How Coffee Shops Have Grown Since 2010

There’s an old joke about how the the answer to the question “how do you cross from one side of Dublin to the other without passing a pub” is “to stop at every one.” You could almost make that joke about Georgetown and coffee shops. And being one who never can let a joke just be, GM decided to visualize the growth in coffee shops.

Here is a heat map showing coffee shops in Georgetown in 2010:

(For the record, GM is including in “coffee shops” and place where you can walk in, get a latte, then leave).

Back in 2010 there were thirteen coffee shops. They clumped up a bit in Book Hill, but they were pretty evenly spaced out down in the main commercial corridor.

Skip ahead to today and the map is quite different:

There are now eighteen coffee shops in Georgetown. There’s less of a clump up at Book Hill, mostly due to the closure of Marvelous Market and Dolcezza. But there is way more clumping down on M St. And there are more on Wisconsin between Book Hill and M St.

There seems to be an endless demand for coffee shops in Georgetown. The opening of the gigantic Compass Coffee shop in the old Georgetown theater will really test just how high this demand stretches.

Retail districts like Georgetown have had to move to more “experiential” shopping. In other words, you can’t beat the internet for prices, so to get people to come out and stay for a while, you’ve got to give them something they can’t get online. A cozy cup of coffee is one of them.