Spring has officially arrived in DC, and there’s no better time to grab a drink that feels just as fresh as the season.

But before we get into this year’s amazing spring drinks, we need to share a little secret: it wasn’t always this way. Believe it or not, there was a time when we didn’t offer flavors at all. In fact, in our earliest days at our first cafe on 7th Street, we were total coffee snobs. Proudly so.

We believed that adding anything other than a bit of milk was practically an insult to good coffee. Syrups? Flavors? They were unthinkable. Coffee was sacred!

Then we met a customer who changed everything.

Every day, a familiar face would sit at the bar in our cafe. He’d order a latte, open up his laptop or a book, and then quietly pull out a small glass bottle from his bag. At first, we thought, “Is he drinking bourbon at 9 a.m.?”

Turns out, it was vanilla simple syrup—homemade, bottled, and carried in each day just to flavor his latte. We realized something important: here was someone who loved Compass Coffee, who genuinely enjoyed being in our cafe, and who was clearly committed. Yet, we were completely failing to meet his needs. He’d literally taken matters into his own hands. It felt humbling. It also felt like a wake-up call.

Maybe we’d been the ones with the wrong idea all along.

Doing it right meant doing it ourselves.

We decided if we were going to offer flavors, we’d do it the Compass way: real ingredients, made from scratch, no shortcuts. Easy enough, right?

We quickly learned otherwise.

Our first batches were made one pot at a time—literally—in a tiny back-of-house kitchen at 7th Street. Have you ever tried grinding twenty pounds of vanilla pods in a coffee grinder? It’s dusty, loud, and honestly kind of awful. (That grinder still smells like vanilla to this day.) Brewing even one small pot of syrup took hours of simmering, stirring, and more simmering. We thought we'd whip up a week's worth of syrup in an afternoon. Instead, we found ourselves in the kitchen at midnight, covered in sugar, exhausted but determined.

And then, something amazing happened. Customers loved our vanilla syrup—so much so, we could barely keep up. Pretty soon we realized we didn’t just need someone making syrups occasionally—we needed someone dedicated full-time to crafting flavors. We jokingly called this role the “Saucerer” (think sorcerer, but with sauce). It stuck.

Requests poured in: chai, chocolate, caramel, Nutella. Even sugar-free. Suddenly, we weren’t just making vanilla syrup; we were spinning up an entire new line of craft flavors inside Compass.

Christine’s Pick: Lavender Matcha Latte

435 11th Street

For Christine, the Lavender Matcha Latte perfectly captures spring. Crafted with ceremonial grade matcha and our house-made lavender syrup—infused with real lavender and sugar—it’s bright, refreshing, floral, and just sweet enough.

"It’s the perfect blend of sweetness from the lavender and earthiness from the matcha." — Christine

Eventually, we outgrew our little cafe pots. We upgraded to tanks loaned by a neighborhood brewery in Ivy City—the same place we now roast our coffee. Brewing syrup became exponentially more complex: suddenly, we were managing hundreds of gallons at a time, pallets of sugar, mountains of spices. The learning curve was steep, and demand just kept growing. We even took a trip to Milwaukee to learn from beer brewers about pumps, tanks, and agitators, all to better infuse flavors into our syrups.

It was intense—but rewarding. We were becoming experts, but more importantly, we were learning to listen.

Olivia’s Pick: Vanilla Cream Cold Brew

435 11th Street

Olivia loves the Vanilla Cream Cold Brew because it’s smooth, rich, and just the right touch of sweetness. Real vanilla beans, real sugar, brewed into cream and poured over bold, slow-steeped cold brew.

"It's a little sweet, super smooth, and so refreshing!" — Olivia

Fast forward to today: all our syrups and seasonal flavors are crafted by hand daily at our Ivy City Roastery. The pots are bigger, but the heart is exactly the same: real ingredients, real sugar, real craftsmanship.

But more than the syrups themselves, the real story here is about us learning to get over ourselves. It’s about putting aside the snobbery that once prevented us from seeing what was right in front of us: that coffee isn’t about purity tests or rules. Coffee is magical precisely because of how it makes you feel—not because of whether or not you put syrup in your cup.

Davon’s Pick: Cherry Blossom Cream Cold Brew

1301 K Street

Davon’s favorite springtime pick is the Cherry Blossom Cream Cold Brew—delicately floral, slightly sweet, and brewed in-house daily. It’s a drink that feels like a perfect DC spring day.

"It's floral, sweet—but not too sweet—and has a strong cold brew kick!" — Davon

Today, at Compass, we’re just as proud of our vanilla syrup and lavender matcha as we are of our perfect espresso and black coffee. We haven’t compromised our values—we've expanded them. You can still come in and enjoy the absolute best espresso or drip coffee of your life. But now we understand there’s a whole world of people out there who enjoy coffee differently. Meeting them where they are, every single day, is just as important as pulling the perfect espresso.

Our journey from purists to flavor-makers wasn’t easy, and it definitely wasn’t predictable. But it made us better baristas, better craftspeople, and ultimately, a better Compass.