Dayglow Coffee Brings Multi-Roaster Concept to Georgetown
Most cafés pick a roaster and stick with it. Dayglow built a brand doing the opposite.
The Los Angeles-based multi-roaster concept is opening its seventh location this summer at 1510 Wisconsin Ave. NW in Georgetown — its first in Washington DC and only its second on the East Coast. The 2,000-square-foot space previously housed Alkova Yoga & Coworking.
The Dayglow Model
Founded by cousins Tohm and Philippe Ifergan on New Year’s Day 2018, Dayglow won the Sprudgie Award for Best New Café that same year by doing something unusual: instead of roasting their own beans or partnering with a single supplier, they cast a wide net across the specialty world.
At any given time, a Dayglow café carries coffee from 10 to 20 different roasters, split roughly half domestic and half international. The roster rotates based on blind cuppings by staff. Recent menus have featured La Cabra from Denmark, Drop from Japan, Coffee Collective from Copenhagen, Jiribilla from Puerto Rico, and Morgon from Sweden.
Ifergan describes it as “the only non-US multi-roaster café in the States” — a bit of branding flair, but the international emphasis is real. The goal is exposure: turning customers on to roasters they might never discover otherwise.
From Silver Lake to Georgetown
The original Dayglow opened in Silver Lake, LA, with a striking minimalist design: bright white walls, neon accents, and furniture that photographs well. The aesthetic helped, but the coffee drove repeat visits.
A Chicago location followed in 2021, overcoming pandemic delays to open in the Humboldt Park and Logan Square border near the 606 elevated trail. A Brooklyn outpost came next. Georgetown marks store number seven.
An investor apparently nudged founder Tohm Ifergan to scout DC neighbourhoods, and Georgetown clicked. The area has plenty of coffee competition — the original Compass Coffee location is nearby, for whatever that’s now worth — but no multi-roaster concept operating at Dayglow’s scale.
More Than Coffee
Georgetown visitors can expect more than espresso. Dayglow will serve drinks from Awan, their Los Angeles-based vegan ice cream brand, along with matcha drinks and mocktails. The company also runs a subscription service shipping beans from featured roasters nationwide.
The subscription dovetails with the café model. Discover something you love at the bar, then keep it coming to your door.
Why This Matters
Most specialty coffee shops position themselves as arbiters of taste: here’s our roaster, here’s our style, trust us. Dayglow flips that script by positioning the café as a curator rather than a source.
It’s the record store model applied to coffee — a place to browse and stumble onto something new. For a city like DC, where the café scene tilts toward familiar names and established brands, that kind of variety could shake things up.
Georgetown regulars will find out this summer.