On the corner of South Bouquet and Sennott streets sits a white coffee truck, bedecked in brightly colored stickers, with a line of eager customers typically forming on the sidewalk. “Standing Wave,” a local coffee truck that sells a variety of items, is a staple for Pitt students looking for a pick-me-up during the week.
The coffee truck began with Colin Frye, a Pittsburgh native, and opened about four years after he opened his first coffee shop, Silver Horse Coffee, in Donegal. Right before the pandemic, Frye had bought a high-quality coffee roaster from Germany. From there, he started roasting his own coffee beans, which inspired him to open Standing Wave so that he could sell his hand-ground coffee.
Standing Wave made its way to Sennott Street from its previous location in Schenley Plaza after a Pitt student recommended a more central place on campus instead. Since 2023, Standing Wave has found its spot in Oakland from Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. every week.
“[We’ve] kinda become a fixture in the area,” Frye said. “This is a perfect environment. All the maintenance staff, they do all their breaks here. All the cops come through here. And I get a lot of professors, a lot of UPMC people. Anyone from South Oakland kinda has to be right here.”
The truck’s location is connected to Frye’s background as a Pittsburgh native. He grew up in the city and spent a lot of his youth in Oakland. He even remembers taking his SAT in the Cathedral of Learning and graduating in the Soldiers and Sailors Museum.
Frye noted that many Pittsburgh locals tend to avoid Oakland, but he thinks the neighborhood has an “energy” that no other place in the city does.
“You can’t beat Forbes and Fifth. You feel like you’re in Chicago. You feel like it’s got that [special energy],” Frye said. “It’s like our mini New York. If you can make it in Oakland, you could probably make it anywhere in the city. That’s why I came here. It is the hardest. It’s the most congested chaos.”
Many Standing Wave customers are glad that the truck has chosen a spot in the heart of Pitt’s campus. Ranya Khouri, a junior communications and sports studies major, visits the truck almost daily.
“I think it definitely is a staple in our community because it’s a small business. There’s a lot of big corporations in Oakland,” Khouri said. “So, having something small and local feels better.”
The food truck format is something that Frye found especially beneficial to the Standing Wave brand.
“I love it because I don’t pay for rent necessarily,” Frye said. “I pay city parking, and I have this outdoor seating. I don’t have bathrooms or Wi-Fi, so I charge a little bit less than other coffee shops.”
Frye has been a coffee shop entrepreneur for nine years. Prior to opening the Standing Wave truck, he spent time on oil rigs in the Arctic and at a gold mine in Alaska. It was in these far-off spots that he found his love for sharing coffee.
“I would take a little pour-over kit and a grinder, and I would take really expensive coffee out in these really remote locations,” Frye said. “There’s no drugs. There’s no alcohol. There’s no girls [to distract you]. So instead, I provided the coffee everywhere I [went].”
Sustainability is a huge part of the Standing Wave franchise. Frye said that his scientific background as a geologist and his lifetime experience in the outdoors — especially around Ohiopyle State Park — contributed to making his business sustainable. Standing Wave routinely donates to the Mountain Watershed Association, gives customers discounted coffee if they bring their own bag to fill with beans and refuses to use K-cups to make coffee.
“Just little things like that [help]. People say that [K-cups] are environmentally friendly. But you’re putting boiling water in plastic — that can’t be great,” Frye said. “I’m not a chemist, but I’m not an idiot either. I know it’s convenient, and that’s what you’re paying for. I turned down making money to not sell K-cups.”
Valentina Gomez, a senior emergency medicine major who visits Standing Wave three or four times a week, said that the truck helps people connect to the outdoorsy community. Gomez is a manager at the Bike Cave, which sits next to Standing Wave’s parking spot, and felt encouraged to become a raft guide at Ohiopyle after meeting Frye.
“I think it’s a really cool spot where people from the outdoor community can come and chat and hang out and stand in line and just get to know each other,” Gomez said. “I think it’s a really cool area for spreading awareness for Whitewater and Ohiopyle in general and the outdoor experience here at Pitt.”
Frye said he is glad that Standing Wave is where it is now — using equipment and ingredients that he can stand by with a location that connects the company to the community.
“I used to be in horrible places, and I was paid a lot of money, but it was a terrible life. So now I’m starting to make a little bit of money doing what I like to do,” Frye said. “I don’t wanna be in that corporate world. It was terrible. It’s not worth the money. This is what I do now, and I like what I do. I like being here.”