What is third wave coffee?
Third wave coffee is a U.S. coffee-industry term for treating coffee as a craft product: higher quality beans, bought from named farms rather than just countries, roasted lighter to bring out each coffee's own flavor, and brewed with care. The term dates to 1999, and the approach goes back to specialty roasters of the 1970s.
First, second and third wave compared
| First wave | Second wave | Third wave | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it valued | Low price, consistent taste | Origin countries, espresso drinks | Named farms, quality, the coffee's own character |
| Typical form | Pre-ground cans, instant, diner coffee | Fresh-roasted bags bought at a coffee shop | Single origin lots from small roasters |
| Roast | Not the point | Signature dark roasts | Lighter, to show origin |
| Examples | Folgers, Maxwell House | Peet's from the late 1960s, then Starbucks | Small roasters buying from named farms |
Where the term came from
Wikipedia credits coffee professional Trish Rothgeb with popularizing "third wave" in a 2003 article, borrowing the idea of waves from the history of feminism. The specialty coffee broker Timothy J. Castle had already used the phrase in an article titled "Coffee's Third Wave" for the December 1999 issue of Tea & Coffee Asia. National Public Radio brought it to mainstream media in 2005, in a piece about barista competitions.
In 2008 the food critic Jonathan Gold summed it up in LA Weekly: in the third wave, beans are sourced from farms instead of countries, and roasting brings out the character of each bean instead of burning it off. The older term "specialty coffee", coined in 1974, refers narrowly to high quality beans that score 80 points or more on a 100 point scale.
The label is loose. No body certifies a roaster as third wave; it describes a way of working, not a standard.
What third wave practice looks like at Oregon roasters
Several Oregon roasters we list opened in the late 2000s: Coava in 2008, and Heart, Lone Pine, Trailhead and Water Avenue in 2009. We do not claim any of these roasters calls itself third wave. These are practices the term describes, published on the roasters' own sites, checked 2026-09-27. A listing does not mean a roaster is part of the club.
- Farm names on the bag. Case Study names the producer, region, variety and process for each lot. Coava, founded in a North Portland garage in 2008, names its single origins for the producer and rotates them with the seasons.
- Roasting for the coffee, not a color. Heart, founded in 2009, gives each coffee its own roast profile instead of a light, medium or dark label, prints a roast date and batch number on every bag, and publishes a transparency report.
- Coffee as a seasonal fruit. Roseline buys fresh crop coffees and describes coffee as a seasonal fruit; its team tests many sample roasts and meets producers at origin.
- Time at origin. Heart's staff travel at harvest to help with quality control and pick lots. Coava carries out an agronomy audit at each farm it buys from.
- Trained palates. Caravan in Newberg has been a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America since 1998, and its roastmaster is a certified Q grader through the Coffee Quality Institute.
All of this happens in Oregon roasteries with Oregon staff. When you buy a single origin from one of them, the tasting, sourcing trips and roasting work stay here. Why that matters.
Third wave coffee in the club
The closest plan to the third wave idea is Light roast with the Single origin style, set in the plan builder. The single origin subscription page explains it. Each 12 oz bag comes from a different independent Oregon roaster, roasted to order and shipped in the roaster's own bag with our packing slip, which names the roaster and the tasting notes. $16.99 a bag, every 2 or 4 weeks; first bag free, you pay $7.99 shipping.
Related terms and sources
Related: specialty coffee, single origin, direct trade coffee, light roast, Q grader, cupping.
- Wikipedia: Third-wave coffee (definition, origin of the term, the three waves, specialty coffee score)
- Coffee Quality Institute (the body behind Q grader certification)
- Oregon roaster practices: each roaster's own pages, read 2026-09-27, as summarized on our roaster profiles.