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Coffee and tea are some of the most enjoyed beverages around the world. Sips of these renowned, warm beverages can give drinkers energy and peace of mind. You can also combine these with different foods to make for an even more enjoyable experience. There’s so much to try beyond coffee and donuts. Here are four pairings for coffee and tea that you’ve gotta try.

Organic Bread

A nice piece of toast with an appetizing spread can go great with coffee and tea. Be sure to use organic bread that’s rich in nutrients. Then, find a nice marmalade or cream cheese to use. As you take a bite of the toast and a sip of the drink, you can appreciate how they work with one another. This can be a perfect snack during any time of day.

Cake

A moist and satisfying cake can really bring out the flavor of your coffee or tea. You might consider something with a cooler temperature like cheesecake to contrast the heat of the beverages. You might also pair a rich coffee with a slice of coffee cake. If you’re at a coffee shop, see what sort of cakes or other pastries they have. Ask for their recommendations about what goes best with what.

Oatmeal

Coffee is a breakfast staple for many people. Therefore, you should find a way to pair it with what you eat for breakfast. Oatmeal is tremendously healthy and can go great with coffee. You can add things like dried fruit, syrup, and cinnamon. These can really bring out the flavor of the coffee. If you like black coffee, you can offset the bitter taste with the sweetness of your oatmeal.

Salad

You can really appreciate the refreshing properties of tea with a great salad. A salad of greens and fruits can go well with green tea. Plus, you can cool your mouth off well with it. Make sure that you balance your salad well. There should be all kinds of things in it, from greens to tomatoes, nuts, and a flavorful dressing or vinaigrette. Make sure that any dressing you use goes well the tea you’ve chosen.

We hope this has given you a great idea of what to pair with your coffee and tea. You want to make this an immensely satisfying experience. By using these pairings, you can expand your palate and make for the best tea and coffee drinking experience possible.

The consumer-product relationship is broken. Just think – walking into a store  - there is no real interaction between you and the products on the shelf? For most of us it is a simple “Hmm this looks good, I’ll take it.” and throughout consuming the item, nothing new about it is really ever learned. We seek to revolutionize this experience by allowing you – from the moment you first see the product on the shelf to your last interaction with it – it adds value & color to your life.

When we saw this gap, we started Coffee Match – changing the buying & consumption experience around Coffee.

Revolutionizing the way we consume Coffee & Tea

We are both passionate about technology and wanted figure out a way to use it to create an experience around Coffee & Tea. To create an experience – we started thinking about what kind of content would add value to the consumption.

To start…You want to know where it comes from, who is responsible for making it. Next to really spice things up – experience it with your own eyes. Meet the farmers, the local roasters, understand how its locally consumed, what is interesting about the Coffee/Tea drinking culture, & impacts around the production of this beverage.

And that’s exactly what we did. We went to India to accomplish this.

Our First Journey: South India

Our trip in India was incredibly insightful. Most of the amazing Coffee in India is grown in a region known as Coorg which is about 3-4 hours away from any major city. On our journey to Coorg, we realized we were stumbling across amazing locations filled with interesting people & an amazing culture. We started to see how the Coffee & the culture fit together.

It was a surreal experience of how we initially began the trip to find this amazing Coffee, but in the process of doing so – we ended up with so much more. From learning local recipes, understanding how the Coffee is supposed to be made, listening to local music, meeting the local developer community, picking small bits from the language – how it all came together to change our perception of what Coffee & Tea really is.

So we want to bring this experience back – package it in a way from the first sip to the last sip – you feel you’ve been there.

The future of Coffee & Tea:

Once we came back home, we realized we had an opportunity to expose the world to interesting cultures through their daily interaction with Coffee & Tea – a seamless way to consume information while enjoying a delicious beverage.

So we built an app as prototype that pushes all the of the content that we gather while sourcing the coffee/tea from that destination & delivers in a seamless way to the end customer from the moment they see the product at the store.

For instance, meet the farmer with a quick snap – you can see the actual farmer who made it & the raw coffee/tea in his/her hand right on the store shelf. Watch it in action.

And through the process of drinking the coffee/tea until the last sip – we push interesting content through directly to you.

Creating an experience around products

Our vision is at the store – walking into an aisle – is much more interesting & interactive. The products are alive. You’re not buying a product, but you’re buying an experience.

We just launched our Indiegogo & we’d sincerely appreciate your support in changing the way we consume coffee forever.

I've become really fascinated with how small independent businesses can take advantage of emergent social web tools. Much of my professional experience has been in the non-corporate world (except for Ritz
Carlton, Hyatt, GTE Sprint, and some early career positions);
independents generating less than $5 million in annual revenues.

The growth challenges posed to independents are, I believe, much more difficult than that for larger organizations. With larger organizations comes economies of scale. The independent organization manager has so
many more hats to wear and not nearly the time or educational resources
available.

How can these organizations take advantage of the new tools of the social web? The social web research firm Wetpaint/Altimeter found that organizations with total social media engagement were able to grow their
businesses by 18%. It's no secret that the social web offers
organizations opportunities, but these players aren't able to afford the
market rate for social media strategists and community managers
($100/hour and $60/hour respectively).

**Please do not think you can conduct good social media by hiring a kid with a large Facebook account - that will FAIL miserably.

How does an independent restaurant, inn or coffee house effectively compete against the multi-units in social media? This question has been rattling around my brain for the past six months and I think there is a
minimum of three answers:

Do It Yourself. Doing it yourself offers the operator complete control. It also means significant time in learning effective strategies, tools and methods. In addition, it means significant time
involvement in maintaining your social media activities (production,
distribution, monitoring, engagement).

Outsource To A Large Firm. Outsourcing to a large firm can be attractive because of the automation offered in distribution, monitoring and analysis. In addition, you don't have to invest time and money in
learning effective strategies, tools and methods. The disadvantage is
that your organization will still have to do the content production and
the engagement, requiring your time and attention.

Hire A Small Professional Creative Company. I posit that this is the best option for the independent small business. The creative company brings all the resources for production, distribution, monitoring and
engagement - crafting and executing a sound and highly individualized
strategy. Time requirement for the organization is minimal, requiring
meeting in person or through technology for the creative professional to
gather some raw content and give reports/feedback. It's personal and
accountable.

I'm going to forecast here that 2010 will be the year we'll see an explosion of small creative social media providers catering to small business. Market rates will be reasonable, ball-parking in the $500 to
$1000 per month range. With small business being the backbone of the
American economy, I believe these social media providers will become the
norm.