Welcome to Fourth Wave Coffee

Hello! Welcome to Fourth Wave Coffee. My name is Sternum and I’ll be your barista, but you can call me big poppa, Dr. Freud, Mrs. Robinson, or any other nickname that makes you feel warm inside. Warm like our coffee.

Here at Fourth Wave, our mission is to provide a beverage experience that transcends the merely average service provided by ordinary third-wave coffee shops. Fellow millennial, I’m here to make you feel good about yourself. Here’s a trophy, just for coming in.

Let me show you around our shop. Those aren’t ordinary Eames chairs you see over there basking in the Valencia-ready light of our shop’s bay window. In fact, those shell chairs were made by a local artisan using the compressed ashes of mid-century design icons Charles and Ray Eames. Go ahead! Take a load off. The Wi-Fi password is MORTALITY, all caps.

What can I get you to drink? Here at Fourth Wave Coffee, our beans are nano-roasted one at a time by our in-house craftsman-slash-junkie using a silver spoon and a vintage Zippo lighter. We go beyond fair trade, sourcing our coffee from farms tilled only by trust-funded liberal arts students on spring break WWOOF-ing trips. We name our roasts after the mid-sized flyover cities our baristas abandoned to pursue screenwriting careers. My favorite is the Naperville, IL. The Alliance, OH is pretty popular too.

Let me tell you a little bit about our menu.

Our entry-level coffee comes in two sizes — — beautiful, and equally beautiful. Here at Fourth Wave, we’re body positive! Unlike other cafés, we don’t feel the need to label our coffees using judgmental adjectives like “small” and “large.” Come as you are! Like the corpse you will eventually become, our cups are compostable.

Or hey, fellow eco-warrior, forget the cup altogether! I agree — -Silent Spring was a great book! Another thing that sets us apart from other shops is our specialty “in-mouth” lattes. Go ahead, hop on over the counter and put your head like this. A little lower, yes! Like that! We steam the milk directly in your mouth to keep you feeling as connected to your drink as possible. Did you say you wanted quinoa mylk or brazil nut mylk? No, I’m sorry, we don’t offer soy.

Have you heard of pour-over coffee? Yes? Well we don’t have that here at Fourth Wave. Instead, we offer pour-under coffee, a brewing technique in which gravity is momentarily subverted to best enhance the subtle notes of our beans. Watch as your drink flows gracefully out from the base of the Chemex and out into the endless abyss of space.

You know, I didn’t just become a barista by chance. In fact, unlike other baristas, I did both my undergraduate and graduate degree in English. See this latte art? That’s Picasso’s Guernica. I can also do the Annie Leibovitz semi-nude Miley portrait, and several of Jeff Koons’ plagiarized works.

Anyway, here you go! Enjoy your coffee! Your total comes to $16.50. We accept skillshare, trash bags of clothing meant for Buffalo Exchange, and bitcoins, or we can contact Sallie Mae and add the total directly to your student loan balance.

Jamie Lauren Keiles lives and writes in Philadelphia.