The grand prize is two round-trip tickets to Japan, and you can enter without spending a dollar.
Paragon Tea Room has brought back Whisked Away, its matcha raffle, and this year’s version runs July 27 through August 31.
The top prize is not just flights.
The winner and a travel companion fly out in spring 2027, with a guided tea farm visit and a guided hojicha factory tour built into the trip.
Around that sit four weekly giveaways and eight milestone bonuses, which is where this year gets interesting.
Entering has two routes.
Buy an eligible item, online or in store, and every item comes with a raffle ticket you register by scanning its QR code.
The catch is that tickets are weighted rather than equal.
A 100g ceremonial matcha carries a golden ticket worth 10 entries. Other 100g powders and loose leaf teas carry 4. Smaller 30g and 50g sizes and a bamboo whisk carry 2. Any Japanese tea drink, pastry, popcorn, chocolate or teaware carries 1.
The other route costs nothing.
A free daily online entry is worth one entry, once per day, no purchase and no code, and Paragon states every entry has an equal chance of winning whether it was free or bought.
The milestone mechanic is the genuinely neat part, because it is collective.
Every entry anyone registers moves a plane along an interactive map of Japan, and each stop it reaches unlocks a bonus prize for the whole pool.
The thresholds are published, running from two $50 gift cards at 2,500 entries up through month-long tea passes at 15,000, teamLab tickets at 45,000, a wagashi and chawan class in Nagoya at 60,000, and at 100,000 entries, two more round-trip tickets to Japan.
Your own odds on the grand prize do not improve when a stranger enters, but the prize pool grows, which gives the whole thing a co-operative feel that retail raffles usually lack.
Weekly winners are drawn every Tuesday, and the grand prize winner is announced after entries close on August 31.
For anyone new to it, Paragon is a Vancouver tea company built on direct-sourced Japanese teas, with shops at Cambie, Richmond, Pacific Centre and YVR Airport.
For most locals, Paragon is regularly named as having some of the best matcha drinks in the city.
Aside from getting entries for shopping at Paragon, 11 partner cafes count too, each with its own qualifying drinks, including Honolulu Cafe, Fife Bakery, Provisions Kitsilano and Mister Ice Cream, though Mister only counts at its Robson location.
Whisked Away joins a busy summer for Vancouver matcha, with eleven partner cafes running qualifying drinks alongside their regular menus.
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Address: Paragon Tea Room locations across Metro Vancouver, plus participating partner cafes