Joe Coffee Raises $750K

Joe Coffee, the Seattle-based startup helping local coffee shops compete with big chains, has raised $750k from Flying Fish Partners, bringing the startup’s total funding to date to $1.7m.

Founded in 2014, Joe Coffee offers coffee shops a mobile order and rewards app that allows their customers to order coffee from their smartphones. The app is currently being used in over 200 locations in Seattle and the startup plans to launch in Los Angeles next month.

“It was important for us to be be careful not to grow faster than we could promise a trustworthy and consistent experience for consumers. We built a lot of below-the-surface tech that allows us to monitor the quality of end-user experience down to the store level in real time. This has enabled us to make well-informed decisions on new features and functionality for all three major stakeholders in our marketplace: owners/operators, baristas, and consumers. From the time you place an order to the time you expect your drink and/or snack to be ready for pickup is between 3 and 7 minutes before the perception of that experience begins to suffer. The data tells us that if that experience breaks down just once early in the consumer lifecycle, it’s hard to get them back.” – Cofounder and CEO of Joe Coffee Nick Martin.

Bottom Line: Flying Fish Partners has also invested in Tomorrow Ideas (think: an insurance partner to some), and today Joe Coffee can also become a good partner to commercial insurers.