A few months back I was invited by Joffrey’s Coffee to taste and evaluate their coffee Jamaican Me Crazy. I liked the coffee, but it was a little mild for my taste. Needless to say I was not the only person in social media to evaluate their coffee. The other day I received a sample pouch of their incarnation based on that evaluation – Coffee 2.0.

Coffee 2.0 “contains many bug fixes” as Joffrey’s stated on the accompanying brochure and based on the feedback from over 1,500 bloggers, they created this blend that is mild tasting yet bold in the caffeine department. And as you can see from the accompanying photo of the package, they have embraced social media with their packaging, complete with tagging and caregories.

I decided to throw the coffee into production and sampled it in real-time on a weekday morning. It smelled great, but the taste was a little milder than I was used to. The sample pouch was of ground coffee, and I may order a bag of whole beans, as I typically add more beans than usually recommended when brewing coffee, so the taste could be adjusted to my liking. As for the “effectiveness” of the coffee, I was in good working form the day I drank it in the morning, so the caffeine levels were just right.

Even if I did not like the taste of the coffee at all, I surely like the approach. The idea of crowdsourcing, which I covered in a previous book takeaway, is increasing globally where the crowd – the potential customers – provide their input to the eventual products and services they will buy. Companies such as threadless and crowdSPRING in Chicago are blazing this trail and are quite successful. I hope to see Joffrey’s continue to be in this good company.

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