Compass Coffee

Compass Coffee was founded in 2014 in Washington, DC by Michael Haft and Harrison Suarez, two Marine officers who became interested in coffee while deployed in Afghanistan, where they encountered the influence of specialty coffee culture through the military community’s creative adaptations to deployment conditions. After their service, Haft and Suarez brought their coffee expertise to Washington, where they roasted their first batches in a DC garage and built the brand into one of the most distinctive coffee businesses in the capital.

The founding story of Compass Coffee, which is documented in the founders’ writing about their military service and their transition to civilian entrepreneurship, gives the brand a specific Washington identity that connects the military community, the coffee world, and the DC professional culture. The brand has developed a significant following in Washington’s government, military, and professional community that is as much about the story and the identity as it is about the coffee.

The Wisconsin Avenue Georgetown location at 1351 is one of multiple Compass Coffee locations across Washington. The Wisconsin address is on the commercial corridor between the lower Wisconsin waterfront area and the upper boutique section, serving the foot traffic of the middle Wisconsin block. The roastery operations are at the brand’s DC production facility rather than at the retail locations, which provide the finished coffee in the forms the cafe serves.

The coffee program covers the espresso standards and the brewed coffee options, with the single-origin rotating selection that the roastery program produces reflected in the pour-over menu. The beans are sourced from the producing regions that the specialty coffee world follows: Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala, and the other origins whose crops the seasonality of coffee agriculture makes available through the year.

Hours run from 6:30am on weekdays and 7am on weekends, closing at 6pm daily. The DC-founded identity that Compass Coffee maintains is genuinely specific to the founders’ story and to the city in which the brand was built. For a Washington coffee drinker who cares about supporting a locally founded roaster rather than a national or global chain, Compass provides that option in a format that competes on quality rather than relying on the local provenance as a substitute for good coffee. The Georgetown Wisconsin Avenue location at 1351 is accessible from the Circulator and from the upper Wisconsin retail block, which gives the coffee shop access to the afternoon foot traffic of the boutique corridor as well as the morning commuter market. The full range of Compass beans, including the single-origin rotating selections and the house blend coffees, is available as whole bean for home brewing in addition to the prepared drinks that the cafe serves. Hours run from 6:30am weekdays and 7am on weekends, closing at 6pm daily.