Today we’d like to introduce you to Kati Quarto.
Hi Kati, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I didn’t start Happy Cat Café because I love cats (although I do). I started it because there wasn’t one and I wanted there to be.
When the idea first came to me, there wasn’t a single cat café in the United States. I’d read an article about the ones in Japan and couldn’t stop thinking about it. By the time we launched our Kickstarter in 2015, the first American cat cafés were opening in Oakland and New York, and there was still nothing anywhere near Michigan. I had a biology degree, no money, and no business background. What I did have was a willingness to try something nobody around me had tried. I told friends the plan and several of them laughed at me.
We ran a Kickstarter in 2015 and raised over $25,000 from people who wanted it to exist as badly as I did. Happy Cat opened August 17, 2017 as the first cat café in Grand Rapids, in partnership with a local rescue. We opened with a self-serve Keurig machine, because I couldn’t afford an espresso bar.
Then came the part that doesn’t make it into most origin stories. A divorce. A pandemic closure. A few long years where I stopped talking about the business publicly because I was just trying to keep it alive and keep myself upright. Building something looks romantic in hindsight. In the moment it’s payroll, litter boxes, and decisions made at 11pm while stress eating.
Almost nine years in (our birthday is August 17th), more than 1,000 cats have gone home from our lounge. The Keurig is long gone. This spring I was named a Brilliant Entrepreneur by West Michigan Woman, and readers voted us Best Small-Scale Attraction in Revue’s Best of the West for the third time.
What I understand now that I didn’t at 26: I’m a builder. The thing I’m actually good at is taking something formless and giving it a structure, whether that’s a café, a policy manual, or a homeschool hiking club that grew to thirty kids across nine towns. The café taught me that by making me do the other jobs for nine years.
So that’s where I am. Still running the café, raising three kids, painting and writing poetry again, and paying close attention to what wants to get built next.
If there’s one thing I’d want someone to take from my story, it’s this: start with the Keurig. The espresso bar will come.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No, and I’d be doing a disservice to anyone reading this if I pretended otherwise.
I opened undercapitalized and learned the business by getting things wrong in public. I went through a divorce from my business partner. I was shut down by a pandemic. I had someone I trusted with the money embezzle thousands. I’ve rebuilt the team more than once, and I’ve had to let people go who I liked personally, which is a specific kind of awful nobody warns you about.
For me, the hardest part has never been the cats or the coffee. The part of this job that comes least naturally is hiring, training, and managing people. I’ve had to build that skill on purpose instead of by instinct, and I’m still building it.
And there’s always a new challenge. For eight years we were the only cat café in West Michigan. In the summer of 2025, two more opened within an hour of us. That was a permanent change to our market, and 2026 has been a rebuilding year because of it. I’ve had to get honest about the difference between a problem I can fix and a market that simply changed shape.
Grit is part of the honest answer. I’ve kept these doors open through things it would have been reasonable to quit over. But grit alone wouldn’t have gotten us to nine years. This place is also held up by the customer who has come every week for six years, the volunteer who shows up without being asked, the rescue partners who trust us with their cats, and the barista who stays late because a cat is having a rough night. I built this. They’re a big part of why it’s still standing.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Happy Cat Café is Grand Rapids’ first and longest-running cat café, at 447 S Division Ave downtown. Half specialty coffee shop, half adoption lounge. You book a session, come in, order a drink, and spend time with cats who are all available to adopt through our rescue partner. Over 1,000 of them have gone home since 2017.
What sets us apart is that this was never designed as a pet store with espresso attached. It’s a designed experience. Every choice in that building is deliberate, from the airlock at the door to the way the cat furniture is placed so cats can choose you instead of being chased. Our positioning is “let the cats come to you.” Real hospitality means the animals get consent too.
The coffee is not an afterthought either. We run a full espresso program with Ferris, plus mocktails, and a rotating seasonal menu. We host Cats & Canvas painting nights, crochet with cats, tarot nights, yoga, private parties, and birthdays.
Brandwise, the thing I’m proudest of is the voice. We talk about our cats like they’re characters, because they are. Ray, our blind resident host, cannot see you but is entirely certain you’re his person. That’s not marketing copy, that’s just accurate. We’ve never used guilt to move an adoption and we never will. Nobody should take a cat home because a business made them feel bad.
The thing I want readers to know is that the fun and the mission are the same thing here. When you buy a latte, you’re funding a room that keeps cats out of cages and in front of people who might fall in love with them. Sip coffee, save cats. It’s on the wall because it’s literally how the math works.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
We turn nine on August 17. Nine years in a downtown storefront, in an industry with brutal odds, in a category most people thought was a gimmick when we opened.
I’d say two things to anyone reading.
To the person sitting on a wild idea with no money and no permission: the version you can afford right now is a legitimate version. Start there. Waiting until you can do it properly is how most good ideas die.
To everyone else: the businesses that make this city interesting are almost all one stressed person and a small team making it work on thin margins. We notice every single time you choose us.
Pricing:
- Kitty Express, 30 minutes: $7 per person
- Stay & Play, 1 hour: $13 per person (Weekend rates run slightly higher)
- Private party and full lounge buyouts available, pricing on request
- Cats & Canvas and other ticketed events: $30-40
- Coffee and cafe orders are separate, and no reservation is needed to visit the cafe side
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.happycatgr.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happycatgr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happycatgr
- Email: meow@happycatgr.com
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@happycatcafe
