We didn’t set out to revolutionize cafe design—we just wanted to stop cutting unexpected holes in our buildings.

When we started designing our first Compass Coffee cafe at 1535 7th Street, we thought we were stepping into the modern era of architecture and construction. Turns out, we were closer to ancient Sumeria than the 21st century.

Our architect, Brie, arrived with her associate, George, a tape measure, a notebook, a pencil, and—critically—a fun hat. That was the full extent of our technology.

They walked around, measured things by hand, and jotted numbers down on paper, recreating a process that hadn’t evolved much since the ancient Egyptians were designing pyramids.

Then came demolition. Walls came down, and surprise! Many of them were fake. Just drywall covering up the bones of the building. The true footprint was finally revealed.

Great! Now, all we had to do was capture a three-dimensional space using a two-dimensional drawing.

Lost in Translation: How 2D Plans Led to 3D Disasters

The architects loaded everything into AutoCAD, a drafting program that lets you draw straight and curved lines—because apparently, that’s all you need to describe an entire building.

In theory, this should have worked.

In reality? Things got... weird.

Small miscalculations turned into big, weird-looking rooms, like something out of an M.C. Escher painting where stairs go nowhere and doors lead to solid walls.

And when things inevitably didn’t line up? The architect just stamped "VIF"—Verify In Field.

VIF is an architect’s get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s their way of saying, "Yeah, these measurements might be totally wrong, but that’s on you now, buddy."

"VIF, Baby!" (A.K.A. Why We Had to Cut a Hole in Our Building)

We hired the best. No corners were cut. We did everything by the book.

And yet, when it came time to install our coffee roaster, we discovered—too late—that the machine literally didn’t fit through the front door.

So we did what any rational business owners would do. We took the doors off the building and cut a massive hole. Because, you know... VIF.

Once the roaster was inside, we placed it exactly where our super expensive architectural plans told us to. And wouldn’t you know it? There was a steel beam directly overhead, making it impossible to vent the exhaust properly.

Again... VIF.

At some point, we realized: This system is broken.

Every cafe we built had delays, budget overruns, and a healthy dose of “find a way” moments involving bandsaws.

This process was not scalable. It was expensive, slow, and prone to disaster. We needed a better way.

The Turning Point: A 3D Revolution

By the time we opened Rosslyn, our 8th cafe, the frustration reached a boiling point.

Every project felt like the same awful "VIF and pray" cycle. Expensive mistakes. Endless change orders. Construction delays.

So for our 9th cafe—Spring Valley—we decided to do something dramatically different.

Instead of 2D drawings, we switched to Revit, a 3D modeling program. For the first time, we weren’t just drawing lines on a screen—we were building full 3D models of our cafes. We could walk through the space virtually before construction even started. We could get a real sense of how everything would fit and what the cafe would actually feel like.

This was a dramatic improvement, but there was still a problem:

We were still using tape measures.

Which meant that all those painstakingly detailed 3D models? They were still based on hand-measured numbers—and still prone to the same errors that had been haunting us since 1535 7th Street. Revit was good. But it wasn’t enough.

From Guesstimates to Precision: How Laser Scanning Changed Everything

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

When you keep running into the same costly, time-consuming problems, you’re forced to find better answers. That moment came when we started designing Ivy City, our roastery. This wasn’t just another cafe—it was a 50,000-square-foot, three-level space with millions of dollars in custom-built equipment. Joel, our head of design, was staring down the challenge of laying out an entire industrial facility.

And there was zero room for error.

The idea of measuring the whole thing by hand? Not an option.

So we rented a Leica 3D scanner, a game-changing tool that captured an exact digital replica of the space, accurate to 1/16 of an inch.

Instead of measuring by hand, the scanner created a "point cloud"—a perfect 3D map of every beam, column, pipe, and doorway.

For the first time, we weren’t guessing.

Joel scanned the space, ensuring every onsite condition was captured with precision. With an exact digital model in place, all furniture and equipment were fabricated to fit perfectly. There were no surprises, no last-minute adjustments, no costly change orders. This wasn’t just a better way to design; it solved construction. No more tape measures, no more confusion—just a flawless plan that let us build exactly what we envisioned.

After Ivy City was a massive success, we brought this same system to our cafes.

With this rock-solid foundation, Joel could now develop an equipment library—a collection of exact to-scale 3D models of everything we use in a cafe. This system allowed us to drop in objects with pinpoint accuracy. Tables, chairs, espresso machines, even milk pitchers—everything fit perfectly.

With everything already digitized, each new cafe could now be designed with unmatched accuracy—before we even lifted a hammer.

But we weren’t done yet.

$280 vs. $5,000: The Tech That Made Our Build Process 90% Faster

Leica scanning was amazing, but it was too slow and expensive.

That’s when we discovered Matterport.

Matterport is a cloud-based scanning service that does everything the Leica scanner did—but for $280 instead of $5,000. A Matterport technician came in, scanned the entire cafe space in about an hour, and 48 hours later, Joel had a fully interactive "digital twin" (an exact virtual replica of the space) in his inbox. In just one week we had the full cafe 3D model laid out with digital drawings of equipment and furniture, ready to go for our in-house construction team. That’s a 90% cost savings and a 90% time savings.

This system also allows us to avoid making extra site visits. Now we can pull up the scan, measure distances, edit areas, and tag key details directly in the model. Our whole team can walk through the cafe space without ever leaving the office. It took everything we had been doing and made it faster, simpler, and dramatically more efficient.

From Chaos to Control: The New Blueprint for Building Cafes

Today, we scan every space before designing it, ensuring every cafe is built with precision, efficiency, and zero surprises.

Now, we can:
✅ Generate a fully accurate 3D model of the space
✅ Drop in every piece of equipment, furniture, and supplies—perfectly to scale
✅ Do a full virtual walkthrough before construction even begins

This isn’t just about using cool tech—it’s about building better cafes, faster, and on budget.

By leaning into innovation and iteration, our small and scrappy team can now open cafes at a speed and level of accuracy that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

We went from tape measures and hand-drawn plans to 3D scanners, digital modeling, and automation.

And now? We’re just getting started.