Zoe Hughes-Nelson and Hadyn O’Hara With Java Cats Cafe

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is a special edition. This is part of the GSU Ene series, the Georgia State University’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute’s series, where we spotlight some of the great work that’s being done over there. And in this case, these are some of the folks that have gone through the Main Street Entrepreneurship Seed Fund or they’re involved with In this year’s cohort. We have Hadyn O’Hara and Zoe Hughes Nelson with Java Cat’s Cafe. Welcome.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:00:58] Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:59] Wow, That was a workout. That was a lot there. But I’m glad we got that part done. And now we can focus on the most important things. What’s happening at Java Cat’s Cafe. How are you serving folks over there?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:01:11] Yeah. So we currently run a coffee counter. We’re trying to get back to being a Georgia’s very first cat cafe. We originally opened in 2017 and we had a long five year run to locations and the pandemic unfortunately ended into that chapter. So we are working with the Georgia Georgia State Entrepreneurship Fund to get back and going and hopefully secure a building and continue our dream of being adoptable. Cat Cafe.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:36] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did this whole thing get started?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:01:41] So I was a Georgia state student back in 2016. I kind of found the concept through a film class I was in and just derailed all my focus. I just never heard of a cat cafe before. And I’m a huge animal lover and advocate and I love cats. And just the concept of having a coffee shop where you can go and sit with cats. It just seemed amazing to me. And from there I decided I was going to take a leap of faith and open my very first business. So at 24, 25 years old, I opened Georgia’s very first Cat Cafe and found immediate success. It was very well loved in the community and well received, and we increased adoption rates for our partner shelters by 100%. We generated a ton of adoption revenue for them to support rescue efforts. And it was just it was just a dream. So it just turned out to be an ultimate dream for me. And that’s kind of how it started. The rest is history.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:36] Well, did you have any background of running a coffee shop in, you know, in that part of the business, or was it always about heart of helping cats?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:02:45] Yeah, I’ve been in the service industry, hospitality industry for as long as I’ve been able to work. And no, I had no I have no business. Being in business is what I like to say. I am a true entrepreneur. I had no experience doing this and I’ve learned everything the hard way. But it was it’s definitely been a learning experience for me and I’ve grown a lot. But yeah, so I had no experience in this. I just knew I loved. I love being in the community, I love serving people and combining my passion for that. Learning the coffee skills and combining that with cats was just an ultimate dream dream business scenario for me.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:18] For someone who didn’t know or says they didn’t know anything about the business, what compelled you to open a second location during that time? Because it’s hard enough to run one location. What what was the thinking behind, you know what, let’s do this again in a different place and see what happens.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:03:36] Yeah, you know, there was a lot of growing pains and I definitely think in hindsight I jumped the gun a little bit by opening as quickly as we did. I think we opened the second location in 9 or 10 months in after the first, and I think it was just the buzz around this new business. I mean, it was internationally recognized and it was one of the first cat cafes in the country. And I think just a lot of the attention and the buzz and just people wanted more locations to pop up everywhere. So the demand for another location was in downtown Marietta and close to the square. And it just kind of happened organically. There was a perfect building, perfect timing, perfect everything just lined up and it was much easier to open the second location. It took nine months from signing the lease to opening for Grant Park in Marietta only took three. So I learned a lot in that time, and opening a second location was a lot easier. It was very overwhelming being a young business owner still learning, but I think just trying to ride that wave of we’re doing something really good, cats are getting adopted and just incredible rates. Like we’re changing the lives of so many animals and people are loving it. So I think just trying to keep that momentum up and just, you know, I was like, you know what? I’m going to dream a little bit bigger and see what we can do with this.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:53] Now, when you’re like in business, at least in our business, we call it the metrics that matter. Like what are the the numbers that you should be paying attention to? It sounds like cats getting adopted was the super important metric for you in the growth of this? Did that tie it all to the numbers that it requires to pay rent, pay employees and pay for stuff?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:05:16] Yeah. So the way the business model worked is there’s a half coffee shop, half cat adoption lounge and the lounge. We obviously have to make money. So the lounge, we charge admission. So you would go into the room with the cats for an hour and included a drip coffee or a tea so you can come into the coffee shop just to support us with coffee sales. But we are money making aspect of it was the admission. So every single person, every single hour was paying to be there. When I first let when the reservations went live for Grant Park, we were booked every single hour, every single day. We were open max capacity for the first three months. So it was just amazing to see the support coming through. And people just love this idea. And it was it was just very successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:02] So it was kind of a membership.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:06:05] Um, it was more like people can go. We had a website and people would go online and make reservations. So not really a membership, but just kind of a thing that you reserve like the day before or even the day of when you wanted to come in.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:20] So you would just reserve it like at Tuesday at ten. And then and then I would just coincide that where were people like doing work and using it as a traditional coffee shop or were they just coming there just to chill out and just hang out with cats.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:06:35] If they made a reservation, typically? Well, if you make a reservation, it’s for the cat lounge. So that’s typically where you would go and hang out with the cats for an hour. Um, but, you know, sometimes before or after, people would come early and hang out later and do like work on their laptop in the coffee shop. And the cool part about it being half coffee shop, half cat lounges, even people who didn’t like cats particularly, but still wanted to support the idea, You know what we were doing of animal rescue, They would just come and, you know, get coffee and do stuff on their laptop. And of course you don’t need a reservation to use it as a regular cafe.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:10] And then do. Are there any cats in that area or. That’s like a cat free zone?

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:07:15] That’s a cat free zone just because of like health code regulations and stuff like that. And also we, we strive to be, um. We strive to be accessible to everyone. So even people who are allergic to cats, we want them to be able to come in and hang out with us.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:33] Now, when a person’s hanging out was there, like were you learning like, Oh, if a hundred people come in here, five cats are going to get adopted? Was it like kind of predictable at some point there?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:07:45] There was never pressure for anyone to adopt and we did. We never wanted it to be about the numbers. I mean, we of course we wanted cats get adopted, but for us it was more of like bringing cats out of the shelter that had been there for years, didn’t get much exposure, didn’t get much, you know, socialization with people. So it was more we did expedite adoptions just because the organic environment created for these cats, they would just thrive there. But I mean, it was it was there was never like a it’s never numbers based. I mean, some days we would have ten adoptions. Some weeks we would have, you know, 4 or 5. But the adoptions were they were always consistent. We would always having adoptions, but I think for us it was getting cats that just didn’t have that chance of that exposure and bringing them to a new environment where they were being seen by people every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:33] And there’s way more cats than anybody could handle. Right.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:08:38] Exactly. So there are way too many.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:42] And so these these rescue organizations are happy to put some of them in your place because, you know, it’s helping them achieve their mission of saving these cats, right?

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:08:52] Yeah, exactly. If you think about it like we would like Hayden said, we would try to take in cats that were really scared and nervous and like, you know, needed some extra time socializing and getting adopted by us having them like, let’s say, a cat that’s super scared. It could be in the shelter for like a year. But if we take that cat, that frees up space for them. They could take on, you know, 5 or 10 friendly cats in one year and get them adopted. So it was really good. You know, just the socialization aspect is I think that’s really what made it flourish and made the adoption rates go up so high.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:30] So now so you closed both locations. Did you close both of them or just one of them?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:09:36] Correct. Both locations did close. We closed Grant Park last year in Marietta, followed about 2 or 3 months later, unfortunately. And it was all Covid pandemic related.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:46] Right. So, I mean, a lot of small companies struggle during that period of time when people couldn’t go to places and things like that. So now at that point, are you just wrecked? Like, how were you emotionally handling this setback?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:09:59] I was completely devastated. I mean, this is something I took a chance at such a young age, and I really wanted to build this to be my what I thought my lifelong career, what I hoped. And I so much of my identity was in this business. And I invested my heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears to get it open. It was very difficult to open a business of this kind. And yeah, I was devastated. I was completely wrecked. It took me about a year to really recover and just kind of, you know, see myself more than just my business and what I did. And but that took a lot of, like, self work. And I’m glad I went through that. I’m, you know, in hindsight, I’m not I’m sad the business is closed, but I’ve grown so much from that devastation and just knowing my worth and I’m more than a business and I can I did it before and I know, you know, I can certainly do it again and bigger and better. And that’s what me and Zoe are definitely setting out to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:54] So what was kind of the spark that reignited this? And, you know, you could have done anything at this point. Now you have a blank sheet of paper in front of you and you said, Hey, let’s let’s take another run at this Java Cats.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:11:06] I think you know one thing, Zoe. Zoe put it perfectly. I mean, when we. So just a little backtrack with Zoe. When I when I laid off everyone, when I realized the pandemic was not going to be just a few month thing, it was going to be a long haul. Um, Zoe came back to work, and we both pretty much didn’t pay ourselves for two years just to keep the business open. And Zoe was the only employee that that came back and did that. And for two years we really worked hard. We knew the end was coming, we knew it, it was inevitable, but we wanted to work to see cats get adopted in the time that we had left on our lease. So we did. And then when we closed, we spent a few months just kind of like, what do we do now? And it’s just not the same. And she, she put it perfectly. She said, It’s like purgatory. We both felt like we were just in purgatory. Like, what’s next? What’s what’s what do we need to do now? Yeah. And was like.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:11:59] Sorry, sorry to interrupt you. Um, it was like stuck in between Java Cats was my first job. I was only 15 when I started there and now I’m in my 20s and, you know, it just it just feels so weird to not have it in my life.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:17] Right. What you were doing something that not only was making money and employing people, but it was also making a difference. And when you have that bigger y, it’s a lot easier to get up in the morning to do your job, you know, You know you’re making an impact.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:12:31] And then also when you have such a great boss and super great coworkers around, you know, then it then it makes the work environment very, very easy.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:12:43] It was rare. It was a rare, magical place.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:47] Right. And so you said, okay, let’s take another swing at this. So you went from did you change anything from the original business model? Did anything really change? Or it was just like, let’s just reboot this thing and let’s see what we can do now without a pandemic.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:13:02] So unfortunately, with the pandemic, we didn’t receive any funding. We applied both rounds. We did not. Money kept running out. So we it was just setback after setback. And I mean, I lost everything. I lost everything with the business financially. And I’m still recovering financially from those two years. So coming from a place of not having any money and wanting to get this back up and going, it was was difficult. But someone who adopted a cat from us, he reached out and offered us a space in a market he had just opened in Old Fourth Ward, so it was going to be a coffee operation, but he was like, Keep the name alive, make some money, and, you know, just just stay active in this. Like, keep keep working towards it. So we knew it was a setback, but it was a baby step forward at the same time. And we’ve we’ve been running that since late February. And that’s currently what we’re operating. It’s just a coffee counter to get back to being a cat cafe.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:56] So you’re so you’re keeping the brand because that’s a great name and it’s a great brand. And now you’re just trying to raise funds to expand into the vision that you’d like it to be. Where it’s half coffee shop, Half Cat Cafe.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:14:11] Exactly. Yeah.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:14:12] Um, yeah, we’ve been speaking to people around Atlanta and stuff like that of, of just like. Potentially making it making a comeback, and I definitely foresee it happening eventually. Um, for sure. Just a matter of time. And, you know, permitting stars have to align.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:14:33] We’re waiting for the stars to align. But we are we’re very eager and we have the passion and determination to make it happen. We’re just waiting for the right time.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:41] And then what do you need more of at this point? Are you so you’re going through the main street process. So they’re working with you, mentoring you, doing things like that, right? Yes. So are they have they kind of poked at your business model or do they feel pretty good about it? It’s just a matter of, you know, kind of raising the funds.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:15:03] Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we’ve I’ve definitely learned a lot from attending the Main Street Entrepreneurship Seed Fund. Lots of things that I really, you know, just kind of haven’t thought about before and like how to like customer discovery workshops and stuff and just kind of how to expand our brand. Um, but really what we need is like to talk to investors and stuff to make, to make it a reality again, to like be able to afford the build out and stuff like that. Because I know the build out for our original location was, was very expensive. So, you know, just kind of getting that ball rolling is the main thing. But we have learned so much from the seed fund and they have been able to kind of provide some little like constructive criticisms as well as some praise for just, you know, everything we’re doing. And it’s been very helpful.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:55] Well, one of the things at the beginning of any startup is to kind of prove the model. It seems like you’ve already kind of checked that box and you’ve proven that this model can be successful. So it’s just a matter of finding and attracting the investors or the money that you need to kind of roll it out is the ultimate vision to kind of franchise this, to have Java Cat’s Cafe all over the planet. Is it to be, you know, a big brand here in Atlanta? Like how do you see the story kind of evolving?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:16:25] I think I you know, with opening a second location, the idea was like, well, we can do more. If we have more locations, we can adopt more cats and do more good. But I think, you know, what I’ve learned from that is I just really want to pour my focus into one location and I want to do bigger and better things with it. Maybe having a medical component where we can do like vaccine outreach or just just I’m just trying to think of more ways we can do good in one location. I have no desire to franchise. I have no desire to make Java Cats a known cat cafe all over. I just want to do good, as much good as we possibly can with our focus in one location. And that that’s my desire and it would be in Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:05] And so you’re just looking for kind of a central location that you feel can best serve the community. Yes.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:17:13] So going back to what you said about community, I think one of the reasons why we only want to do one location is because we really like that community aspect of like knowing the people who come in and like forming those relationships. That’s something that makes Java cats what it is.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:32] Absolutely. It’s a great idea and congratulations on the success and great job kind of getting back up there after a setback. A lot of people, you know, when they have a setback, they just call it and then they go a different direction. But to be resilient and tenacious enough to come back at it is kudos to you for that. That is not an easy thing to do.

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:17:54] It’s really not. And I feel really lucky. You know, Zoe and I’s relationship has really grown and we’ve learned to, like, lean into each other. And we went from, you know, I was a boss to she was my employee to like, Hey, we’re in this together and we’re crying together. We’re rejoicing together. We’re celebrating the little victories and we’re pushing through the setbacks. And I think having someone that’s been through the grit with me up to this point, it’s just it just makes this so much more so much more possible to just to really push through what’s what’s been difficult to get through. So I’m really grateful for this relationship and what’s come out of it. And I can’t wait to see how it continues to flourish in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:33] So if somebody wants to learn more, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect with you all?

Hadyn O’Hara: [00:18:38] We are very active on social media, Instagram, Facebook, just Java, Cats, ATL. That’s where you can find us.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:46] Good stuff. Well, again, congratulations on all the success and momentum. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Zoe Hughes Nelson: [00:18:54] Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:55] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on GSU indie radio.