Good evening everyone! As usual, we’re back with some weekly updates about our progress towards opening affoGATO Cat Cafe!
First, and most importantly, we selected our architects and they’ve been hard at work to help us open as quickly as possible! We’ve been working with the extremely talented Michael Augoustidis and Bryan Daily at JMT. They’ve been doing lots of research, taking measurements, and putting together our architectural drawings and city submission, which should be going in any day now. We’re still working based on the timeline of opening in July, but there is definitely a strong potential for delays while we wait for city approval. We will keep you updated as we hear feedback.
Michael and Bryan also made us these lovely tentative renders of the space! (Budget and city approval pending, plus still picking paint)
Aren’t they meowvalous?! We especially love the cat climbing wall/catwalk, and the gorgeous cafe space! We’ve actually started purchasing furniture this week as well. It’s not identical to this drawing, but we picked some cozy pieces perfect for snuggling with the cats!
We also announced our coffee supplier this week: Rising Star! They are an amazing local company, and will not only be supplying the coffee and espresso we’ll be serving in our cafe, but are also helping us with a custom retail coffee for you to brew at home. A portion of the profit from each sale of that coffee will go to animal-related causes! Learn more here.
We’ve been having meetings to find the purrfect local suppliers for our other cafe needs as well, including milk for our cafe drinks, light prepackaged lunch food, bakery items, tea, and soda. We’re pretty close to finalizing those, so we’re excited to share the news soon!
On a similar note, we’ve also reached the point that we can start deciding on the merchandise we will stock from local artists and businesses! In general, the requirements will be that it must be cat-themed, you must be local, and you must be able to provide a sample of your work when requested. The full application will go up next Monday (6/18), and will close on Saturday, June 30th at 11:59pm. We can’t wait to see the work of Cleveland’s talented local artists!
Finally, don’t forget that there are LESS THAN 3 DAYS left to earn purrks on our GoFundMe fundraiser! With your generosity through GoFundMe and private donations, we have raised a total of $12,657 (a little over half of our goal), which is already being put to good use in the tasks we listed above!
We’ve gotten a ton of interest from people excited to visit affoGATO, so if you haven’t contributed yet, make sure that you can visit before we open to the public, get exclusive gear, or even host a party or special event by donating before it’s too late!
Thanks again for everyone’s overwhelming support and enthusiasm! We can’t wait to keep sharing these exciting updates, and to open our doors for you soon!