan and liked anyway once we noticed. The color of that water, that sky, that whole coastline. It was never a hard name to land on.

Matcha had already become something real to both of us: a grounding ritual built around first-flush matcha and the case for single-harvest sourcing, a slower and more deliberate start to a day that otherwise belonged to corporate work that had gone dull. That philosophy existed long before the name did. The name just gave it somewhere to live.

The margins, before it was a business

For a long stretch, Azure existed entirely in the in-between hours. Nights. Weekends. The gap between one obligation ending and the next one starting. Office days that quietly turned into kitchen nights. Weekends built, without much discussion, around whatever pop-up was next. The first omakase at Moxy Hotel Miami in August 2025 was a small, intimate setting: four to six preparations, a quiet room, and enough of a response to confirm that the multi-course format was worth keeping. A test kitchen that was really just our apartments, and more flights between Miami and New York than either of us would have predicted.

None of it looked like much from the outside. It wasn't glamorous, and it wasn't supposed to be. It was just what it actually looks like to build something you care about while still holding down everything else in your life. Sameer eventually made the call to leave corporate life behind and focus on Azure and his freelance creative work full time, a decision that's worked out about as well as it could. I'm still moving between two worlds most weeks, tech during the day, Azure on nights and weekends, though corporate is fully in the rearview at this point.

What grew out of those margins turned into something we hadn't exactly planned to build: full professional events, real product curation instead of a rotating cast of experiments, a matcha residency at Aventura Mall, and a full product line now in motion. None of it happened on a clean timeline. It happened the way most real things do, a little at a time, mostly at night.

• April 2025: Azure Matcha founded in Orange County by Miya Lapin and Sameer Ghai
• April to May 2025: Pop-up residency at Aventura Mall, Miami
• August 2025: First event: Omakase Experience at Moxy Hotel, Miami
• 2025 to 2026: Ongoing pop-ups, omakase experiences, and masterclasses across Miami and New York
• August 2026: First Miami matcha delivery
• November 12, 2026: Matcha tins available in person at our New York launch party
• November 16, 2026: Matcha tins available to order via website and TikTok Shop

What the experience looks like

Each session opens with the host walking through the matcha: where it came from, which harvest, and why that matters to the cup in front of you. From there the preparations move in sequence, starting cold-whisked and working toward traditionally prepared, with each one introduced as it arrives. The format is conversational by design. Guests ask questions, compare what they're tasting, and slow down in a way that most mornings don't allow.

Seating runs four to twelve guests, small enough that no one is watching from a distance. That size is the point. It keeps the room intimate and the attention real. The whole structure connects back to what Azure has always been built around: the idea that the best version of a day starts unhurried, with something worth paying attention to in your hands.

The coastline that moved it

Laguna is where Azure started. Miami is where it's actually building.

Upcoming pop-ups and tastings are listed at azurematcha.com/experiences. Events currently run in Miami, Los Angeles, and New York.

Our first batch reached Miami by local delivery in August 2026. Small as that sounds, it was the first time Azure existed as a product someone could simply order and receive, instead of something you had to catch at the right pop-up on the right weekend. Tins are available to order online starting November 16, 2026 through the website and TikTok Shop, and in person at our New York launch party on November 12. A broader product line follows in early 2027. Until the wider rollout catches up, Azure still mostly lives the way it always has: at pop-ups across Miami, Los Angeles, and New York, one ceremonial-grade matcha at a time, whisked to order, not shipped in bulk.

There's an obvious thread between the two coastlines, even with the ocean between them and a different kind of light hitting the water. Both carry a version of the same brightness Azure has always tried to bottle: natural daylight, water as a constant, a sense that the good version of the day starts unhurried, not rushed. Laguna gave that feeling its name. Miami gave it a place to actually reach people at scale.

Fall 2026 update

As of September 2026, Azure is preparing for its biggest product milestone. Matcha tins become available in person at our New York launch party on November 12 and online on November 16, and pop-ups continue across Miami, Los Angeles, and New York, including an October 11th event with Dripped Pilates in Los Angeles. The brand's first wholesale partnerships are also taking shape. For two people who built this in the margins, the next few months look like the moment those margins become the main thing.