Have you ever heard about the waves of coffee ?

Coffee has been around for a long time. A quick google search yields a handful of dates and stories regarding the origins of the consumption of the beverage. This article, however, will focus solely on one aspect of this long history: the “Four Waves of Coffee”.

When you first discover the world of the Coffee Lovers, as I recently did, you will likely stumble upon this term.

The four waves of coffee refer to trends in the coffee industry, and they try to describe the course of coffee production and consumption from early in the last century, up until today.
Let us start with the first wave.

This one is all about convenience, there is no regard for the whole chain, from producer to consumer. The focus here is on getting large quantities of coffee easily and cheaply available to consumers. It is not coffee for enjoyment, this is coffee for the people who just want to wake up, have their cup ready in a minute and head out to work.
Then we move on to the second wave.
This is where we start to see coffee as more than utility, but as something to be appreciated. Coffee shops started to open which offered better tasting brews than what you might find at a supermarket and make at home, and taste became a factor when choosing your beverage.
The third wave is where people start considering the coffee as a whole: where it came from, how it was grown, harvested, roasted and prepared.
Coffee became appreciated much like wine, the community began appreciating how the whole process, from bean to brew, affected the flavour.
And so we come to the fourth wave. People from all over the world are closely connected through the internet. This concerns with social and environmental problems are becoming widespread. So it is with the coffee community. In the fourth wave, the producer is considered, and
there is a focus on improving the lives of their communities. We regard the environment as well, how coffee affects and is affected by climate change, and there is also a trend for organic beans.
The fourth wave is ongoing.
It goes beyond great taste, it announces a yearning for change, for action that impacts societies for leaving behind a better world than the one we were given at birth. Great coffee tastes amazing, but knowing someone’s life is even slightly better because of you tastes even better.
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