Coffee People ft. Taylor Minor and Charles Nick, Third Wave Water
Taylor Minor and Charles Nick are the Co-Founders Third Wave Water. Their mineral supplements are added to distilled water to create a consistent, optimized base for your coffee.
Full video posted below, or watch and/or listen to Coffee People on:
Apple Podcasts • YouTube • Spotify • All Your Favorite Platforms
Guests: Charles Nick and Taylor Minor, Third Wave Water
Based: Cedarville, OH
What they drink: Charles-a single-origin pour over
Taylor-a black drip (or a flat white if he's hungry)
Charles Nick had a problem. Neither he nor the customers of his subscription coffee business were able to consistently replicate the same excellent results. During a work trip in Kansas, he realized the variable was the water. It was the differing component for the scientists...err...coffee drinkers attempting to brew good coffee.
Taylor Minor came to the problem (and eventual solution) from the other side as he delved into educational resources to improve the quality of his brews for the customers of his coffee roaster. Learning about water composition during coffee convention educational sessions focused his attention.
A lunch between the two coffee-preneurs began with entrepreneurial brainstorming. Charles had customers who needed a consistent, variable-controlled water for coffee. Taylor had such a water, but the challenge of "dehydrating" it in a manner that would allow for possible scaling still existed. The two men would get there. The important part was that they knew they wanted to work out the solutions together.
"Business is just a, its constant trouble shooting because you’re creating new problems you never had.”
• Charles Nick
Find Third Wave Water on social media: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
SPONSORED
Coffee People is sponsored by our friends at Roastar. They just won an award for their peel and stick tin can end at the Sustainable Business Awards from the Sustainable Business Council.
PODCAST TAKEAWAYS
- “Sticks” is the term the co-founders used to describe the mineral packets.
- Not everyone has a positive first coffee experience. Charles didn’t, but he found his way into the industry later with a subscription-based coffee business. Taylor grew up in the hospitality space at his parents' coffee business. He began home roasting with the dream of opening his own roaster someday.
- Once you start down the path of entrepreneurship, it gets under your skin; there is always a “next time.”
- Brewing coffee is a science experiment. Third Wave Water is looking to help scientists, or coffee drinkers, control for a major variable—water. It took a lot of development, testing, repeating, developing, testing, and repeating for Third Wave Water to find the solution. Charles and Taylor weren’t the first to make their own water, but they did aim to simplify the process for their customers at scale.
- They started by looking to meet the water standards set by the Specialty Coffee Association, and worked backwards.
- Read the books that inspired and guided some of the Third Wave Water evolution: Water For Coffee by Chris Hendon & Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
- They brought original versions of the product to smaller coffee conventions in order to get feedback from the most discerning potential users. The response was positive, and they were off to the races.
- They were always thinking about the mineral sticks as a product. They launched a Kickstarter. It did well enough to lead to an appearance on Shark Tank. That momentum begat more momentum.
- Appearing on Shark Tank isn’t a guarantee of short or long-term success. It is merely another platform, and one that creates as many challenges as opportunities. They still had to do the “nitty-gritty” of the business and execute once the orders started rolling in.
- They are partnering with the equipment companies to engage more customers on a worldwide basis, and also help people maintain that expensive equipment by controlling the water going into their machines.
💡
Roastar presents Coffee Smarter: Entrepreneurial-minded people will quickly reveal themselves. When seeking a business partner (or stumbling onto one), spend time talking, addressing problems, and asking what questions they may have about an idea. You're looking for someone trustworthy, hardworking, and realistic who will pick you up, but also challenge you. Paraphrased from Charles Nick & Taylor Minor.
- Third Wave Water is now being distributed in Europe.
- The level of expectation from consumers of companies has dropped significantly. Rise above that to improve people’s lives, and customers will be thrilled.
- Just reach out. They’re available! Interested in the product, have questions, want to develop a corporate relationship? Contact charles@thirdwavewater.com and taylor@thirdwavewater.com.
"Companies don’t go out of business because of lack of opportunity. They go out of business because you have too much opportunity, and you're not focused.” A mentor's words of wisdom.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
• In the news: Nestlé explores sale of Blue Bottle Coffee.
• In the news: Futuristic Earth-Cooling Solution Not Likely to Protect Coffee. There is also another, more in-depth exploration into the company behind the plot to cool the Earth in a recent issue of the New Yorker: A Startup’s Bid to Dim the Sun. And even more in Politico: The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming.
• Nick and I had a cup of coffee...
Nick and Ryan Drink Coffee: November 2025
We have a cup of coffee with our friend Nick Schmitt from Roastar coffee packaging in November 2025.
Ryan Woldt
Coffee is the best gift...
Our collab with Relative Coffee makes a great gift for the Midwestern transplant in your neighborhood.
Just for fun-ish:
Free coffee-themed coloring pages as downloadable PDFs from Monday Mandala.
COMING SOON:
We close out the season with in IRL interview with Kyle Layton at Prismatic Coffee in Salem, OR.
