STEPHANIE JOLLY

A latte art demostration at Caffe D'arte with audience participation is part of the new Coffee Bites & Sights walking tour.

For almost a year, Seattle has had the Seattle Coffee Crawl. This month, Coffee Bites & Sights debuted. Some stats:

Price: The Crawl is $20 in advance (rising to $24 this summer). Bites & Sights is $69.

Time: The Crawl runs Friday through Sunday (plus Monday and Tuesday beginning May 18), 10 a.m. to noon. Bites & Sights runs Wednesday through Saturday, 1:45 to 4:15 p.m.

Rain or shine? Yes. It's Seattle.

Tour size: Max of 15 for the Crawl, 14 for Bites & Sights.

Caffeine consumption: The Crawl is all about beverages, with samples of three coffees and a hot chocolate along the way. Bites & Sights features foods, like espresso-smoked sea salt caramels, mochaccino cheesecake and mocha-braised short ribs.

In common: Coffee made on a celebrated Clover machine; debunking the Starbucks-supported myth that its store in Pike Place Market is the original.

Places visited: The Crawl starts at Seattle's Best Coffee in Pike Place Market and ends at Zeitgeist Coffee in Pioneer Square, with stops in between at Seattle Coffee Works, Dilettante Mocha Cafe, Trabante Coffee & Chai and Monorail Espresso.

Bites & Sights starts with a Flatliner Cocktail at Oliver's Lounge in Mayflower Park Hotel and ends atop the Space Needle, with stops at Caffe D'arte, Chocolate Box, The Confectional and the newly remodeled Starbucks at First and Pike. A monorail ride takes the tour to The Cheese Cellar (cheddar cheese rubbed with ground espresso and lavender, of course) and the Space Needle's dining room for mocha-braised short ribs (or cedar-wrapped salmon or vegetarian crepe lasagna, on request).

THOMAS JAMES HURST/THE SEATTLE TIMES

Seattle Coffee Works co-owner Kristi Cromwell, left, talks to Seattle Coffee Crawl participants. The walk's guide and owner, Vicki Schuman, is second from the left.

How they're doing: Vicki Schuman started Seattle by Foot last summer with the Coffee Crawl. She plans to hire more guides and add three tours this summer: A broader walking tour of the city, a pub crawl and a sports-and-bars walk with her husband, ESPN.com sports writer Jim Caple, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports columnist Art Thiel.

Angela Shen started Savor Seattle Food Tours in 2007 and now has three tours and six other guides. Next month, she's launching an "Off the Beaten Path" tour of new places at Pike Place Market for people with more adventurous palates.

On competition: "It's too early to tell [how much competition the other coffee-oriented tour presents]. People can go on the original Seattle Coffee Crawl and then have money left over to do something else. It's the best value for their money." -- Vicki Schuman, Seattle Coffee Crawl

"Her tour is great. I've been on her tour. It's a very different experience and is $20, and mine's $69. Hers is strictly focused on the beverage, and for me that's part of it, but it's more about the other things like cocktails, latte art demonstration, shortbread cookies. It's about experiencing the bean in all its forms." -- Angela Shen, Coffee Bites & Sights