SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – Pawsitivitea CNY owner Alisha Reynolds is choosing between coconut milk and a full tank of gas to keep her Syracuse business afloat.
“It’s a lot,” Reynolds said. “90% of the time I’m a one-person business, doing two businesses at once” — running the cat cafe and managing its foster and adoption program.
Pawsitivitea CNY, a cat cafe in Syracuse, celebrated its sixth anniversary Saturday, Sept.19. Despite years of success, Pawsitivitea is struggling to stay open amid rising material costs, its owner said.
Pawsitivitea opened during the COVID-19 pandemic as a space for people to interact with cats and each other in a safe setting
“It’s a nice quiet place for people to come in and shut the world off for a little bit,” Reynolds said. “I think that helped a lot during that time.”
Now, six years later, Pawsitivitea can’t afford to buy ingredients in bulk for its menu of coffees, teas, and baked goods. Rising grocery prices at the stores where Pawsitivitea sources its ingredients have led it to remove items like coconut milk from the menu.
To save money on digital marketing, Reynolds does all her advertising in person at pop-up events and festivals. Driving across Syracuse, she introduces residents to current Pawsitivitea, the cats available for adoption, and the business itself to encourage more traffic at its CNY Regional Market storefront.
Although speaking face to face with potential customers is Reynolds’ preferred form of marketing, keeping her gas tank full is not easy.
“Traveling around for it kinda sucks,” she said. “I haven’t been able to put a full tank of gas in my car.”
Pawsitivitea is staffed by part-time employees and volunteers. Reynolds recently raised Pawsitivitea’s prices to help pay her employees and the additional costs of running the business. Staying affordable is important, but the costs of running a business are making that increasingly difficult, Reynolds said.
Emma Vallelunga volunteered at Pawsitivitea CNY for the first time last week during its six-year celebration party. Vallelunga adopted her cat, Juniper, from Pawsitivitea during its first year of operations, while she was a graduate student at Syracuse University.
“I have a lot of good memories from this place,” she said. “I wanted to come back to the place where I adopted my own cat and just do some good.”
Pawsitivitea CNY is a foster location in Syracuse, partnering with Oswego SPCA and Wayward Paws to support their efforts to find homes for cats in their care. In the cat room, Pawsitivitea displays binders containing former residents who found their forever homes after fostering at the cafe.
The cafe has three permanent residents – Freddie Purrcury, Eddie Van Tailen and David Meowie – who were born in Reynolds’ bathtub. The cafe is also home to nine fosters looking for adoption. Although adoption is not required to visit the cafe, Reynolds’ ultimate goal is to find each cat a loving home.
Even in the face of difficulties, Pawsitivitea’s 12 residents live lavishly. With cat trees, an agility wheel, and enough treats to feed an army of kittens, the residents of Pawsitivitea want for nothing, except even perhaps more treats.
Pawsitivitea is a part of a network of cat cafes throughout the United States. Brenda Rayburn and her grandson, Jakk Roeshergilles, traveled two and a half hours from their hometown of Massena, New York, to visit the cafe for Jakk’s 11th birthday.
“This is something he has always wanted to do,” Rayburn said. “It’s a really interesting business model to do: cat and cafe.”
Visitors from Philadelphia also stopped in to Pawsitivitea during the six-year celebration party. Reynolds explained the cat cafe to the tourists, who left searching for the nearest cat cafe to them in Philadelphia.
As for the future of Pawsitivitea and its residents, Reynolds fully intends to keep it open. The cafe is more than just a foster space for cats — it’s Reynolds’ whole life, she said.
“At the end of the day, you’re more so supporting the cats than you are me,” Reynolds said.