Beans Cat Cafe Expands to New Paltz

“As soon as we came up with Beans Cat Cafe, we decided the name was so perfect that we had to make this thing happen,” says Jess Cruz, who founded the establishment with her partner, Justin Strika. The cafe allows customers to enjoy beverages while interacting with a room full of foster cats and kittens. “I quit my job in restaurant management one week before the COVID lockdown to make this a reality. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we took the $10,000 saved up for the wedding we had planned at the time, took out a small business loan, and used our own savings.” The couple spent months at their first location in Beacon, renovating it themselves. They opened in November of 2020, and opened a second location in New Paltz in July of 2023.

Both born and raised in the Hudson Valley, the couple met when working together at a Speedway gas station in 2016. While Strika had grown up with cats, Cruz’s feline-free childhood home had inspired a longing for her own cat. “Growing up, my mom didn’t like cats, and I would always beg her to get a dog or a cat,” she says. “When I got my first apartment, and noticed my neighbor had a cat, I realized I could get a cat. Right away I got Bean, my first cat. It only took six months after that to get another.”

Cruz jumped at the idea when Strika proposed they open a cat cafe, an increasingly popular business trend that mixes a cafe with cat therapy. The cafe fosters shelter cats, offering food, drink, and opportunity for visitors to spend time with the cats, all while promoting adoption. “We wanted to become somewhere where people who grew up like myself with parents who didn’t want cats, or people whose landlords wouldn’t allow cats, could come in and experience even a short-term emotional bond with a cat,” she explains.

When Cruz quit her job to take action on the cat cafe in 2020, the couple originally had their eyes set on a location in New Paltz. “It’s a very eclectic, young, vibrant community,” says Strika. “It has that reputation for being interesting—weird in a good way.” Their tight budget, the business competition, and their requirement to bring cats into their space made it difficult to find a location in New Paltz that met all their needs.

It was then that the couple turned towards Beacon, looking for any space to make their vision a reality. “I was given a piece of advice that really stuck with me,” says Cruz. “You don’t need everything right away. Get what you need to start, then you can build it up later. When we opened in Beacon, we didn’t have all the trash cans or furniture that we needed. Just anything to get the doors open.”

Within the first year, the cafe had made 214 adoptions from the Hudson Valley Animal Rescue and Sanctuary, which provides all cats fostered at the Cat Cafe. During this time, the couple harbored a plan to expand their business. “I was still determined to have a second location in New Paltz,” says Cruz. “On a whiteboard in the back of the location in Beacon, I wrote ‘100 months.’ When I did the math for those 100 months, it came out to be January 18, 2023. That was when we were going to get serious about looking at leases. When we finally went to look at our spot in New Paltz, it was January 20th.”

With a little more experience and money under their belt, they were able to find a spot on Church Street in New Paltz. The second location opened on July 14, complete with a cafe room and a separate cat room. Walking down the street in New Paltz, passersby peer into the window at the kittens sleeping on the windowsills. The cat room is a calm and playful environment, regulated by the list of visitor rules protecting the animals from harmful or disrespectful treatment. The cat room, home to around 20 foster cats at a time, is accessible to visitors for half-hour ($7) or one-hour ($12.50) sessions. Visitors who fall in love with a cat can adopt their new pet by filling out an application with the HVAS, whose vetting process investigates details such as leases and other household pets.

Most visitors grab a coffee or a freshly squeezed lemonade to enjoy along with their cat time. With coffee from Albany-based Chris’ Coffee, the cafe offers classic espresso drinks from lattes ($4.25-$5.00) to macchiatos ($4.50-$5.50), as well as an assortment of seasonal specials. At the Beacon location, the cafe partners with Peaceful Provisions to sell pastries, while at the New Paltz location sweet treats come from the Highland-based Mad Batters Pastries. “We wanted to make sure that we were doing quality, but also that we were putting some fun into it,” says Cruz. “We think of ourselves as very bubblegum.” This is evident in the specials, the most recent feature being the Barbie lemonade, a fizzy pomegranate lemonade with pink glitter sprinkles. Cruz, Strika, and the other employees share the responsibility for making drinks as well as taking care of the cats.

Between the two locations, Beans Cat Cafe is approaching nearly 500 adoptions, proving the couple’s vision of opening space to share their love of cats through drinks and quality cat time to be a success. You can walk in or book your cat time online. “This space welcomes anyone for whom being with animals makes them feel better,” says Strika.

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