A Mexican restaurant chain with a strong commitment to sustainability has turned to Blockchain technology to track the origin of its coffee beans from the field to the cup.

The platform of the blockchain SIMBA Chain is the one selected by the restaurant chain Toks, which has among its varied menus, serving coffee made from its ground, roasted and sustainable origin coffee beans.

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Restaurant Toks is a family-owned chain with 208 affiliates throughout Mexico and is owned by local conglomerate Grupo Gigante, which includes other chains such as Bitcoin Method / Crypto Investor / Bitcoin Era / Bitcoin Formula / Crypto Cash and The Home Store.

According to the statement issued by the company on May 7th, 2020, the integration with SIMBA Chain and the University of Notre Dame to create the distributed application to register and track every coffee bean that has ‚bought, processed, packed and sold‘, ensures the ‚integrity of its coffee supply chain and allows it to better differentiate the products it sells.

In this regard, Gustavo Pérez Berlanga, senior vice president of sustainability and social responsibility of Toks Restaurant Group said that „our customers expect us to meet the highest standards of sustainability and food quality when they dine with us. It is important that we authenticate and track each bag by producer, grade of coffee and production dates.

„Simba Chain’s smart contract solution will help Toks maintain the high quality that our customers expect and enjoy.

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Meanwhile, SIMBA Chain is best known for its contracts with the United States Air Force, and a few months ago raised $1.5 million in a round of funding. They have over a thousand applications on their platform, supporting Ethereum, Quorum, Hyperledger Fabric, Stellar and other block chains.

Notre Dame, who invested in SIMBA Chain, worked on the creation of the program for Toks Restaurants, visiting several farming communities with which the chain deals.

„Smart contracts are a powerful tool for food producers and restaurant companies who want to provide greater security and traceability to their supply chain,“ said Joel Neidig, CEO and co-founder of SIMBA Chain. „I commend Toks for taking a leadership role in developing a Blockchain-enabled supply chain prototype that adds value for growers, restaurants, customers and the food and restaurant industries in general.

SIMBA Chain’s Smart as a Service (SCaaS) contract works with some of the ecosystem’s most popular Blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, RSK, Stellar and Hyperledger, among other protocols.

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It aims to make it quick and easy to develop and implement decentralized applications on these protocols. Meanwhile, its cloud-based platform tracks every step of the supply chain, creating an immutable and auditable record at all times.

The project will begin this May and a prototype is expected to be delivered in September 2020.

Food tracking is not a new use of the block chain. IBM Food Trust has witnessed its application in real-life use cases, with companies such as Dole, Walmart and even France’s leading supermarket chain Carrefour. It is also being applied at Nestlé to track a brand of Arabica coffee beans.

Recently, in March 2020, the Indian government created a chain of coffee production blocks with the aim of building a brand and increasing farmers‘ income. Toks works with a host of intermediaries such as producers, traders, roasters, curators and other processors to bring the coffee beans to each of its restaurants throughout Mexico.