Our Story
It started
behind the bar.
Flow Sifter began with a small question about a step I had repeated thousands of times.
A routine worth rethinking.
I’ve worked as a barista in Vancouver for nearly seven years. During that time, I watched matcha go from a relatively niche order to something we made throughout the day, every day.
At any café that takes matcha seriously, sifting is part of the process. It helps create a smoother drink, but the workflow has never been particularly smooth: place a sifter over a bowl, open the canister, measure the matcha, sift it, then clean everything up before moving on to the next drink.
For a long time, I never questioned it. Then, during a shift one day, I started wondering whether this small but repetitive step could be faster, cleaner, and simply more enjoyable. That question became the beginning of Flow Sifter.
Learning by making
From an idea to something I could hold.
I had never designed or manufactured a product before, so I began with modest expectations. Still, the idea was difficult to let go of. I started working with designers to turn what was in my head into something tangible.
The concept sounded simple—a matcha canister with a sifter built into it—but explaining how it should work proved surprisingly difficult. There was no existing product I could point to, and the first few designs didn’t work the way I had imagined.
Instead of stopping there, I bought my first 3D printer and began making prototypes at home. What started as a straightforward idea became many rounds of printing, testing, adjusting, and trying again.
The turning point
Simpler worked better.
My earliest prototypes borrowed from the way a manual coffee grinder works. Matcha sat inside a tall container, with a crank on top driving the sifting mechanism. I even considered developing an electric version for cafés and other high-volume settings.
After several rounds of prototypes, I realized the crank itself was creating most of the difficulty. I replaced it with a simple twisting motion, closer to the way you would use a pepper mill.
That change made the mechanism faster, simpler, and much more intuitive. It also worked efficiently enough that an electric version no longer felt necessary. The form of Flow Sifter today came from that moment—not by adding another feature, but by removing the part that was getting in the way.
Where we are now
Made to be used.
Once the new direction began working, progress came quickly. I printed prototypes in PLA, used them in my own routine, shared them with friends, and brought them into the café for my coworkers to try.
Their response gave me the confidence to keep refining the details. After months of development, Flow Sifter was no longer just an idea in my head. It had become a tool people could use and understand.
The next step is Kickstarter. I’m excited to see where Flow Sifter goes from here—and to offer a different, more fluid way to make matcha.