Georgetown Cupcake

The line outside 3301 M Street NW is the first thing most visitors see when they approach Georgetown Cupcake on a weekend afternoon. Sophie LaMontagne and Katherine Kallinis Bochicchio opened the shop in January 2008, and the line has been a feature of the M Street block since roughly the first month. The business that started as a local cupcake boutique became the subject of “DC Cupcakes,” a TLC reality series that ran for six seasons starting in 2010, which brought national attention to the Georgetown address and extended the line considerably. The TV show ended. The line did not.

LaMontagne and Kallinis Bochicchio are sisters who left careers in finance and fashion, respectively, to open the bakery. The timing coincided with the peak of the cupcake trend that swept American cities in the late 2000s, but Georgetown Cupcake predates the trend’s more commercial expressions and has outlasted most of them. The original M Street location remains the anchor, with additional locations in New York, Boston, and other cities, and a national shipping operation that sends boxes overnight to customers who cannot visit the shop.

The Georgetown menu runs about a dozen rotating daily flavors plus a changing selection of seasonal and special options. The Red Velvet is the house standard and has been since the beginning. Chocolate Ganache, Vanilla Birthday, and Lemon Blossom are the other anchors of the permanent list. Seasonal flavors rotate with the calendar and include options that reflect the sisters’ baking instincts more than the commercial minimum. The cupcakes are full-sized, frosted generously, and made fresh each day. Specialty orders for events and large groups are handled through the website, and the shop ships nationwide.

The M Street storefront is directly on the main Georgetown commercial strip, which means the foot traffic is constant and the surrounding blocks are always busy. The line forms outside and moves steadily; the wait on a peak Saturday afternoon is typically 15 to 30 minutes. The shop is designed for fast counter service rather than extended seating, and most customers take their boxes and walk.

Hours run from 10am daily, with the shop closing at 8pm on most days and 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Online ordering is available for pickup and shipping. The box sizes run from single cupcakes to dozens, and the shop produces custom orders for events of all sizes. The shop ships boxes of cupcakes overnight across the United States, which has extended the Georgetown brand far beyond what the M Street location alone could sustain. For visitors who want to avoid the line, online ordering for scheduled pickup is available through the website. The holiday and seasonal flavors are the most anticipated rotations on the menu: the winter collection, in particular, draws customers who time their Georgetown visits around it. Sophie LaMontagne and Katherine Kallinis Bochicchio have maintained direct involvement in the Georgetown operation since opening in 2008, which is one of the reasons the product quality has held up across a period when many bakeries that started with similar media attention faded.