Alum Tess Klugewicz was “shocked” when she looked down at her phone to her group chat of past and present Peet’s Coffee baristas last week and received the news that her former place of work, where she made a trove of coffee-filled memories, is closing.

“It’s who I spent every day with during college and where I got a lot of my identity, it was like, ‘I’m the Peet’s barista,’ and everyone in class knew me as the Peet’s barista,” Klugewicz, who graduated from GW in 2024, said. “It was really sad. It felt like a chapter closing that I didn’t have any control over.”

Located on the first floor of District House, Peet’s Coffee is a steady student hotspot where long lines form throughout the day for caffeine boosts and quick favorites like the horchata cold brew latte and bacon and cheddar brioche breakfast sandwich. After 10 years in operation, Peet’s will shutter its doors on May 30 after the shop declined to renew its lease.

No stranger to the daily rush of caffeine-seeking students between classes or the rhythm of pulling espresso shots for regulars, Klugewicz worked as a Peet’s barista from her sophomore year through the year after graduating from the University, where she built a close-knit community with fellow student baristas and often worked alongside the same group of students.

While working at Peet’s, she said she and her fellow barista friends lived together on and off campus for three years, forming a tight-knit community where work and friendship were deeply intertwined and where the cafe became a shared space that felt like a second home. Over time, she said they built lasting relationships with regular customers, sometimes even future boyfriends, and spent early 6 a.m. shifts together opening the shop and starting the day in a rhythm that made Peet’s central to their college experience.

“We had a very close, casual relationship and really took on managing the store by ourselves,” she said. “We’re trauma bonded in that way, in a really good way.” 

Klugewicz said she and her fellow barista friends have stayed in touch beyond GW through a group chat called “No Managers,” a joke about running the shop themselves without much supervision during their college years.

Looking back on her experiences, Klugewicz said working as a barista for 30 hours a week while juggling internships and a full course load was difficult, but the bond she developed with her fellow baristas went deeper than just friendships — they understood that they each needed to work to support themselves to afford groceries, books and daily expenses. 

“Knowing that we’re all going through finals at the same time, but we also all have to open Peet’s at 6 a.m. the next morning, it’s nice to have someone to commiserate with,” she said.

Ellie Neal, a fall 2025 graduate who is in her fourth year of working at Peet’s Coffee, said she didn’t expect to be there for its closure but ultimately saw it as “inevitable.” She pointed to reduced foot traffic after the University restricted public access to the District House dining entrance due to “safety concerns” and closed nearby spots like Chick-fil-A in 2021, which she said left fewer non-student and non-employee customers in the area.

She also said the University’s shift from dining dollar-focused meal plans to primarily meal swipe-based plans led students to spend less at Peet’s Coffee, since they had fewer dining dollars available for purchases there.

“I started working my sophomore year, and I didn’t have many friends at the time, and so then I came into this group, and we got really close,” Neal said. “We do nights out where we’ll go, we’ll grab drinks or they’ve come to my birthday. We’ve celebrated so many lifetimes together.” 

Sonia Lerner, a sophomore double-majoring in public health and computer science and a frequent Peet’s customer, said they found out about Peet’s upcoming closure at a book club, where everyone was heartbroken at the news.

Lerner said they prefer Peet’s to other on-campus cafes, like Starbucks and Tatte, because of the lower prices and faster turnaround. They said they usually order an iced lavender matcha latte at Peet’s and hang around the cafe with friends.

“I’m very sad about it, and I’m very sad because employees are now unemployed,” Lerner said.

Anna Krantz, who graduated last spring and has worked at Peet’s for the last four years, said the coffee shop’s upcoming closure is a loss of community for both her and Foggy Bottom coffee lovers. She said she’ll miss the people most — both her fellow baristas and the student customer base. Though she was upset about the closure, she said she was already planning on moving back home to New York to attend graduate school.  

“At other coffee shops, you have your regulars, but here everyone is connected,” Krantz said. “You know everyone or someone’s roommate would come in, and so I think that’s definitely what I’ll miss the most.” 

After years of countless coffee creations and daily customer interactions, Krantz said the baristas at Peet’s Coffee have built up a trove of memories, from incidents like a customer stealing $20 from the tip jar to Krantz once hiding in the back after skipping class when her professor walked in, as well as sheltering in place during a 2023 campus lockdown after a murder suspect escaped from GW Hospital.

“It wasn’t funny in the moment, but now we can laugh about it,” Krantz said. 

Krantz said the student response to Peet’s upcoming closure has been heartwarming for her, with some students offering to create petitions to fight against the closure in hopes of keeping the baristas’ jobs intact and the coffee institution alive for years to come.

“A silver lining, in that it’s nice to feel appreciated and knowing that we have done something for the GW community,” Krantz said.