Coffee Republic — Restaurant in Rockville

This place has had a change in management about a year ago, and it shows (Sarah, great work!!)! I've become a regular, going almost daily, and getting coffee and pastries for 4+ members of my family. I love all their drinks, but absolutely love their Sugar Daddy, In Bloom and Bees Knees. The pastries are usually great, especially the muffins and croissants. The baristas are GREAT (shout-out to Sam, Taz and Sophia, my favorite peeps!), very nice, friendly, professional, kind and knowledgeable. They move as fast as they can, especially when the place is super crowded - I've never had to wait more than 3 minutes for my order. I've also had the pleasure of speaking to Sarah, the new manager, and she's awesome - on the day I spoke to her, she was there washing dishes, which I've never seen any store manager do. She's very involved and devoted to the success of the place, so I know the business is in good hands.

Suggestions for improvement: update the website, including the menu on ordering apps such as Odeko, and coordinate/link rewards programs (e.g. Coffee Republic has its own rewards program, different from the one through Odeko, but the Coffee Republic rewards are better and can only be obtained by going in person into the store). Also - and I know they are considering this - the place would benefit from an expansion. It's already quite popular and gets a little crowded at times, and the bar is a very small place. The definitely need 3-4 baristas there most times just to keep up with demand, but the poor staff barely have room to move when they're all there.

I'll be a loyal customer as long as I live in the area, and I'll spread the word! We need more high-quality independent coffee shops around here! Keep up the...

This coffee place is about 20 mins drive from me, so no matter how much I like to I cannot be a regular here. But I take the drive at least once a week. This is due to two reasons, one the quality of the coffee and various drinks are amazing here. Second, the baristas usually do a meticulous job for each cup. This results in a repeatable taste unless you change the coffee type which is representative of high quality control. I guess there is a little bit of love in each cup. I have seen a lot of people work here during the day so you can always join them or get it to go to enjoy. Bottom line, this is one of the best coffee shops in this area.

Update: I am taking my review from 5 stars to 3 stars. Since most of the baristas were changed in the last year the drink and service quality has decreased significantly. They mix up orders, serve the din-in orders in paper cups instead of the usual mugs and so on. The drinks are not as well made either. Every once in a while I ran into one of the old baristas who remind me why I used to love this place. Also avoid weekend mornings. It gets crowded and the low quality gets even more abysmal!

Update 2: I increased it back to 5 star for multiple reasons. I like how they are taking initiative to take care of some errors they made in the past. Seems like it is not happening anymore. It seems they are working on bringing the new baristas up to the same high standards as before. And frankly being busy is a good thing! I think it’s better that we support a good local cafe rather than all the abysmal chains popping around...

Please note that I am a retired barista, coffee manager, and have designed coffee menus.

Because of my pregnancy, I am consuming little to zero caffeine, so I order a Chai Latte Frappe...every... single...time. I have received a different version of the beverage... every... single...time. For some unholy reason, they are now adding shots of espresso to it while their menu says that any beverage can be ordered as a Frappe. Unless any other version of their Chai Lattes comes with espresso, this beverage should not, nor should I have to keep returning to the store explaining this new unwarranted ingredient. Can someone, please, standardize the Frappe recipes. My first Chai Latte Frappe was perfectly normal, now they are either under-iced, texturally watery, served in a half-full cup, flavorly milky, and temporarily frothy OR over-iced, bland, and iced milk flavored. Just why offer the beverage and accept money for a complete lack of thought and wasted effort. For all that needs to be corrected, why would you settle on adding espresso to a famously tea based latte in any form?!

Today they were out of ice, so we were provided with the ingredients to blend at home; I requested extra chai, they included extra milk so that I could make thrice the actual size of the beverage with that lovely milky, chai-less flavor. Otherwise, we thoroughly enjoy everything else, including the staff and customer service, we order here including all of the croissants, coffee and both standard and...