Portland cat café in the works — introducing Purrlandia
Hi Portland! I’ve been working on a cat café concept called Purrlandia, and I figured it was probably time to introduce it here.
One thing I want to clarify up front: the goal is for Purrlandia to be a full café and taproom, not just a cat lounge that happens to sell coffee. The cat lounge would be a separate part of the space, and you would not need to visit the cats to come in for coffee, food, or a drink.
Ideally, I want it to be somewhere people would actually stop in regularly even when they aren't planning a cat lounge visit. The cats would be a major part of the concept, but not the only reason the business exists.
I’m still in the planning and site-search stage, so I’m not announcing an opening date or pretending I have everything figured out yet. A lot of the work right now is figuring out what will actually make sense for the Portland area, especially when it comes to location.
A few things I’d be curious to hear from people here:
Where would you realistically travel for something like this? Would you strongly prefer Portland proper, or would somewhere like Beaverton or Tigard still appeal to you if the location were easier to access and had good parking?
How much does easy parking matter? A lot of the neighborhoods that seem like an obvious fit for this kind of business are primarily street parking, so I’m trying to figure out how much weight to give that in the site search.
And for people who have visited cat cafés before: what would make you actually come back regularly rather than visit once for the novelty? That could be the café itself, events, atmosphere, pricing, the cat experience, or something else entirely.
I’m interested in both the positive and critical answers. I’d rather figure out what Portlanders actually want while I’m still building the concept than after everything is set in stone.
If you want to follow along as Purrlandia develops, I’ll be posting updates on Instagram at purrlandiapdx