How To Open a Cat Café in 11 Steps + Free Template

For cat lovers, stumbling upon a friendly calico, spunky orange tabby, or chatty Siamese at a bodega or outdoor café can make your day and make you think, How can I spread this joy to others? Like an answer to your ailurophile prayers (dare we say purr-ayers?), comes a unique business idea: cat cafés.

If you’ve always dreamed of opening your very own cat café (or have just realized at this very moment that it’s your life’s purpose), here’s what you’ll need to know about starting your business.

What is a cat café?

A cat café is a café or lounge that allows patrons to visit with resident cats while enjoying café fare. The concept debuted into the public consciousness in 1998 in Taiwan, when a television station reported on Cat Flower Garden in Taipei. To this day, the café features a population of resident cats who came in as strays or were surrendered by friends.

In the years since that first café opened, cat cafés have popped up around the world, and the concept has evolved to include partnerships with local animal shelters to facilitate adoptions or help find foster homes for cats in need. They can be an excellent way for potential pet parents to get to know a specific animal in a fun, relaxed setting.

The goal of a cat café is simply to provide a novel experience with free-roaming cats as the star attraction. In the US, cat cafés are required to separate animal rooms from café sections where food is prepared, purchased, and consumed. In most locations, the cat room can still be viewed from the café through a window, allowing those customers without a cat room reservation to still enjoy the overall atmosphere.

11 steps to open a cat café

1. Conduct market research
2. Outline your business plan
3. Incorporate and register your business
4. Secure funding
5. Find a location
6. Obtain licenses and permits
7. Design and furnish your space
8. Develop your menu
9. Hire your staff
10. Launch a marketing plan
11. Open your doors

Because animals are involved, opening a cat café business comes with a few more considerations than a traditional coffee shop, but many of the steps overlap with those for opening any brick-and-mortar café. Here’s how to start a cat café:

1. Conduct market research

To cat lovers, the idea of a local cat café is bliss, but it’s critical to make sure you’re in good company before you put in the work of opening one. In the process of conducting market research, investigate the following:

• Is my local audience already aware of the cat café concept?

• Are there indicators of demand for a cat café?

• Is there room in my local market for another café?

• How much demand exists for adoptable cats?

• What trends exist in the cat café world beyond my locale? Which trends might be a fit for my local audience?

For example, cat cafés are especially popular in Tokyo, so doing online research in that market could tip you off to a trend to bring to your town.

As you gather your research, you can use a SWOT analysis to organize the findings and factors that might impact your business strategy.

2. Outline your business plan

Once you’ve done your research and feel confident that there’s a market for your vision, it’s time to craft your cat café business plan.

An important part is your business model, which will determine the feel of the physical space and your revenue streams. Some cat cafés completely incorporate the café and cat environment. This model often requires reservations, ensuring a calm and orderly environment for both the cats and customers. Others keep the café and cat space separate, allowing café walk-ins like a traditional café, with a fee to enter the cat area. Some sessions are timed, some aren’t.

Next, determine how you’ll add cats to your café and decide if the cats will be permanent residents or if you’ll aim to re-home them. You might also choose a blend of the two approaches, with some cats living as permanent café residents and others available for adoption if the right fit comes along.

Three common approaches to securing cats are purchasing them, adopting them from a shelter, or providing a foster environment to help facilitate cat adoptions. If you’d like to adopt permanent cat residents, know that many shelters may have restrictions or regulations around how many cats you can adopt, or require approval of your space. Make sure all animals are immunized and comfortable socializing with people and other cats.

If you want to make cat adoptions part of your operation, look into partnering with a local animal shelter. Determine how the adoption application process would fit into your operation. Typically, cat cafés require customers interested in adopting to go through an application and extensive interview process with members of the cat café staff. And once resident cats find their forever homes, you’ll need to bring in new adoptable cats.

3. Incorporate and register your business

How you structure your service business (e.g., a sole proprietorship or limited liability company (LLC)) has legal, tax, and financial implications. An LLC is a business structure that can be owned by one person or multiple partners (called members). It’s a popular choice because it legally separates the business owners’ business assets and liabilities from their personal affairs. Consult with a legal adviser if you’re unsure of the best structure for your business.

Once you’ve decided on an entity type, it’s time for incorporation paperwork and registration with your state. Then you can obtain an employee identification number (EIN) from the IRS.

4. Secure funding

There are many ways to finance a small business, from small business grants and loans to angel investors and crowdfunding. Regardless of which path you choose, there will be an application and vetting process, so practice your elevator pitch until it’s second nature. Prepare a folder of relevant files early on in your planning with your executive summary, business plan, financial statements and projections, and product summaries.

5. Find a location

The right location is key for any café, but animals need ample space and calm surroundings. Once you’ve established your budget, consider potential listings through the lens of foot traffic, population, and animal welfare. Ask yourself:

• Are there many offices or stores nearby?

• Is the location considered a tourist hotspot or more of a residential hidden gem?

• Is it easy to find or access via public transit?

• If it’s in a busy neighborhood, how loud is it inside? How potentially disruptive might it be for the animals?

The ideal space will feature multiple rooms: a cat-only room (where you’ll house cat litter boxes, for example), a café side for selling food and beverages, and, depending on the requirements of your city and state, a separate room for interacting with the cats. If you find the perfect location without the perfect layout, you could work with builders to add the rooms that suit your needs.

6. Obtain licenses and permits

Licenses and permit requirements will vary slightly by state—visit your local business bureau website for a complete list. Depending on the structure of your cat café (whether you’ll be preparing food in-house or only offering packaged snacks, for example), that list is likely to include:

• Business license (and a “doing business as” (DBA) license if your business name is different from your café name)

• Retail food service license

• Sign permit

• Food handlers permit

• Animal welfare permit

The well-being of your cats and customers is of the utmost importance; obtaining and maintaining the necessary certifications and permits will help you maintain a food-safe environment that’s also comfortable for felines.

7. Design and furnish your space

Cat cafés are often cat-themed, but it’s not a requirement. Your café interior could be designed like a Victorian tea room, an airy indoor treehouse, or a modern Scandinavian-inspired café. Regardless of your style, aim for a welcoming environment that appeals to both customers and cats.

Furnish your cat section with climbing structures and cat trees, scratching posts, hiding spaces, napping spots, and cat toys to help humans break the ice.

Litter boxes typically live in a cat-only zone between the main café and cat play spaces, easily accessible to the animals by a cat door. This minimizes odors and allows for regular deep cleaning and sanitizing, which prevents odors in the first place. Here’s how Washington’s Neko Cat café does it:

You’ll also want to think through where and how to accept payments. Explore point-of-sale (POS) software tools, like Shopify POS, that allow you to accept multiple payment types when you sell beverages, snacks, and cat-related merchandise. If you also plan on taking reservations, explore appointment booking apps that integrate with your website.

8. Develop your menu

Your café menu is the primary opportunity to showcase your cat café concept or your passion for coffee, panini, or acai bowls. If the coffee and food are excellent, you’re more likely to draw in new customers and make your current customers want to stick around.

Whether your plan is cat-shaped cookies and whiskered latte art, or easy grab-and-go packaged snacks that limit food preparation, your menu should deliver a delightful customer experience that gets people excited to be in your space.

9. Hire your staff

When hiring for your cat café, start with a basic staffing structure: You’ll need a barista to prepare beverages, a cashier, and true cat lovers to handle the cleaning, sanitizing, and cat care for the cat space. You can rotate employees through these roles, but adjust your headcount based on the number of cats who need looking after and the flow of customers who require café service.

Applicants with experience working or volunteering in animal shelters are a bonus because they can help manage behavioral issues and animal personalities.

10. Launch a marketing plan

Both before and after you’ve opened, a strong marketing strategy will be key to your cat café’s success.

Cats, the original stars of the internet, make for excellent social media content, so be sure to capture all the antics, lounging, mischief, and general atmosphere you can. Post profiles of specific cats, provide behind-the-scenes insights into everything that goes into operating a cat café, and embrace the many cat-related puns at your disposal. Your social channels can also be a great way to educate your customers on the dos and don’ts of your space and set expectations for their visit.

To build local brand awareness, consider offering branded merchandise. Custom pins, stickers, apparel, or cat accessories are all popular merch options that double as word-of-mouth marketing.

11. Open your doors

When you’re ready, host a grand opening and invite any fellow small business owners in the neighborhood. To avoid overwhelming the cats, consider an opening day instead of a single opening party where people can drop in throughout business hours. For your first day of business, you could waive cat space fees or provide complimentary merch for the first customers.

To grow your customer base, consider adding events to the mix. Evening art classes, happy hours for the cat-curious, and renter nights for people who can’t have pets at home are ways to get new people in the door. Many cat cafés host happy hours, yoga classes, or casual concerts to attract customers, like the “cello and chill” nights at San Francisco’s KitTea Cat Lounge & Café, which sends out a promotional “mewsletter” with events, updates, and more.