One of the developers at Dragonchain learned about Knowledge Perk through Rock Hill’s technology incubator. After learning about their vision and meeting with Ryan Sanderson, Co-founder and CEO of Knowledge Perk, lunch quickly turned into a mutual understanding of how blockchain could help increase transparency in the last journey of the premium small-batch coffee supply chain.

We brainstormed several ideas (payments, loyalty, product reviews, sourcing, roasting) and settled on providing transparency into their roasting process. Ryan described how the small-batch coffee roasting process is completed by hand. And even though a recipe is followed for each specific roast profile, there was no means to provide customers assurance that the high quality coffee purchased matched with the batch. For example, if a batch is roasted and the roast goes off recipe (heat, airflow, bean types, etc), most roasters will sample the product, and if the flavor is similar, sell the product regardless.

Knowledge Perk wanted to be the first to provide transparency in the space by labeling each bag with a unique QR code. This proves to the customer that the recipe matches the roast profile on the bag of coffee beans. The roast data is obtained through IoT devices in the roaster, and directly stored on the blockchain.