Coffee did not change the moment we started saying specialty. What changed was what we expect from it. A century ago it was enough for coffee to be available, reliable and consistent. Today we ask where the bean comes from, how it was processed, and why one cup tastes nothing like what we used to call simply strong coffee.
That shift is most often described through three waves of coffee. The term was popularised by the American roaster Trish Rothgeb in the early 2000s, when she attempted to explain several major transformations that modern coffee culture had undergone. The boundaries were never precise, the waves overlap, and the world did not collectively move from the first to the second or from the second to the third on any particular morning. As a map showing how coffee evolved from a mass commodity to a product we discuss almost as we discuss wine, however, the framework is surprisingly useful.
The first wave is above all a story of accessibility. Industrialisation, mass production, ground coffee in packaging, and instant coffee allowed a product that had once required considerably more time and knowledge to become part of daily life for millions of people. The main question was no longer where to find coffee, but whether you had it at home.
It is tempting today to look back at that period with condescension and laugh at instant coffee or anonymous supermarket blends. That would be rather unfair. The first wave accomplished something enormous: it turned coffee into an everyday ritual. Consistency, price and availability mattered more than origin or sensory profile — but without that mass culture, there would likely have been no audience later ready to want more.
The second wave said that coffee did not have to exist only at home. It could have its own place.
This is where the culture of large coffee-shop chains, espresso drinks and the cafe as part of urban lifestyle begins. Peet's in California, then Starbucks and other major players, helped make words like espresso, cappuccino and latte part of the everyday vocabulary of a much wider public. Country of origin began to appear as information that meant something, and going for coffee became an experience purchased alongside the drink itself.
For those of us on the Balkan peninsula, the idea of the cafe as a place was, of course, no American invention. Coffee had been a social ritual here for far longer. But the global second wave brought a different kind of standardised coffee-shop experience: a recognisable menu, espresso culture, large milk drinks, branding and a space that mattered as much as what was in the cup.
The third shift was subtler. Attention moved away from the cafe and back to the coffee itself.
If the first wave asked how do we get coffee everywhere?, and the second asked where and how will we drink it?, the third began to ask what is actually in this cup?
Suddenly Brazil was no longer a precise enough piece of information. People wanted the region, the farm or cooperative, the variety, the altitude, the processing method, the roast date and the tasting notes. The roaster no longer necessarily aimed to produce the same dark profile from every bean, but to preserve what distinguished one bean from another. The barista measures dose, yield and extraction time — not as a ritual of seriousness, but because a few small changes can substantially alter the flavour.
James Hoffmann opens up the world of coffee in exactly this way in The World Atlas of Coffee: origin, variety, terroir, harvest, processing, roasting, water and preparation are not separate curiosities but parts of a single chain that ends in the cup. Coffee becomes much easier to understand when we stop seeing it as a brown bean that comes into existence in a roaster and remember that it was first a fruit on a plant.
The third wave is therefore closely connected to specialty coffee culture, but the two terms are not perfect synonyms. Specialty describes the quality and value of coffee in a much broader sense, while third wave is a cultural framework: the way in which producers, roasters, baristas and guests began to relate to coffee as a product with origin and character.
At its best, this is the democratisation of taste. Someone who previously only knew whether they preferred a stronger or weaker coffee can suddenly discover that they enjoy the chocolatey and nutty profiles of Brazil, or the more pronounced fruitiness of certain Ethiopian coffees. No professional vocabulary is required. It is enough to understand that coffee is not one single aroma.
At its worst, the third wave turned all of that into an exam.
A tiny menu set in a font no one can read, a barista who looks at you as though you have insulted his family because you asked for sugar, twelve pieces of farm information you must absorb before being permitted to order, and a general sense of having walked into a club whose rules you were never given. When quality becomes a pretext for the absence of hospitality, we have lost much of the reason cafes exist.
VERA belongs to this third story, but that particular stereotype is one we dislike. For us, specialty means that we should know the origin of the bean, the recipe, the extraction and why the coffee tastes the way it does. The guest does not have to. If someone wants only a good cappuccino, all of that work should simply resolve itself into a good cup. If they want to know more, the conversation can go as deep as they wish.
And what about the fourth wave?
It depends who you ask. Some say science and precision; some say automation; some say sustainability and a better relationship with producers; some say fermentation and new processing methods; some say specialty coffee at home. No consensus exists — which perhaps indicates we are not yet far enough away to see the period clearly.
Rothgeb later spoke of a next wave that should look beyond the cup and pay greater attention to the people throughout the entire coffee system. That is probably a healthy direction. If we have learned to value origin, the next question is how well we know and value the people behind it.
Or perhaps we are simply an industry that is rather too fond of numbering its own history.
In any case, the third wave does not matter because it gave us the V60, lighter roasts or a new kind of interior design. It matters because it changed one very simple question.
We used to ask: Shall we go for coffee?
Now we sometimes also ask: Which one?
Try it at VERA — specialty café and wellness bistro, Nikole Spasića 4, Stari Grad, Belgrade.
Specialty coffee at VERA →