Coffunity was developed in El Salvador and has been downloaded in more than 75 countries
By Vladimir Vásquez
When a group of Salvadorans felt the need to support coffee roasters and consumers to make their products visible in the market, Coffunity was born.
Those who download the mobile application on their iPhone or Android smartphone, can take a picture of a coffee bag and obtain information related to the production, processing, and marketing of at least 175 thousand brands of coffee from 75 different countries. Amazing, right?
Andrea Pacas, executive director (CEO) and co-founder of the project, explained to Bandola that the app works to provide information to any coffee lover in the world, but also to bring exposure to the producers who do not have the budget for advertising.
Consumers, in addition to finding the information on the coffee brands within the app, can evaluate them to let other people know which are the best grains worldwide.
With this, “we allow quality to speak for itself, and if a company does not have a marketing budget, its clients can expose it and help it to be discovered,” says Pacas.
At the moment they are working with data from some 3,000 companies and in the future they also hope to include baristas, producers, and roasters to share their stories so that their work is recognized even more.
Two years of development
Since the idea began, Coffunity has been around for almost two years. The application took about a year to development, but it took another 365 days to collect, group, and place the information so that it would be accessible to the public.
In March 2018 it was officially launched for IOS and later, in August, it reached the Android online store. It also works in the style of social networks and allows users to add other coffee lovers so they can exchange experiences and see what brands they are testing and evaluating.
The idea is that people can have more information about the coffee they are drinking at the moment, and learn more about its production and how it reaches the cup.
From El Salvador to the world
One of the biggest surprises for the creators of Coffunity was the international recognition granted to them at the Specialty Coffee Expo 2018 in Seattle, United States, where they won the Best New Product of the Year award and also an award in the Technology category, two important mentions that now force them to look to the future with their app and their extensive knowledge of the coffee sector.
The awards allowed them to be in different international magazines and subsequently, they received invitations to the New York Coffee Festival in New York, the Producer and Roaster Forum, and the Coffee Shop Innovation Show to be held in London in November next year.
A young team
There are many young people behind Coffunity. The co-founders, Andrea Pacas and Federico Bolaños are involved in coffee from two different areas: she is from the 6th generation of coffee producers and he has trained baristas around the world.
The app was developed by one of the team members and now 4 people are in charge of the technical part of the project that takes care of the programming. The project grew to such an extent that currently, 11 people are working who do not exceed 27 years of age on average.
