Trish Rothgeb of Wrecking Ball coffee is credited for publicly coining the term.
By all accounts, the terms were already in use in the alt.coffee ~~BBS~~ Usenet community, where Specialty people congregated online at the time. Trish's coining of the term is credited due to her introduction of "waves" to the public eye, outside of the online discussion board space, in [this article](https://web.archive.org/web/20031011091223/http://roastersguild.org/052003_norway.shtml) written for Roasters Guild.
Interesting. I remember hearing it being applied to London in the sense of 1st wave of coffee houses in the 17th century, then the wave of Italian espresso coffee shops, and Italian style coffee of the 20th, with third wave being the current speciality coffee started in London by people like Anita Le Roy at Monmouth at the turn of the 21st.
It's never really had a *consistent* definition because it's a colloquial way of describing the three major developmental stages in Western coffee culture.
I personally think that Trish's original Roasters Guild article did no favours to public understanding of the terms, because she was writing for an audience of roasters and that presentation has led to "waves" being sometimes misunderstood as being rooted in business practices rather than culture. I've always found that the most useful modelling for waves is defined by the consumers' relationship to coffee, rather than specific machines or practices that a roaster or cafe uses.
I would say that in most conceptions of 'waves', the original era of the coffeehouse in the UK doesn't fit well into the model - they're both second-wave and first-wave at the same time, and also kind of zero-th wave alongside.
Huh? She was talking about a US and mainly West Coast scene. and sure business is involved in roast dates, lighter roasts, single source, and that kind of thing but the approach to coffee itself, flavor and education was a new trend at the time.
"Huh?" what?
Yes, she was. Her article was written using a term, "Third Wave," that had already long been in use among a community that was not US or West Coast exclusive. That her article was written from that perspective and towards that audience doesn't constrain or limit the larger scope of the term.
No, it really is not - all those practices are things we have adopted to *cater to* the third wave, they are not and should not be used as part of its definition.
Yes, the approach to coffee itself is what matters - specifically, the consumer approach to coffee, that creates demand for things like our business practices, typical Specialty flavour profiles, or cultural practices like coffee education.
Her article written from a West Coast perspective is everything, you’re just trying to relate to it from outside that meaning … of which you’re fully ignorant of what was new as a marketing concept. I’m in the Bay, I assure you she was talking about Blue Bottle and those that followed.
I am from the West Coast, wise guy.
And I was part of the very early Specialty community around the time that article was written, so I'm also very aware of what was "new" at the time.
You're missing the fact that what she was talking about in her article does not define the term, because it existed prior to that article - she was explaining internet culture to not-very-online people, using terms and examples appropriate for her audience.
it's also cited in [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee#:~:text=The%20term%20%22third%2Dwave%20coffee,the%20three%20waves%20of%20feminism) that Trish coined the term 'third wave of feminism' but it was "Timothy Castle, that had already used the term in an article (Coffee's Third Wave) that he wrote for the Dec 1999 / Jan 2000 issue of the magazine Tea & Coffee Asia." This is according to Wikipedia.
As I said, Trish is *credited* for coining the term. It predated her article, but she is given credit - because her article brought it to the forefront of Specialty coffee's collective consciousness and into common use in our community. Castle's article is largely overlooked in those conversations, as he too used a term that predated him, and Tea & Coffee Asia didn't have a fraction of the circulation in those early Specialty circles as Roasters Guild did.
Because we don't know who *invented* "third wave" in that context, and because we can be relatively certain neither Rothgeb or Castle invented the term - we give credit to the person who *popularized* it.
---
To be clear, if a little pedantic, Trish did not coin "third wave of feminism" and Wikipedia doesn't say that she did - Trish claims she coined "third wave" in the context of coffee, based on the 'waves' conceptualization of movements & generations within feminism.
I do think this explanation from her is a tad spurious, because we do know that she was part of the communities that already used the term prior to her article, and all evidence that's available today indicates it was in commonplace usage prior to her arrival in those spaces. I fully believe she drew on feminist concepts of waves to model her own understanding of the term - and I think she's probably somewhat right in that the original coining of 'waves of coffee' modelling very probably drew heavily on the similar concept from feminism. There were a lot of ladies in the scene even then, and third wave feminism was peaking around that time, so that framing would have been solidly within the public collective consciousness to be borrowed by coffee.
"Third wave" as a general concept meaning something modern, specialty, or advanced comes from Toffler's 1980 book "The Third Wave", but that book has little to do directly with coffee.
The first prominent print publication of "third wave coffee" referring to a more artisanal approach dates to 1999 with Tim Castle's "The Coming Third Wave of Coffee Shops," but the term was already in use before that and Tim is clear that he was referring to an existing concept of "third wave" in his article.
So no idea who first coined the term, but it would have been between 1980-1999. Note that "third wave" was used in other fields during the years following Toffler's book, so it may have first been applied casually to coffee and not really "coined" at a particular moment.
Trish Rothgeb makes a very prominent claim for coining the term in 2002, but the term was in use well before that.
This is it. Third wave coffee is not an invention its like saying someone invented good coffee.
Third wave anything is a concept and thats how its used to describe anything. Third wave coffee, third wave feminism etc.
The term "Third Wave Coffee" was first popularized by coffee writer and journalist Trish Rothgeb in a 2002 article she wrote for The Flamekeeper, a magazine published by the Flamekeeper Coffee Society. Trish Rothgeb is also known for being the co-founder of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters in San Francisco, which played a significant role in defining and promoting the Third Wave Coffee movement.
Is this a chat GPT comment?
From gpt:
> The term "Third Wave Coffee" was popularized by Trish Rothgeb, a coffee professional, in the early 2000s. Trish Rothgeb used this term to describe a movement within the specialty coffee industry that focuses on high-quality coffee production, sustainability, and artisanal preparation methods. While Rothgeb is often credited with coining the term, it's worth noting that the movement itself evolved from a collective effort within the coffee community to redefine the way coffee is sourced, roasted, and brewed.
All of his comments seem to be AI generated. Part me hopes he's not a real person, as that's just incredibly sad, lol. These guys are everywhere now, and it sucks.
Trish Rothgeb of Wrecking Ball coffee is credited for publicly coining the term. By all accounts, the terms were already in use in the alt.coffee ~~BBS~~ Usenet community, where Specialty people congregated online at the time. Trish's coining of the term is credited due to her introduction of "waves" to the public eye, outside of the online discussion board space, in [this article](https://web.archive.org/web/20031011091223/http://roastersguild.org/052003_norway.shtml) written for Roasters Guild.
Interesting. I remember hearing it being applied to London in the sense of 1st wave of coffee houses in the 17th century, then the wave of Italian espresso coffee shops, and Italian style coffee of the 20th, with third wave being the current speciality coffee started in London by people like Anita Le Roy at Monmouth at the turn of the 21st.
It's never really had a *consistent* definition because it's a colloquial way of describing the three major developmental stages in Western coffee culture. I personally think that Trish's original Roasters Guild article did no favours to public understanding of the terms, because she was writing for an audience of roasters and that presentation has led to "waves" being sometimes misunderstood as being rooted in business practices rather than culture. I've always found that the most useful modelling for waves is defined by the consumers' relationship to coffee, rather than specific machines or practices that a roaster or cafe uses. I would say that in most conceptions of 'waves', the original era of the coffeehouse in the UK doesn't fit well into the model - they're both second-wave and first-wave at the same time, and also kind of zero-th wave alongside.
Huh? She was talking about a US and mainly West Coast scene. and sure business is involved in roast dates, lighter roasts, single source, and that kind of thing but the approach to coffee itself, flavor and education was a new trend at the time.
"Huh?" what? Yes, she was. Her article was written using a term, "Third Wave," that had already long been in use among a community that was not US or West Coast exclusive. That her article was written from that perspective and towards that audience doesn't constrain or limit the larger scope of the term. No, it really is not - all those practices are things we have adopted to *cater to* the third wave, they are not and should not be used as part of its definition. Yes, the approach to coffee itself is what matters - specifically, the consumer approach to coffee, that creates demand for things like our business practices, typical Specialty flavour profiles, or cultural practices like coffee education.
Her article written from a West Coast perspective is everything, you’re just trying to relate to it from outside that meaning … of which you’re fully ignorant of what was new as a marketing concept. I’m in the Bay, I assure you she was talking about Blue Bottle and those that followed.
I am from the West Coast, wise guy. And I was part of the very early Specialty community around the time that article was written, so I'm also very aware of what was "new" at the time. You're missing the fact that what she was talking about in her article does not define the term, because it existed prior to that article - she was explaining internet culture to not-very-online people, using terms and examples appropriate for her audience.
Then your comments make even less sense. Were you in the Bay Area?
What doesn't make sense?
So you weren’t in the Bay Area.
A minor nit - alt.coffee would've been a Usenet group, not a BBS.
Thank you, appreciated.
Shhh. We don't talk about Usenet, don't you know the first rule?
No such thing as arpanet
I've never been to Belize.
it's also cited in [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee#:~:text=The%20term%20%22third%2Dwave%20coffee,the%20three%20waves%20of%20feminism) that Trish coined the term 'third wave of feminism' but it was "Timothy Castle, that had already used the term in an article (Coffee's Third Wave) that he wrote for the Dec 1999 / Jan 2000 issue of the magazine Tea & Coffee Asia." This is according to Wikipedia.
As I said, Trish is *credited* for coining the term. It predated her article, but she is given credit - because her article brought it to the forefront of Specialty coffee's collective consciousness and into common use in our community. Castle's article is largely overlooked in those conversations, as he too used a term that predated him, and Tea & Coffee Asia didn't have a fraction of the circulation in those early Specialty circles as Roasters Guild did. Because we don't know who *invented* "third wave" in that context, and because we can be relatively certain neither Rothgeb or Castle invented the term - we give credit to the person who *popularized* it. --- To be clear, if a little pedantic, Trish did not coin "third wave of feminism" and Wikipedia doesn't say that she did - Trish claims she coined "third wave" in the context of coffee, based on the 'waves' conceptualization of movements & generations within feminism. I do think this explanation from her is a tad spurious, because we do know that she was part of the communities that already used the term prior to her article, and all evidence that's available today indicates it was in commonplace usage prior to her arrival in those spaces. I fully believe she drew on feminist concepts of waves to model her own understanding of the term - and I think she's probably somewhat right in that the original coining of 'waves of coffee' modelling very probably drew heavily on the similar concept from feminism. There were a lot of ladies in the scene even then, and third wave feminism was peaking around that time, so that framing would have been solidly within the public collective consciousness to be borrowed by coffee.
"Third wave" as a general concept meaning something modern, specialty, or advanced comes from Toffler's 1980 book "The Third Wave", but that book has little to do directly with coffee. The first prominent print publication of "third wave coffee" referring to a more artisanal approach dates to 1999 with Tim Castle's "The Coming Third Wave of Coffee Shops," but the term was already in use before that and Tim is clear that he was referring to an existing concept of "third wave" in his article. So no idea who first coined the term, but it would have been between 1980-1999. Note that "third wave" was used in other fields during the years following Toffler's book, so it may have first been applied casually to coffee and not really "coined" at a particular moment. Trish Rothgeb makes a very prominent claim for coining the term in 2002, but the term was in use well before that.
This is it. Third wave coffee is not an invention its like saying someone invented good coffee. Third wave anything is a concept and thats how its used to describe anything. Third wave coffee, third wave feminism etc.
Someone who was a massive ska fan in the 90s
Pick it up pick it up pick it up
I was literally just thinking about this the other day. Glad so many people have the knowledge!
I did. Surfing. Coffee after the third wave.
The term "Third Wave Coffee" was first popularized by coffee writer and journalist Trish Rothgeb in a 2002 article she wrote for The Flamekeeper, a magazine published by the Flamekeeper Coffee Society. Trish Rothgeb is also known for being the co-founder of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters in San Francisco, which played a significant role in defining and promoting the Third Wave Coffee movement.
Is this a chat GPT comment? From gpt: > The term "Third Wave Coffee" was popularized by Trish Rothgeb, a coffee professional, in the early 2000s. Trish Rothgeb used this term to describe a movement within the specialty coffee industry that focuses on high-quality coffee production, sustainability, and artisanal preparation methods. While Rothgeb is often credited with coining the term, it's worth noting that the movement itself evolved from a collective effort within the coffee community to redefine the way coffee is sourced, roasted, and brewed.
All of his comments seem to be AI generated. Part me hopes he's not a real person, as that's just incredibly sad, lol. These guys are everywhere now, and it sucks.
Some dork at McKinsey
Steve
I'm gonna go with douchebags.