Mew Haven Cat Cafe: Opening Day

It’s Opening Day (Part 1)! The plumbing, electric, fire, and building inspections have been completed. We passed the health inspection with flying colors. The baristas are ready to hit the ground running, and we’re swimming in coffee paraphernalia.

So what’s the game plan? We were set to open during Artwalk, the neighborhood’s largest event of the year. Every year, dozens of vendors fill their tents with the crafts they have for sale; the nearby park features interactive events like rock-climbing, t-shirt tie-dying, and balloon-animal making; food trucks line the street for the hungry crowds; and the whole neighborhood prepares for the increased traffic and excitement.

Including us! In addition to opening our café, we also organized a small fair in the space for our future cat lounge. We assembled artisans who specialized in cat-themed illustration, photography and other merchandise, and dubbed it “Cat Arts & Kitty Crafts”.

It was a huge accomplishment for us to be able to both open the café side and to host an event like this on the same day, and we were fortunate to enough receive some press from the local paper, who had a photographer exploring the neighborhood festivities.

While we had a good day, financially it wasn’t the blazing success we might have dreamed of. Part of the reason for this was the weather. It rained on and off throughout the morning, and this impeded foot traffic. (Later on in the month, we would discover that this continued a yearly trend for Artwalk.) Another reason may have been lack of promotion. While we have a strong following on social media, a large portion of the neighborhood gets to know of new businesses either through word-of-mouth or by simply walking around. And finally, the lack of cats! Our competitive advantage versus any other potentially similar café was the fact that we will have cats! Since there’s still time left before we can bring the cats back in, the excitement of our coffee opening often took a back seat to the necessity of informing anyone who came in about the next steps we were taking to re-open the cat lounge, and their leaving without purchasing anything.

So, for next month, our goals are clear: increase our visibility through networking with local businesses, continue informing our followers about the steps we’re taking to bring back our feline residents, and gather more feedback from customers about potential future events and ideas.