Connected Coffee

Your phone can help you get more out of your coffee experience – if you find the right app. Phil Wain analyses the options

- Phil Wain

The rise of speciality coffee since the mid-2000s has been simultaneous with the rise of smartphones, apps and social media. Early adopters of both social media and quality coffee used Twitter to connect and find the best places to drink coffee. In those days it was easy for us to find each other as both Twitter and the coffee community were smaller. Forums such as coffeeforums.co.uk were – and still are – another great source of knowledge and opinion.

As smartphones became more popular, apps enabled more people to explore third wave coffee, especially in terms of café recommendations. Early online guides such as Young and Foodish’s Top 10, Charmaine Mok’s Time Out guide and the collaborative Google Map at philwbass.com were soon replaced by Derek Lamberton’s app London’s Best Coffee (now owned by Paced Group and rebranded as Best Coffee). It’s undoubtedly true to say 21st-century technology enabled the growth of coffee appreciation.

Coffee finder apps

Apps that help you find great coffee can essentially be divided into those curating content and those relying on user-generated content. Keeping up with café changes, openings and closures is a demanding task and the more information an app includes, the more there is to update. Users also have different needs: sometimes it’s about finding the best coffee in London, sometimes it’s just about finding any decent coffee nearby. We tested a number of apps extensively so that we could recommend those that performed well in user experience (UX), content and being up to date.