The Vivino for Coffee: Why Coffee Needs What Wine Already Has
When I go to a wine shop, I know what I'm looking for. I love Pinot Noir. I'm drawn to Italian wines, Barolos and Barbarescos from the Piemonte region. I know this about myself not because I went to sommelier school, but because at some point I tried a wine, loved it, and looked at the label.
The label told me it was a Barbaresco from Italy. I didn't even know what that was at the time. But the next time I was at a wine shop, I looked for Italian reds. I tried a few. I liked most of them. Over time, a pattern emerged: I reliably enjoy wines from this region, made from these grapes, in this style.
The wine industry made this possible. Not because wine is inherently easier to understand than coffee, but because wine has a data infrastructure that coffee doesn't. Bottles are consistently labeled with grape variety, region, vintage, and producer. Apps like Vivino let you scan a label and see ratings, reviews, and flavor profiles. The framework exists for any curious drinker to build their own understanding of what they like.
Coffee has nothing like this. And that's the problem Siip was built to solve.
The coffee data gap
Walk into a specialty coffee shop and pick up a bag. What do you see on the back?
Some bags list the country of origin. Some add the region. Some mention altitude, variety, and processing method. Some have detailed tasting notes. Some just say "medium roast blend."
There's no standard. Every roaster labels differently, emphasizes different things, and uses different terminology. One roaster's "medium" is another roaster's "medium-dark." One bag says "washed," another says "fully washed," another doesn't mention processing at all. I've seen roasters put the wrong country's landscape on the bag. I've seen the same coffee described with completely different data points by different roasters.
For a consumer trying to figure out what they like, this is chaos. You can't build preferences across a system with no consistent structure.
Compare this to wine: every bottle tells you the grape, the region, the vintage, and the producer. Every single bottle. Whether it's a $10 supermarket wine or a $500 collector's piece, the fundamental data is there. That consistency is what makes it possible for consumers to learn.
What Vivino did for wine
Vivino solved a specific problem: you're standing in a wine shop, holding a bottle, and you want to know if you'll like it. Scan the label. See the ratings. See the flavor profile. Make a decision.
Simple, but transformative. Vivino turned every wine purchase into a learning moment. You didn't need to study wine. You just scanned, drank, rated, and over time built an understanding of your own palate. The app was the infrastructure that let millions of casual drinkers become informed drinkers.
What Siip is doing for coffee
Siip is building that same infrastructure for coffee. But with some things coffee can do that wine can't.
Scan any coffee bag. Point your phone at a bag in a cafe, a grocery store, a friend's kitchen, in any country, in any language. Siip identifies it from our database of 30,000+ specialty coffees from 3,000+ roasters and shows you everything: the farm, the producer, the region, the altitude, the variety, the processing method, the flavor profile, and your personalized match percentage.
That last part is something Vivino doesn't do. Vivino shows you aggregate ratings from other people. Siip shows you how well this specific coffee matches your specific palate, based on everything you've rated before.
Build your taste profile from everywhere. Rate a subscription bag at home. Rate a pour-over at a cafe. Scan a bag you found on vacation in Colombia. Every rating feeds the algorithm, from any source, any country, any context. Your profile gets smarter with every coffee you encounter, not just the ones you buy from us.
Connect discovery to action. Found a coffee you love at a cafe? Buy it there. Or order directly from the roaster. Or if it's in our subscription catalog, add it to your next delivery. Siip connects understanding to purchasing in a way that makes the whole coffee experience more intentional.
A subscription built on your profile. Once you've built a taste profile from even just 10-15 ratings, the subscription knows what to send you. And it improves every month because every delivery you rate teaches it something new. Your 8th bag is more precisely matched than your 1st. That's not possible in a wine subscription because wine doesn't have real-time algorithmic matching.
The bigger picture
Here's what excites me most about all of this. When consumers understand their coffee preferences, it changes the entire supply chain.
Right now, most coffee is traded as a commodity. A Brazilian coffee competes on price with every other Brazilian coffee, regardless of quality. Farmers who invest in exceptional quality often can't charge more because consumers can't tell the difference.
But when consumers start saying "I love coffees from Huila, Colombia" or "I prefer washed Kenyans from Nyeri," that creates differentiation. And differentiation creates demand. And demand flows upstream to the farmers growing those specific coffees.
I've seen this happen firsthand. A producer I've known for 20 years in Costa Rica went from being told their coffee wasn't good enough for Blue Bottle to winning 5th place at Cup of Excellence. Now they have direct trade relationships with buyers in Taiwan, Japan, and the Middle East. That happened because buyers recognized the quality and consumers valued the differentiation.
Siip's goal is to make that recognition happen at scale. Not just among industry professionals, but among the billion people who drink coffee every day.
The Siip app is free on iOS and Android. Start scanning. Start rating. Your preferences are already there. We just give you the tools to see them.