It may seem like Starbucks has a monopoly over the coffee cups in your office, but an up-and-coming startup called BeanGenius is betting on the growing population of coffee connoisseurs who are looking for a specialty roast with just the right flavor notes.

BeanGenius is betting that there is a large group of coffee drinkers that aren’t being served the coffee that they deserve. With its subscription-based service, the company wants to take these neglected customers on a journey to finding their perfect roast.

They’re not the first to think of providing a subscription-based coffee product. Blue Bottle and Craft Coffee are just two of the many competitors in the space. But they are the first to pair a subscription with the backend technology that promises to tailor the service to the personal preferences of each individual customer. BeanGenius has developed an algorithm that learns a customer’s taste preferences, measured by dozens of different criteria.

“With all our competitors, they are telling consumers what they should be drinking, and we provide a way for the consumer to decide what they like,” BeanGenius cofounder Krishna Gupta said. “Our competitors call their tasters experts and taste makers, and our position is who cares what anyone else thinks is good when you are the ultimate tastemaker.”

To start, a customer will fill out an online diagnostic, selecting different foods that they like, anything from bananas to chocolate. The customer will then receive one to two different roasts a month, depending on the subscription model they select. The customer can provide feedback on those roasts to BeanGenius that will help them build off of the original diagnostic to determine a more specific taste set and provide an even more personalized experience moving forward.

Ironically, Gupta himself wasn’t much of a coffee drinker before he met Ranga Yarlagadda two years ago at an event in Los Angeles called Startup Weekend. At the event Yarlagadda pitched an idea for a specialty coffee marketplace to help consumers discover independent roasters. Gupta and Yarlagadda joined forces, tweaked the idea a bit, and in three days came up with a working website that was getting actual orders. The team came in second place and decided to turn the project into something bigger.

In November 2013, Gupta and Yarlagadda launched a beta test that was met with great feedback, and this November, the two are getting ready for a full launch of BeanGenius.

Gupta is incredibly optimistic about the prospects of BeanGenius because, as he explains, coffee is inherently social.

“If you check out people’s Instagrams, it cracks me up that there will be pictures of a wedding, a child’s first steps, and then the morning’s cup of coffee,” Gupta said. “People feel compelled to share it with their friends.”

So all BeanGenius needs to do is tap into that conversation, be it commenting on those Instagram photos or tweeting at people who overuse coffee hashtags. Their plan is simply to engage on social media.

Gupta is also confident in the company’s business model of choice: subscriptions.

The subscription-based model has become very popular with startups like Birchbox, which curates monthly deliveries of beauty products for consumers. The idea is that consumers are looking for something new and exciting, but they want help from experts who can guide them to high-quality products. Consumers want a “sherpa on that journey” to finding the next best thing, be it coffee, makeup, or wine, Gupta said.

BeanGenius takes that model to the next level by tailoring the deliveries to each customer’s unique taste.