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The third space is dead

Specialty cafes are becoming what shopping malls were in the 2000s—basic. For many post-millennials the third wave is desperately trying to hold on to its glory days. Walk into any coffee shop between two and five p.m., and it’s almost empty. The data doesn’t lie: In NCA’s National Data Trends Report shows a clear decline of 22 per cent in consumers buying coffee at coffee shops since 2019. The third space is dead. But in its wake, something unexpected is emerging.

Walk into a random cafe anywhere in the world on a Saturday morning, and you won’t find a barista at the centre of the bar; instead, you’ll see a DJ. With 150 BPMs, turntables, and a crowd of post-millennials jumping and dancing into the weekend, the scene is vibrant. Instead of a proliferation of pour-overs, you’ll find iced matcha lattes keeping the energy pulsing. Cafe raves are spreading like wildfire.

I believe we are entering a new epoch for the cafe. In the ’90s, cafe spaces served as sanctuaries of stillness. With the rise of the third wave, they transformed into minimalist-style cupping labs. In the ’90s, the cafe provided an escape from home and work—a true third space. Think of Friends with their local coffee house Central Perk; they were havens for people to slow down, read, reflect, and connect with old friends or a new crush.

However, in the 2010s, as third-wave coffee proliferated, that ritual of slowing down shifted focus. It emphasized a connection not so much with each other, but with an obsession over the taste of coffee. This new approach embraced a craftsman-like devotion, encouraging patrons to sip slowly and appreciate every nuance while honouring the hard work of coffee producers. This cafe experience brought together an unlikely mix of globally disadvantaged smallholders and middle-class neo-craftsman, creating a unique distinction between two worlds that once seemed destined never to meet.

For anyone who grew up in the atmosphere of a Central Perk or Blue Bottle, the idea of cafe raves might feel jarring. These two worlds were never meant to mix. For many millennial coffee professionals, it elicits a sense of discomfort, akin to the townspeople of Hope Springs espying from their immaculate lawns Edward Scissorhands for the first time. Morning and night coexist in the same space. Why would a DJ ever consider performing in a cafe? And why would a cafe ever entertain the idea of having a DJ, especially when third-wave coffee shops have been synonymous with Bon Iver and suchlike signifiers of hipster-inflected refinement?

Parallel countercultures

EDM and specialty coffee, though seemingly distinct, share a surprisingly similar journey, both emerging in the 1980s as countercultural responses to economic and urban decline before evolving into mainstream, multi-billion-dollar industries by the 2010s. Both groups had to fight for respect: EDM against government crackdowns that stigmatized its venues and what people got up to in them, and specialty coffee to professionalize its craft and be taken seriously as a career path (a work in progress). Despite this shift, they maintain a cultural resistance—EDM through its colourful, disorderly playfulness that contrasts with formality, and coffee by emphasizing the precision and hard work of the craft over automated production.

The decay of hipsters and the rise of postmillennial ‘rizz’

‘Club culture died in 2024,’ said DJ Steve Cardigan on TikTok. And he’s right. One in three nightclubs in London has closed since 2021. Simultaneously, coffee consumption at cafes is plummeting. I believe both are struggling partly because these mainstays of millennial culture fail to resonate with post-millennials.

Brand strategist Eugene Healy discussed the death of millennial marketing on the podcast This Is Propaganda. He described the heyday of the millennial marketing as occurring between 2012 and 2018. This is the same period in which third wave coffee exploded, using the same hooks as other millennial brands: eliminating the middleman, transforming nameless commodities back into craftsmanship, and advocating for social justice. Overall, this approach made for an uncomfortable marriage between social justice rhetoric and market-driven goals, with specialty coffee being a sort of poster child for this type of marketing. For post-millennials, however, the promise of creating luxury items while saving the world feels, well, naive. Simply put, the millennial brand strategy isn’t working for post-millennials, and the spaces that exemplified this millennial era are at fundamental risk of disappearing.

The decline is amplified by a broader cultural shift towards off-premises consumption. In his article ‘The Antisocial Century’, published in the Atlantic, Derek Thompson notes that ‘In 2023, 74 percent of all restaurant traffic came from “off premises” customers—that is, from takeout and delivery—up from 61 percent before COVID.’

In response, cafe and music spaces are undergoing a transformation. Post-millennials are reimagining these ‘third places’ into event spaces that prioritize social interaction and entertainment, moving away from simple commuting stops. Cafe raves exemplify this change, offering a unique, sober environment where the emphasis is on authentic connection and conversation rather than the traditional club culture of ‘connection through disconnection’ via alcohol and drugs. This shift reflects Gen Z’s desire for spectacle and entertainment, combined with a growing wellness trend, making sober socializing a new status symbol and an antidote to loneliness.

A report published in the Metro UK reflects this shift, finding that social interaction, not getting drunk or high, is now the top reason people aged 16 to 34 go out. Spaces like cafe raves facilitate these interactions. As one organizer in London described, ‘We had coffee love notes; you wrote something sweet and gave it to a stranger. I saw real conversations happening… I saw people who [didn’t] know each other actually chatting, which is rare. It was a way for us to build authentic connections, plus everyone was sober.’

Tracing the cafe rave’s global rise

Cafe raves represent a kind of return to the early spirit of EDM culture, where invitations were often sent out only days or hours before showtime, attracting those truly in the know. This movement is being amplified in a distinctly postmillennial way through platforms like TikTok. For example, DJ Steve Cardigan used the app to promote his event just days before it took place in Los Angeles, and thousands showed up. Since that viral start, he has created AM.Radio to facilitate the growing cafe rave movement, throwing five events with over 25,000 RSVPs across three cities.

This phenomenon is undeniably global. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on coffee raves gaining a foothold in Mumbai, where organizer Govindani transformed a local cafe into a rave space with less than a day’s notice. He recalls, ‘The coffee bar became the DJ booth… The staff were still pulling shots while I played. It was amazing.’ 400 people showed up within hours. Similarly, the movement has flourished in London, with groups like The Coffee Gen, formed by three friends after a hangover-induced cafe visit in Mykonos. Their events now attract hundreds, with venues ranging from beach bars in Greece and industrial cafes in Berlin to pavements in Sydney, yet the core energy remains consistent. Even major multinationals are trying to tap into this culture source, with Nespresso successfully hosting 7 a.m. raves in Sydney and Melbourne. As EDM has entered the mainstream, hosting raves in unexpected venues like coffee shops or even laundromats recaptures the essential spectacle and countercultural spirit of the genre.

Are you listening?

Cafe raves may have started as test markets for DJs seeking new venues due to the decline of club life, but they strongly suggest that post-millennials are bored with existing cultural spaces. The formula attracting this demographic is what brand strategist Eugene Healey calls friction. This refers to the unexpected, unconventional collision of two worlds—like coffee and raving. It doesn’t matter if the concept sounds appealing, like Coke flavored Oreos, Sabrina Carpenter pop-ups at Verve, or coffee-flavoured Doritos. What’s important is what the friction communicates: that unconventional worlds can merge, and that brands know how to forge connections through a sense of novelty. Healey explains that this approach resonates with an online culture that is ‘fundamentally unserious’: ‘We don’t need things to make sense; we just need them to be entertaining.’

Cafe raves also embody the value of fluid brand identities and temporary aesthetics for post-millennials. They reject the fixed identities that characterized the millennial generation, perfectly encapsulated by Healey: ‘What’s the defining question that one millennial would ask another? What Harry Potter house are you? You are that house, for life.’ In contrast, post-millennials view identities as having eras and expect their environments to reflect this era building. The cafe rave represents one such environment and the ability to try on something new for a while and see how it feels, without the pressure of a long-term commitment.

Redefining socializing and coffee culture

The cafe rave model aligns with a growing wellness trend, offering an alternative to traditional nightlife. For one, these events are often sober, successfully transforming sobriety from a stigma into a status symbol. They foster a form of connection that transcends small talk, encouraging people from various subcultures to come together to share ideas, inspiration, and energy. As an organizer explains in Vogue Arabia, the goal is to ‘energize rather than deplete’, a stark contrast to the hangover culture of traditional clubbing.

The rise of cafe raves serves as a warning to both clubs and cafes. Over the past five years, these spaces have lacked the essential qualities of friction, novelty, and fluidity, resulting in decreased foot traffic and closures. On their own, they’ve come to represent the fixed mainstream—a ho-hum status quo that excites as much as watching paint dry. For specialty coffee, the original concept nis no longer truly special when every other cafe offers the same anaerobic thermal shock micro-lot, the same cupping-lab aesthetic, and the same tired message about ethical consumption saving an abstract farmer.

The end of millennial seriousness

Specialty coffee will likely always capture millennials’ attention with their message of cutting out the middleman, emphasizing craft, and advocating for the marginalized, but this formula doesn’t work for post-millennials, who are actively redefining aesthetics and social justice. They view brands not as guardians of ‘doing right’, but as platforms—much like digital spaces—for building up and tearing down. For this generation, social justice is returning to direct politics; Gen Z is more likely to boycott and has a strong desire for unions, as evidenced by the surge in Starbucks unions initiated by them, not the millennial cohort. Three decades of millennial seriousness—mixing craft with the promise social justice could be achieved alongside maximizing profit—now look naive and superior, while having actually led to little change.

The barista is no longer the moral guide or gatekeeper. For post-millennials, taste and drink creation aren’t about balance or harmony; it’s about having fun, building, and tearing down quickly. Coffee shops no longer preach the gospel of morally superior taste and ethics but serve as platforms where consumers are co-collaborators and co-producers of entertaining experiences. The over-optimization that critics note, where every second counts, is certainly evident in the cafe rave, which is an ironic space to over-optimize what was once a place to let go. However, it also creates a new opportunity to enjoy healthier fun without the hangovers.

The call to listen

The relationship between millennials and post-millennials often feels like one of avoidance, where one generation doesn’t feel the need to listen to the other. Specialty coffee has largely been preaching to the millennial choir. Post-millennials are tired of being lectured, having witnessed the hypocrisy of millennial coffee. If we are honest, not much has changed in 30 years, so why would they want to listen?

We risk losing a generation of coffee drinkers if we ignore this shift. Third-wave spaces will become irrelevant and dated, like an antiquated Central Perk. Perhaps it’s the post-millennials’ turn to decide what cafes should look like and what should happen in them. Just as our millennial generation pressed the idea of specialty coffee into the hands of a willing and, at times, unwilling public, perhaps we can open ourselves to the possibilities of what coffee can be, and try a cafe rave.