"Third wave" gets used loosely by a lot of cafes as a general stamp of quality, but it originally referred to a specific historical shift in how the industry treats coffee, and understanding the earlier two waves makes the term genuinely meaningful rather than just marketing language.
The first wave, roughly the late 1800s through the mid-20th century, was about making coffee widely available and convenient, instant coffee, vacuum-sealed cans, and supermarket brands turned coffee into a mass-market household staple. Quality and origin were rarely the point, availability and consistency were.
The second wave, associated most closely with the rise of large specialty chains starting in the 1960s through the 1990s, introduced Americans and much of the world to espresso drinks, cafe culture as a social destination, and the idea that coffee could be a slightly more premium experience than a can of grounds at home. It elevated coffee, but largely still treated it as a single commodity category rather than something with meaningfully different regional character.
The third wave, emerging in the late 1990s and accelerating through the 2000s, treats coffee more like wine or craft beer, with an emphasis on traceable single-origin beans, lighter roasting that preserves origin character rather than masking it, direct relationships with farmers, and manual brewing methods like pour-over that put more control, and more visible craft, in the hands of the person making the drink. The Specialty Coffee Association itself grew out of and now represents much of this movement. Perfect Daily Grind's explainer on third wave versus specialty untangles the two terms, which get used interchangeably far more often than they should.
Practically, a genuine third-wave shop tends to share a few real signals worth checking for, single-origin beans listed with actual farm or region names rather than just a country, visible or stated roast dates, since freshness is treated as non-negotiable, and staff who can actually tell you about the coffee's processing method or flavor notes rather than just its size options. None of these signals are legally protected terms, so any shop can claim "third wave" or "specialty" without meeting any of them, which is why checking for these specifics matters more than trusting the label alone.
In Marikina specifically, shops that roast their own beans in-house are the clearest example of this approach in practice, since roasting locally is itself a direct-trade-adjacent, quality-focused choice rather than buying pre-roasted commodity beans in bulk. Franken Coffee Bar + Roastery and Resonate Coffee both fall into this category, and we cover the local specialty scene more broadly in our guide to specialty coffee in the Philippines. Plain Sight Coffee Roasters is another Philippine roaster worth reading on what the label means locally.
None of this means second-wave or commodity coffee is bad, plenty of people genuinely prefer a consistent, familiar cup over a rotating single-origin menu, and there is nothing wrong with that preference. The third wave is better understood as an additional option that opened up, rewarding curiosity, not a judgment on anyone who just wants their usual order.