Coffee Wave Culture How Many Stages Has the Coffee Wave Gone Through Is Instant Coffee Harmful to Health

A "wave" is a surging tide — and by extension, the rise and fall of any movement. The "coffee waves" are the great surges in coffee's historical development. Since humans discovered coffee around 1400, the industry has ridden three waves, and most coffee lovers have heard of them.

But plenty of newcomers know the phrase without knowing what it means. So today, FrontStreet Coffee will explain what those three momentous waves actually represent!

First Wave Coffee: Popularization

The older generation believed instant coffee was good coffee — and there was a reason for that. Before specialty coffee shops became as ubiquitous as they are now, instant coffee was the absolute dominant force in most countries' coffee markets.

The story begins with war: coffee became an essential strategic resource for armies, and to get its stimulating effects, people who had never drunk coffee started trying it — and gradually got hooked. Back then, making coffee meant grinding beans and boiling them in a pot with water. Simple, yes, but grinding and boiling ate up real time. To keep soldiers from wasting time brewing, some countries began developing instant coffee. By 1938, Nestlé had developed dry instant coffee — originally to solve Brazil's coffee overproduction problem — just as World War II broke out and demand for coffee expanded rapidly. With both production capacity and a ready consumer market in place, the "first wave" formed: coffee captured the market in instant form and became an everyday consumer product.

Instant coffee was supremely convenient, and consumers of the era had no particular expectations of taste — so for people in some countries (mainly the United States, Switzerland, and the UK), instant beat freshly ground coffee. But manufacturers cut costs by choosing Robusta as the raw material, then buried the bitterness under heaps of sugar and creamer. As a result, instant coffee briefly made the drink itself synonymous with "bad for your health."

Second Wave Coffee: Quality

Not until 1966 did a Dutchman named Peet — deeply shaped by "orthodox" coffee culture (freshly roasted, freshly ground, freshly brewed) — lose patience with America's poor coffee quality. In America he launched what was then considered the greatest reform in the coffee world: using only high-quality Arabica beans, and embracing fresh roasting and fresh brewing. The idea upended American coffee culture, caused an immediate sensation, and rewrote the way America drank coffee. That Mr. Peet was the founder of Peet's Coffee. Many were inspired by him to chase higher quality — so we can say the main mission of the "second wave" was improving coffee quality.

One of Peet's disciples opened his own coffee shop soon after and introduced the Italian coffee system. That shop quickly became a leader in the coffee world — yes, Starbucks! Starbucks' rise spread the Italian coffee system far and wide. Lattes and cappuccinos had been a local, non-mainstream niche culture in Europe; after Starbucks carried them across the globe, they became mainstream popular culture that persists to this day. People call it one of the most successful spectacles in modern food history.

Third Wave Coffee: Specialization

In 1974, Ms. Erna Knutsen proposed the concept of "specialty coffee" in the journal Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. Her original line: "Special geographic microclimates produce beans with unique flavor profiles" — in other words, beans with distinctive regional character are grown under unique microclimates and geographic conditions in the producing regions. (For more on specialty coffee, see the article "Specialty Coffee.")

This idea made people realize how much coffee's upstream affects its flavor, so traceability grew sharply and information became more transparent. And that transparency, in turn, drove improvements across every step from seed to cup: better planting and processing at origin, fair-trade systems that benefit both sides, higher roasting quality, and stronger brewing skills in coffee shops. The essence of the third wave, then, is pursuing coffee flavor more seriously — and bringing consumers closer to the origins.

Those are the three great waves of coffee history. As times move on, we are entering coffee's fourth wave. Which raises the question: what will the fourth wave be about?

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Living through the fourth wave means drinking coffee that celebrates where it comes from — and Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, is a terroir every wave has relied on. FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian lineup makes a great tasting set:

FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon — a classic Brazilian single origin from the famed Cerrado region, pulped-natural (semi-washed) processed and medium roasted: creamy peanut, toast, caramel, and hazelnut aromas in a rounded, low-acid cup. As much at home in a pour-over as in a moka pot, espresso SOE, siphon, or French press — first-wave convenience, third-wave flavor.

FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Fazenda Rainha (Queen Estate) Yellow Bourbon — from Mogiana, where fertile red volcanic soil and a mix of traditional and modern farm management produce deeply aromatic beans. The rare Yellow Bourbon yields a cleaner fruit character than its red parent: pour-over, moka pot, or home espresso all reveal sugarcane sweetness found nowhere else, alongside fruit and chocolate notes.

FrontStreet Coffee Espresso Blend Series — a nod to second-wave espresso culture: the Classic Blend (rich crema), Premium Blend (nut-forward), Dark Cocoa Blend (balanced and budget-friendly), and Commercial Blend all contain Brazilian beans, contributing chocolate and cream aromas, a gentle sweet-sour-bitter harmony, and the stable extraction that made Italian-style coffee a global mainstream.