What happened Shares of Dutch Bros (NYSE: BROS) charged sharply higher Tuesday, surging as much as 14.6%. As of 2:45 p.m. EDT, the stock was up 10%. The catalyst that sent the coffee chain stock higher were reports that Dutch Bros may be outperforming its biggest competitors. So what Data intelligence platform Placer.ai analyzed customer visits to Dutch Bros and compared it to traffic at both Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) and privately held Dunkin' Brands. In an interview with Yahoo! Finance, Placer.ai's vice president of marketing, Ethan Chernofsky, said Dutch Bros was growing much more quickly and the company had an opportunity to become a real competitor to its more established rivals. Image source: Getty Images. An underlying report from Placer.ai provides more context. For the month of September, visits to Dutch Bros locations soared 113.8% compared to the report's base period of October 2019. At the same time, visits to Dunkin' rose 11.9%, while visits to Starbucks declined 1.8%. The results were similar to August, as Dutch Bros customer visits surged 106.5%, while visits at Dunkin' were up 17.8% and visits at Starbucks were flat. That isn't an isolated incident, either, according to Chernofsky. Compared to the October 2019 base period, visits to Dutch Bros were up by more than 100% every month between March and September 2021, as the reopening gained ground. During the same period, Dunkin' visits were up 7.4%, on average, while Starbucks visits dipped 4.5%. Now what It's important to note that Dutch Bros' results are from a much smaller base, but it does provide directional insight into the company's growth. Dutch Bros only has roughly 500 stores compared to more than 15,000 for Starbucks, according to Chernofsky, which points to the magnitude of its opportunity. The report also points out that the number of visits per location at Dutch Bros "has increased dramatically in the past two years," which points to a high degree of customer loyalty. Dutch Bros just went public last month, so it's still early days for the coffee chain, but if it can maintain its current trajectory and customer trends, Chernofsky said it could eventually become "a real threat to the established coffee leaders." 10 stocks we like better than Dutch Bros Inc.When our award-winning analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* They just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Dutch Bros Inc. wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. See the 10 stocks *Stock Advisor returns as of September 17, 2021 Danny Vena owns shares of Starbucks. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Starbucks. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short October 2021 $120 calls on Starbucks. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Source