In the 1990s, Starbucks became a place that offered a "third place," with Frappuccinos and cappuccinos taking center stage, and espresso and blended coffees becoming ingredients on the menu rather than the main focus.

At the same time, specialty coffee culture, a reaction against commodity coffee, was beginning to spread in the United States. A genre known as the "third wave" was born, offering carefully crafted specialty coffee in a format similar to the coffee bars that Starbucks' Howard Schultz was initially inspired by in Italy.

In the early 1990s, Starbucks stores in California—especially during hot summers—began experimenting on their own.

Baristas blended coffee, ice, milk, and flavor syrups.

Inspired partly by blended iced drinks popular in the region

One of them was a Frappuccino from a company called Coffee Connection.

The drink concept and the name “Frappuccino” came from Boston-based chain Coffee Connection, where owner George Howell and his team created a blended coffee, milk, sugar, and ice drink in the early 1990s.

After Howard Schultz became CEO of Starbucks, espresso was not sold as a niche Italian drink. Instead, it was reframed for the American mass market.

He clearly recognized that straight Italian-style espresso was too intense and unfamiliar for most American coffee drinkers of the late 1980s and 1990s, and he adjusted Starbucks’ concept accordingly.

Schultz saw in Milan that Italians happily drank small, strong espressos at bars, while most Americans were used to large cups of relatively weak, “bland” coffee.

The acquisition of Starbucks in 1987 was undertaken by Howard Schultz, the current CEO of Starbucks, in order to realize his vision of Italian-style espresso bar culture in the United States.
Schultz, a former Starbucks employee, was inspired by the local "bar" (stand-up cafe) culture during a business trip to Italy in 1983 and wanted to create a "third place" between home and work in the United States.

Italian restaurants began to gain popularity in the U.S. around 1970.
High-end restaurants in New York and chains like Old Spaghetti Factory and Spaghetti Warehouse became popular.
Originally, the U.S. was a multi-ethnic nation with a large Italian-American population. However, during this period, the number of Italian restaurant chains nationwide increased, spreading the habit of eating Italian food and experiencing Italian culture among other ethnicities.

Starbucks itself was founded in Seattle in 1971, but initially it was a specialty store selling roasted coffee beans and equipment, not a cafe chain serving espresso drinks. 

Around this time, dark roast coffee, like the Italian roast popular in Europe, was beginning to become popular, influenced by California's Peet's Coffee. 

However, espresso had yet to become widespread. 

Coffee was generally perceived as something to drink cheaply in large cups.

Before WWII in northern Italy, people have preferred espresso using dark roast coffee.
In the other side before 1960s in the US, people preferred light roasted coffee.
After the term when peet's coffee showed up in Carfornia, Italian Roast began to get popularity.
And then Starbucks make it gain major recognition in the US coffee market.

Belle Époque ended up by World War I starting.
However, espresso remained popular in Italy.
Luigi Bezzera, Desiderio Pavoni, coffee machine developers and coffee roaster such as Luigi Lavazza kept promoting espresso, which remained popular around bars in nortern  industorial cities or large cities in the era in Italy.

In the early 1900s, Italian espresso machine innovators such as Pavoni began to introduce the machine and cafes began to appear all over Northern Italy.These bars began to supply espresso coffee.  

These bars purchased roasted coffee bean from roasters.
One of the  dominant roaster is Luigi Lavazza.

Luigi Lavazza was an Italian entrepreneur who founded the famous Lavazza coffee company that bears his name today.

Desiderio Pavoni was a pivotal figure in espresso history who transformed Luigi Bezzera's invention into a commercial success. 
Desiderio Pavoni purchased Luigi Bezzera's patent in 1903, recognizing the potential that Bezzera himself couldn't capitalize on due to lack of financial resources and marketing expertise. 
In 1905, Pavoni founded the La Pavoni company and began producing the espresso machine industrially, manufacturing one machine daily in a small workshop in Via Parini, Milan.