When you enter a coffee shop, you expect to be served only the finest brewed coffee from artisan beans grown on an Indonesian island and dry-roasted to earthy perfection (and it’s fair trade, of course). If you go artisanal, you can pay $4 or more for a latte – depending on how “artisanal” you choose to make it. When your choices of toppings, flavors, and milk are practically endless, you can rack up the price of that perfect latte pretty high.
As Bloomberg puts it, “You spend upward of $4 on a small cup of shade-grown, single-origin brew, only to suck it through a hole cut into a plastic cover.”
Surely there’s something better for coffee-drinkers. Every cup you buy in a café should be enjoyed as if you were drinking it from your home. The sad fact of the matter is, most coffee cup lids are simply not up for the task. Every commuter struggles on the daily walk to the office – coffee in one hand, briefcase in the other. No matter how gently you grip that cup, the lid always seems to pop off or routinely squirt creamy hazelnut goodness onto your suit.
When you actually get a chance to sip the morning fuel, the lid captures steam and causes too many tongue burns, or else prevents you from partaking in the rich aroma you would normally enjoy from a mug at your dining room table.
Enter the Viora Lid, a new invention hailing from bright innovators in Seattle.
On Viora Lid’s website, one reads how a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with faulty coffee lids spurred these innovators on to greatness: “When we ordered a coffee to go, we were painfully aware that putting a lid on our drink greatly diminished our much-anticipated experience. Our conviction that there was a better way unleashed a scientific curiosity and a maniacal focus and led to years of researching fluid dynamics, evaluating mainstream and alternative plastics, reading research papers on smell and taste, assessing advanced manufacturing technologies, prototyping, and conducting round after round of testing. The result of all this work is the Viora Lid – and a growing collection of patents and patents pending.”
There you have it, folks. A new lid for a new generation of coffee drinkers. Coffee drinkers on the go, coffee drinkers obsessed with the latest fad, coffee drinkers who just want to have their breakfast coffee-in-mug experience translate into their morning commute.
“The Viora Lid is being received more like a new smartphone than a redesigned Dixie cup,” Bloomberg reported. “The tech industry is eagerly embracing artisanal coffee. At hackathons around the world, many coders are trading in their Red Bull for bottles of Portland’s Stumptown iced coffee. Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters serves Philz Coffee, a cup of jet fuel that’s popular in San Francisco.”
Maybe it’s the imagination and innovation of artisanal coffee shops that attracts the tech industry so strongly, or maybe it’s the need for caffeine — after all, tech innovators need something to keep them innovating. Or maybe they’re long-time coffee drinkers, and all they want is a good lid to enjoy their morning joe.