Cortado Coffee's App Map For Specialty Coffee Cafes and Communities

Cortado Coffee's App Map For Specialty Coffee Cafes and Communities

You know that feeling when you search “coffee shops near me,” and find yourself walking into the closest place, and immediately realize it’s not the kind of coffee you wanted to buy? To solve that problem, Good Neighbor Podcast host Bob Blaisse sat down with Anthony Tilotta, the founder of Cortado Coffee, the global coffee cafe app he created to help coffee lovers discover specialty coffee shops around the world to feel connected with the kind of coffee they love and like-minded coffee lovers.

In this episode, you'll hear how the free app version of the Cortado Coffee App uses geolocation to surface hidden gem cafes and smaller roasters, often harder to find using generic map searches. Anthony shares his personal frustration that sparked his decision to use his software development background to serve the coffee culture, which is much bigger than just a coffee transaction. The conversation goes beyond “finding a coffee shop or cafe” and into awareness and benefits shared by communities of coffee lovers, happy to share what they're drinking. There, they can swap recommendations and invite new app users to join or to create an online Cortado coffee community within the app, to unite users with similar tastes, with discoverable good coffee cafe locations and coffee insights.

If you like drinking coffee hot or cold, listen and learn about the free Cortado Coffee App and optional low-cost subscription upgrade to remove ads and unlock more features. You'll hear Anthony Tilotta's bigger vision, including a built-in marketplace where cafe owners and roasters can sell products statewide, nationwide or worldwide, including the coming Cortado Cold Brew.

Cortado Coffee
www.CortadoCoffee.app
facebook.com/cortadoapp

--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond...  The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.
 

Transcript

Welcome To Delco And Beyond

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Delco, this is Michael Barkin, welcoming you to the Good Neighbor Podcast, where fans of local businesses and their neighbors come together. It's my pleasure once again to introduce my friend and neighbor, our host, Bob Blasey.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Michael Barkin, thank you very much for that introduction once again. And everybody, once again, welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Bob Blasey is my name. We're coming to you for the Good Neighbor Podcast today from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, which is one of 67 counties in Pennsylvania. It's a big state, but we're a small county, smallest almost third smallest, but get this largest in population after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. We're in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, just north of the state of Delaware, just west of uh the state of New Jersey and just below the city of Philadelphia. We lovingly referred to Delaware County as Delco. So the Good Neighbor podcast, Delco and Beyond, as we like to say, attempts to bring good neighbor businesses to you. And today we have another great good neighbor business, and I'm always glad when it's a business that almost everybody

Meet Cortado Coffee Founder Anthony

SPEAKER_01 1:12

will love to hear about because everybody loves coffee. Let me bring to the stage the owner and the founder of Cortata Coffee, Mr. Anthony Talada. Anthony, welcome to the program. Hey Bob, thanks for having me. It's wonderful, Anthony, because I've been uh tracking you and your business for months. Um, this is different. The listeners wondering what this is about. Coffee, everybody loves coffee, but not a retail store, not a spot to come get your coffee walking in the door. But there's some of that. More importantly, what we're talking about today is a product that can serve everybody in the world. We're talking about a coffee app, Cortada Coffee. Tell us a little bit about what your app is, first in what your vision was and what you've brought it to.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yeah, sure. So I build Cortado basically it's an app that attempts to connect the entire coffee culture in one place. So you can discover great coffee shops near you. You can share photos of what you're drinking, you can join coffee clubs and buy directly from cafes or roasters and eventually farmers.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Uh it's it's something because you know, we we all know when we go into like a Starbucks or a coffee shop, we're standing in line, we're waiting, we're chatting, we're seeing what everybody else is getting, we're wondering if that tastes better than what we're getting. And yet

A Global Map For Great Cafes

SPEAKER_01 2:35

um there already is kind of a community among uh people that like coffee. Um, everybody has their favorites. They talk about it, like how do you like your eggs? How do you like your coffee? Well, Anthony, you have done something that may not have yet been done. Am I to understand that what you've done with this app is kind of uh geolocate coffee shops? How far? Are we talking about the whole US?

SPEAKER_02 2:57

So this will find Cortana will find coffee shops all around the world. And it it really started with a simple frustration on my part where I just love coffee, and every time I would travel or move somewhere, it was hard to find really great local shops, other than you know, you you have your classic big chains, which are easy to find. Uh, but the smaller roasters and this and the cafes that are a little bit, I would say maybe care a little bit more about the quality were hard to find in retrospect to the large chains. So I find that when I was using Apple Maps or Google Maps, typing in, you know, coffee, it was it was hard to really indicate, like, okay, well, where are like the really good hidden gem spots? And that was kind of my approach to building up the UI for cortado coffee uh to make it easy to find those smaller.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Well, we we'll we'll have to. Uh we don't usually give out the website right away, but in this case, we have to because there are people listening right now and they're saying, I'll be the judge of this. I mean, I love coffee. This guy is saying that he's got a coffee app that's gonna find especially coffee shops everywhere. I gotta see this. So look, if you're listening and you want to be looking at the app or looking at the webpage, even as you're learning more from the owner and founder, we're talking to Anthony Tilada of Cortado Coffee, you can find it at CotadoCoffee.app. So it's C-O-R-T-A-D-O.coffee dot app A-P-P. That's the website, but that will lead you to the app stores and you'll be able to download the free Cortado Coffee app while we're even talking on this podcast. So, Anthony, big dream, big vision, it's out there. I have to think that there's more than just a dream and a vision that happened here. You you had some background and understanding software enough that you could say this is doable and you brought this to birth.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Yeah, I have been a software developer for almost 10 years at this point, and I've you know always loved coffee. And I kind of had this idea a few years ago, hey, it would be kind of cool to have like a coffee app in some in some sort of fashion. And I didn't really know, I guess, how to execute that immediately. So I really just kind of eventually had it, had that that like issue in the belly. It was it was it was a it was a mission. It was it was a mission, but uh in a combination of a frustration, like I mentioned of not being able to find the type of coffee quality that I really love. And that's really where the idea came uh about a year and a half ago of like, oh that's that's exactly what I have to build is something to be able to filter out those chains and find, you know, the really uh high.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Well, there's the difference. We all know a little bit about the internet, and people can say there's smart people out there that can go do a you know scraping Google search and from a directory, put things on a map and all this, and you know, uh whatever it is near me. Uh this is not a near me typical uh web page. This is a full-blown app in the in the in the Google App Store and the and the and the and the um iPhone store. You know, you actually are able to kind of download the app, and there's not just like that's the beginning, finding where the specialty coffee shops are, filtering out the the food stores that sell coffee and that kind of stuff. But finding those near me, that's big. But then, as we said earlier in this uh episode, there is a built-in kind of community we find when we walk into one of those stores, but but now we're finding them online. Uh, you've actually built into the app some aspect of community. Uh, give us a little idea of kind of where your heart was and wanting to do that, and then really what those uh kind of processes are while we're on the app, how we're feeling community.

Coffee Clubs And Sharing Culture

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Underneath it all, coffee's always been about connection with each other over great conversations or just common interests in general. So, you know, there was a reason why you know coffee houses were a thing hundreds of years ago in Europe and Asia and all over the world. And I kind of wanted to take that same concept with Cortado in a sense where there are these coffee clubs that you can create and start your own little community of, you know, whether it be local Delco coffee club or anywhere in the world, you can just create your own kind of club and essentially, you know, talking about invite people to your club. Yeah, you can invite them, you can share photos, you can share cafes, most importantly. Hey, I found this spot, check it out.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

This is the location, and it just helps everyone else kind of network and find the really great coffee spots that they're that they're so while they're there, and not only finding the coffee spots, they probably can learn about coffee, but they're actually interacting in groups if they want to join a group about coffee, especially coffee or especially geographies. But you know, Anthony, when when smart money, smart mind gets together and builds a smart product like this product, Cortado Coffee. And again, everybody go to it now, right now. Go to Cortadocoffee.app and you'll see Anthony's website. Anthony, this is well done, and uh it shows that you have software development background, but with that comes some responsibility to not just create a nice destination location, there's got to be a business model to make this survive for the benefit of your users, which I think you're targeting like to be come in the thousands or million.

Free App Revenue And Boosts

SPEAKER_01 8:27

What's the business model per se? If we get the app and it's free, are there are there kind of other features present that we could subscribe to or are they coming?

SPEAKER_02 8:39

The app is completely free to anybody who wants to just use the app right away. So you can basically go on the app right now, it's free. You download it, you can find all the great coffee shops near you or all over the world at no cost. But there are some ads that do run in the app. And if you didn't want to see those, you could pay a subscription fee, very small, very low fee for that. Uh, to not see those ads. And then you also get extra features such as boosts. And what a boost is, for example, if you really love a coffee shop or if you're a cafe owner, you can boost and promote that coffee shop so it shows up bigger on the map and other people can find it easier. Smart. So it's it's a good incentive for for both people, whether it's hey, I like this coffee shop and I want to support it, or if you're a business and you want to promote your own business, you can basically Amen.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

I mean, listen, that is true because word of mouth advertising is the best advertising, but the next best is I've eaten there, I've drank that drink, and it is good. And when you can get that kind of review kind of dynamically happening, because people of goodwill want to help your app grow. That's remarkable. That is a wonderful kind of a commerce model that you've tied into the um the app about coffee. It's about coffee and where to get good quality, you know, uh coffee that you might not know is already near you. You can find it by looking at cortadocoffee.app. It's c or r t a do coffee, c O F F E E, right? And then dot app will take you to uh Anthony Tolado, his website. Uh Anthony Tolada is here with us on the Good Neighbor Podcast and sharing kind of the wonderment of um, yeah, it's a coffee app. Why has this not been done before, Anthony? And what is the real future of this? What's the dream that you have for this app

Marketplace Plans And Cold Brew

SPEAKER_01 10:34

in the future? What's coming? What is already coming?

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Well, what's here now basically is if you are a cafe owner or a coffee shop owner or a roaster and you sell products, you can now sell to people statewide, countrywide, or worldwide within Cortado Coffee itself. So you can set up a Cortado business within the app. And the way you set up your marketplace is you basically upload your products and people can check out those products. Anyone that uses the app across the entire planet can see your products on there in one place, purchase them, and then it gets shipped out to them. So that's what's already implemented in the app, but what's coming is are a few things. Basically, I have plans to sell uh Cortado Cold brew too, and that's coming next month.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Your actual drink, your coffee, cold coffee, that's named after your brand, Cortado.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

It is Cortado Cold Brew. It's just uh classic cold brew coffee in a can. You keep it iced to keep it cold, delicious, and I'm excited that that's uh going to be rolling out next month, sometime uh summer 2026.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Big stuff. You're um a dreamer, but you're also a software developer, and you're not just a software developer that has a dream, you're a business owner now because uh everybody I can tell you, I have looked at this website, I'm looking at it now, and um it is really top shelf. This is not some software dreamer that just started, like I can put a geolocation database together. This is really um well thought out, well done. It's quick, and it also uh is needed. I want to say that because you know, we are driving around, we know a certain coffee shop, but you know, we would go to other ones, just like we'll go to other microbreweries for for restaurant food and beer. We want to try their craft brewery. This is the way that you can travel and at any time pull the app out, find out where the closest location is for something different, something new within your community, and go post about it. Um, so coffee lovers, unite. Unite around Anthony Telada, the owner and the founder of Cortado. It's cortadocoffee.app, a fabulous good neighbor business in our community and really in the world, because you can reach it via the internet from anywhere. Anthony, you've done a service to coffee drinkers throughout the world. Done a great service coming to us here on the Good Neighbor Podcast today to tell us about your business. I want to thank you for that. And uh, please continue taking us where we're going in the world of coffee. And please come back and join us again for another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. Thank you, Bob. I will. Thank you.

Wrap Up And Nominate A Business

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Have a great day.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, hosted by Bob Lacey. This is Michael Barkan, inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gnpdelco.com or by blowing bomb at 610 557 3745.