What Do the Three Waves of Coffee Mean for the Arabica Bean?

Coffee history is usually told as three waves. The first brought instant coffee into everyday homes and made coffee a mass daily drink, helped by Nestle's 1938 development of dry instant coffee and soaring wartime demand. The second, led by Peet's Coffee founder Peet, pushed a quality revolution and spread arabica bean growing and fresh roasting.

The third wave moved coffee toward specialization and tasting experience, with origin, processing and brewing treated as serious subjects. The same question keeps coming up: is instant coffee harmful to health? Looking at how each wave changed coffee quality makes today's choices easier to read.

The development of coffee did not happen overnight; rather, it went through three waves of profound significance. The first wave brought coffee into countless homes in instant form, making it a daily beverage for the masses; the second wave was spearheaded by Peet's Coffee founder Peet, who ignited a quality revolution, promoting the spread of Arabica beans and the concept of fresh roasting; the third wave further pushed coffee toward specialization and experiential appreciation. Today, Front Street Coffee will trace the origins and evolution of these three waves, while also answering a common question: is instant coffee actually harmful to your health? By reviewing history, we can more clearly understand the landscape and choices of today's coffee culture.

However, many friends who are just getting into coffee have only heard of the term "three waves" without knowing exactly what it refers to. So today, Front Street Coffee will walk you through those three far-reaching waves in coffee's development and what each of them means.

The First Wave of Coffee: Coffee Goes Mainstream

In the eyes of the older generation, instant coffee was synonymous with good coffee—and this perception has its historical context. In an era when specialty coffee shops were not yet as ubiquitous as they are today, instant coffee was once the undisputed protagonist of the coffee market in many countries.

The starting point of all this is closely tied to war. After war broke out, coffee became an indispensable strategic supply for participating armies. To obtain coffee's stimulating effects, people who originally had no coffee-drinking habits began to try it and gradually became dependent on it. The early method of making coffee was simple: grind the coffee beans and toss them directly into a pot to boil with water. While not complicated to do, grinding and brewing were quite time-consuming.

To spare soldiers from spending too much time making coffee, some countries began researching instant coffee. In 1938, Nestlé successfully developed dry instant coffee to address the problem of excess Brazilian coffee bean production. Just then, World War II broke out, and demand for coffee soared. Thus, with both production capacity and consumer market in place, the "first wave" of coffee was officially formed. Coffee rapidly captured the market through its instant form and gradually evolved into a mass daily consumer product.

Instant coffee was easy to brew, and since people at the time were not particularly discerning about coffee flavor, instant coffee was even regarded in some countries (mainly the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) as a better choice than freshly ground coffee.

However, to cut costs, manufacturers at the time mostly used Robusta beans as the raw material for instant coffee and added large amounts of sugar and creamer to mask the bitterness. As a result, instant coffee once gave this beverage a notorious reputation for being "harmful to health."

The Second Wave of Coffee: Coffee Goes Specialty

It wasn't until 1966 that a Dutchman named Peet, deeply influenced by "proper" coffee culture (that is, fresh roasting, fresh grinding, and fresh brewing), could no longer tolerate the inferior quality of coffee on the American market. So he launched what could be considered the greatest reform in the coffee world at the time: insisting on using only high-quality Arabica beans as the raw material and advocating the principles of fresh roasting and fresh brewing.

This concept completely overturned American coffee culture at the time, quickly caused a sensation across the United States, and re-inspired and rewrote the direction of American coffee culture. And this Mr. Peet was the founder of Peet's Coffee. Inspired by Peet, many people began to demand higher standards for coffee quality. Thus, the core theme of the "second wave" of coffee was elevating coffee quality.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.