Channel 3's Eric Seaver shows us the beauty of the CoffeeQ app.

You buy a coffee for a friend, your friend buys one for their significant other, then that person buys a cup for the guy in line behind them and so on Paying it forward just feels really good.

That's how creators of CoffeeQ hope customers use their new app.

We were inspired by a tradition in Italy where a person will buy a second coffee at a coffee shop and the barista will actually pour out that second coffee into a cup and leave it on the counter for someone who might be down on their luck.

Customers use the app through iPads at counters of participating shops selecting whether to buy a coffee for a neighbor.

A redeemable coupon code is sent to selected friends but if it's for a neighbor the barista can give the free cup to any deserving customer of their choice.

It's a great national way of putting Cleveland on the map in terms of donating back with coffee and digitizing the way people can pay it forward.

Beviamo in Shremont is one of five coffee shops already participating along with Poor Cleveland downtown.

People like helping out other people and you kind of get like this good altruistic kind of feeling paying it forward.

And it's not just coffee lovers that benefit.

CoffeeQ donates a portion of every cup bought to local charities like Refugee Response in St.

Maliki.

How do we make a cup of coffee more than just a cup of coffee?

And we are thinking about some different ways that we can create connections between people.

Shop owners say it's building community one sip at a time.

Try it out, make somebody else's and see you know how that trickle effect really does help and really does work.

Eric Siever, Channel 3 News.