The
th
Wave: Coffee Culture in Charleston
by KATE POWER photos by MADELINE LITTLE It’s a movement. Call it hipster, generational, a newfound awareness. Whatever label you choose to apply to the recent surge in independent coffee culture popularity will probably fit. The creative, alternative lifestyles of an inventive and inspired generation have influenced the demand for places that reflect these very attributes. We want modern. We want fresh. We want to feel connected. We want to be alone, but not lonely. Coffee shops are community builders - essential to the infrastructure of society today. In a world where everything connects, where everyone seeks connections, coffee shops are bridges. Oneof-a-kind coffee shops attract the person seeking more than a grande coffee from Starbucks. They attract the people who want good coffee, who care about what they’re drinking, who want an experience rather than an in-andout cup to take on the go. These spaces are being created to host communities, to build relationships and to give people coffee experiences they won’t forget.
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This is the fourth wave: a community of coffee drinkers gathering in independent coffee shops on city streets, drinking carefully crafted coffee roasted from the finest beans. It was a quiet emergence. Now, its presence is loud and overflowing with a contagious energy - especially here in downtown Charleston. “Coffee culture has finally hit Charleston,” said Jayme Smith, co-owner of Black Tap Coffee on Beaufain St. “People are beginning to understand and want good coffee.” Smith and his partner Ross Jett moved to Charleston in 2012 to open Black Tap. Owning a coffee shop began as an idea and grew quickly as the result of an online chat between the two former college roommates. Smith lived in California at the time and Jett in D.C., but it was no more than a year following this fortunate conversation that the two were trying their hand at running an independent coffee shop in downtown Charleston.
the yard