CeramicCup

Compared to a good old fashioned coffee cup, drinking from a paper cup with a plastic lid can leave a lot to be desired, with that small stream of coffee flowing through that tiny hole. And then you jostle it, and it squirts all over your clean shirt.

vioraA Seattle-area company, Vaporpath Inc., is aiming to solve both of those problems with a new plastic coffee lid, the Viora Lid, making its debut today at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual convention, taking place at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle right now.

The cup works by bringing a drinkable amount of coffee into the well on top of the cup, replicating the feel of a traditional coffee cup rather than requiring the user to pull the liquid out of that small hole.

Vaporpath’s president is former Microsoft director Barry Goffe, and its backers include Seattle angel investor Geoff Entress and tech vet Rick Hennessey. The company is based on Bainbridge Island, Wash.

For coffee lovers, another benefit of the lid is that they can smell the coffee as if it were in a ceramic cup, said Doug Fleming, the company’s founder and inventor of the Viora lid.

The company is marketing the lid to speciality coffee shops, and it’s being tested this week for customers at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, at 1115 12th Avenue in Seattle.

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