Interview! Haydn Hilton, Owner of Java Cats Cafe in Atlanta, GA

“If I would have known how much work a cat cafe was, I might have turned around, but the cats are where the magic is. They market the coffee shop all by themselves when people walk by!”

Meet twenty-six-year-old Haydn Hilton, owner of Java Cats Café. Located in the heart of Atlanta, this is Georgia’s first cat café and definitely wasn’t where Haydn expected to find herself! Initially going to school to be part of the film industry, Haydn dropped everything to start this business and now enjoys giving advice and mentoring other female entrepreneurs looking to start businesses in a male-dominated society. She enjoys being a positive influencer on social media and her business also supports local charities, including a local homelessness charity.

Because her café can’t cook their own food directly on the premises, Haydn farms out the work to that charity, where the people work in a kitchen creating the food that the café receives on a daily basis. What a great way of giving back to the local community!

Haydn was always involved in animal rescue growing up. When she was younger, she spent about a year doing TNR with her family at a neighbor’s abandoned barn that had a large population of barn cats left behind. The cats ended up hanging out at her family’s house after that and the twenty cats that stayed were like a dream come true to Haydn. Through this experience, she developed a true passion for working with feral cats—but she didn’t expect to make a career out of it!

But when Haydn was a senior at Georgia State, she learned about a cat café in a film class and was immediately drawn to the idea. She soon quit school, left her job, learned how to be a barista and started the long journey to opening up Atlanta’s first cat café!

Java Cats Café is heavily regulated and cats are partitioned in a completely different area from the café itself. People come into the coffee shop portion, where they can purchase what they want to eat or drink, or just pay a fee to go straight into the cat area. People can then sit in a room with up to twenty cats, all up for adoption. Who wouldn’t love that?! The fee the café charges is used to help support the local shelters that supply the café’s cats.

Haydn also discusses the entrepreneurial struggle and how hard it was to be taken seriously as a woman entrepreneur. She has now started a woman’s entrepreneurial group at Java Cats to make sure that other women can find the support they need to start their own businesses. Haydn wants women to have a safe space to share their struggles and find a much-needed mentor. She also does special activities and events in the café, including a women’s clothing swap, game nights, paint classes, movie nights and many other things that bring the community and women together to support the cause.

Haydn also discusses the pros and cons of using Kickstarter to help raise her initial equity. Because she wanted to get things open, she needed to get money on the table ASAP. She also wanted the publicity to make sure she was being taken seriously. The crowdfunding worked—but Haydn wants people to know that between taxes, fees and other things that get taken out, you need to make sure it’s actually worth going through the work of setting up a crowdfunding campaign.

She completely believes in the idea of cat cafés, though. Java Cats Café has already doubled the cat adoption rate at  PAWS Atlanta.

In a café setting, eople can see the cats right away and have a more natural interaction with them. It’s more of a playground for cats, rather than the potentially sad environment of many shelters. One thing’s for sure: cat cafés are a game changer for cat adoption!

Learn more about Java Cats Café at their website, javacatscafe.com, or on Instagram and Facebook.

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