Hundreds of visitors came to downtown Geneva on Saturday with coffee on their minds.

Beginning at 11 a.m., the Geneva Chamber of Commerce offered its fifth annual Coffee Crawl, a four-hour self-guided tour through bakeries, pubs, candle shops, galleries, restaurants and more where merchants offered a host of coffee-based beverages and treats.

Cheri Paulsen of South Elgin came to the event looking for a chance to enjoy coffee and treats while also visiting some local stores.

“I’ve come to this event four other times and I love it. It gets the family together and the people are doing a great job,” Paulsen said as she and others sipped some coffee outside the Bad Guy Bagels shop at 501 E. State St. in Geneva. “We heard there are lots of stops and we plan to hit over 20 of them. There’re new places here that just popped up.”

Paula Schmidt, president of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, said she hopes the event helps create more exposure for downtown merchants as well as give visitors the chance to enjoy the first month of spring.

A total of 30 stops were included in the Coffee Crawl this year, the largest total ever.

“We’ve had a lot of people come in and not even realize some of the different merchants that are even here,” she said. “We don’t just do coffee places, we do our merchants and our restaurants and people get a chance to kind of walk into places where they never would have gone before. We range from breweries to candle places to bakeries — there’s 30 stops this year, and so many of our merchants love the idea of people stopping in that normally would not.”

Schmidt said when the crawl first started, stops were limited “to about 15 but that as it grew, everyone wants to be involved.”

“At first, people were trying to get to every stop but now with 30 that’s going to be almost impossible to do,” she said. “People are picking and choosing now. When we started this, we’d sell only about 100 tickets, and now we’re at nearly 300 tickets.”

Those participating purchased a ticket for $29 and received a souvenir mug. Merchants served coffee drinks in cups that could be thrown away, eliminating the need to clean anything afterward.

“We’ve also have changed this to any kind of coffee treat — we have tiramisu, we have whipped coffee, a cowboy campfire coffee bite and so many more things,” Schmidt said.

Cheri Paulsen’s husband, Scott, said he drinks coffee every day and that some of this year’s offerings “were very interesting.”

“One of the things we had years ago, my wife now drinks that every day. It’s like an orange seltzer with cold brew in it and my wife has had it every day since,” Scott Paulsen said. “Coffee is kind of like a blank canvas and you can do anything with it. I don’t know what our plans are after this, but we’re definitely not going to sleep.”

Brenda Hill of Geneva was working at the Bad Guy Bagels shop and said the venue was offering a hazelnut mocha cold brew for the Coffee Crawl.

“People love it. We grind our own beans and do our own cold brew in-house,” she explained. “This was a drink we came up with just for the crawl, but it’s going to be on the menu. We wanted to be involved in the community and support other small businesses.”

The owner of the bagel shop, Sara Parisi of Geneva, said she opened the business a little over a year ago, making this her first time taking part in the Coffee Crawl.

“I just wanted to create a new, fun coffee and so far, so good,” she said. “We expect 200 to 250 cups to be served today.”

West of the bagel shop near the center of downtown, Buttermilk restaurant was also taking part in the Coffee Crawl.

“We are offering a cold-brew that we serve every day, but people can add other flavors,” she Barbie Kramer, who was working as a server-barista at Buttermilk. “We also have an alcoholic version of this. So far, we have seen a number of people make this their first stop on the crawl. I think this is a good community thing that we’re doing.”

Buttermilk restaurant included some crawlers who boasted they planned to visit all the stops.

Helene Schaefer of Naperville said this was her first time coming out for the Coffee Crawl and she and her friends “planned on hitting all 30.”

“My daughter is the driver and I know we’re not going to sleep for a week. We’ve already talked about that,” she said. “We’ve had three stops and so far, it’s been excellent.”

Michelle Bonfield of Campton Hills said this was also her first year attending the event.

“I’m a coffee aficionado and our goal is to hit 30. We have a lot of work to do and we still have to get home and get ready for Easter,” she said Saturday. “We’re definitely going to get our steps in today.”

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.