Turning coffee digital

Paul Haun spent nine years in the insurance investment business before waking up one morning last year inspired to start his own business.

Little did he know the idea for his mobile app-development company, Providence-based Kaneland LLC, would come to him that very same morning.

“I was trying to buy coffee for friends, and I sent out a group text asking, ‘How do you take your coffee?’ ” Haun said. “I didn’t get a response.”

It was in that moment Haun found it odd that with all the information people share about themselves through social media, coffee preference isn’t normally included. So he developed “Nack,” the company’s first app, slated to launch this month, which allows people to share coffee preferences.

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Beyond sharing, however, users are also able to gift cups of coffee to one another via person-to-person money transfers, which he hopes coffee shops will eventually want to tap into. Starting with just coffee, Haun wants to develop the app as a platform for many user preferences of all sorts of consumer favorites.

To build revenue, Haun plans to anonymize the data collected and sell it to coffee companies for market research.

The practicality of Nack, he says, will create a sharing space for coffee drinkers across the country.

“This app is a new tool for the old-fashioned coffee run,” Haun said. •

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