so the brief came to us…
IBM’s Next Gen team was looking for a new, non-traditional project where they could show younger generations how their blockchain technology could be used in new, innovative ways. Considering younger people tend to associate IBM with their parents, we wanted to do something vibrant and totally unlike what you would expect from IBM.
After many ideas from voting to produce to ocean pollution, we came together to create The Blockchain Bean. The world’s first blockchain-powered coffee shop, collaborated with our friends over at Brooklyn Roasting Company.
After six months of concepting, designing, production and execution, our pop-up coffee shop was born at Smorgasburg in Williamsburg, BK.
(You really should watch the video above, I’m pretty fond of it.)
But, if you don’t: essentially we took brooklyn roasting company’s ethiopian yirgachefe coffee and put in on a blockchain, tracking its every movement from the farmer who grew the beans to the hip young chick who got a coffee from our shop.
we told the story of how exactly their coffee got to their hands throughout the experience, and once they got their (free) coffee in our tumblers, they could scan the qr code and our site would pop up giving them specific information about their cup on the blockchain. things such as time, barista, type of coffee, and where it came from all right there in the palms of their hand, thanks to ibm blockchain.
lastly, they could even leave a tip for the farmer and track it on the blockchain as it made it’s way back to ethiopia. Pretty cool, right?
