Matchmaker: a company looking for the perfect, tailor made espresso blend for every customer

How would you feel if you had an espresso blend that exactly suits your tastes? A Canadian company has set its sights on custom made blends!

Coffee is a matter of personal taste, and the search for the ideal blend is a process that never stops. Different backgrounds, different characteristics, dozens of delicious notes and profiles, single-variety coffees, blends of different proportions Arabica and Robusta create a real mess, in which even experienced espresso lovers can enjoy. It's not uncommon for each of us to wish there was a unique, personal blend that meets our expectations, but is that impossible… or not?

A company from Canada, Matchmaker Coffee, is at least trying!

What is MatchMaker Coffee;

Matchmaker Coffee is a roasting company from Canada, which tries to offer its customers custom made blends that meet their expectations. In this context, it has developed a system for recording the tastes of each customer, which are then analyzed algorithmically in order to prepare the right blend.

Experienced as roasters for years, MatchMaker's founders say they received hundreds of emails from consumers trying to describe the blend they'd like to drink. Their next step was Matchmaker launched a few months ago and the results are encouraging, so far, according to its people, despite the difficulties caused by the corona crisis.

How does MatchMaker Coffee works?

The people behind MatchMaker Coffee realized that the main difficulty in describing the ideal blend is on the one hand the subjectivity of perception, on the other hand the dozens of parameters that compose the feeling that a blend leaves and the difficulties that one has in expressing oneself clearly. likes or dislikes his mug.

So they developed a system, inspired by popular dating and social apps like OKCupid. First, in order to use the service, you must subscribe to MatchMaker Coffee, at a certain cost. With this money, he receives a package for a period of a few months, which contains 6 different coffees in packages of 250 grams, for which no data are listed at all. Thus, the subscriber who enjoys them, does not know if he drinks single-variety coffee or blend, as he does not know other characteristics (acidity, roasting, etc.).

Each package, however, invites the subscriber to complete in detail what he liked and what he did not like from the coffee he drank! The data are clearly grouped and concern a number of characteristics, such as taste notes, body, roasting, origins, acidity, etc.

The subscriber then posts the completed folders to Matchmaker in order to receive his next package. The data is analyzed through a special algorithm developed by the company, and thus the "profile" of the subscriber is slowly created. As time goes on, the coffee he receives becomes more and more personalized, with the ultimate goal of creating a tailor-made, ideal for any blend subscriber.

How difficult the process is?

Naturally, such an ambitious project has several problems. MatchMaker's people report that the difference in extraction, and the possible errors of subscribers in extraction, is a truly unbalanced factor that they cannot control and that can alter the results. Also, the cost of the project is increased, since in fact the company applies micro roasting and micro blending, ie roasting and baking in small quantities. Of course, even with the analysis of data that the company attempts, subjectivity continues to play a role, which makes the role of the company's blenders difficult.

On the other hand, the algorithm seems to work satisfactorily and subscribers say they are excited about the experience and the experiment. Even if it doesn't work out, it's definitely a process that significantly enriches the taste buds and cultivates the taste in a unique way - and the element of surprise is very special and fun.