To our dear guests and supporters, this is an update from myself and the ownership team at Catoro. Over the past 6 months, we’ve worked through some real challenges and overcome many obstacles that we never foresaw. It has been difficult for us but it has also taught us a lot about the business and where to make careful improvements to better the experience and to also ensure the longevity of our store.
Earlier this month, we wrote to you talking about re-assessing the feasibility of keeping the cat forest open in these uncertain times. It is no surprise, but operating at half capacity is not what our business was designed to do. The overhead costs of operating a cat cafe are just simply too high for that. Thankfully we have our online business which many of you frequent and have regularly supported us on by purchasing your cat food and related supplies. This has massively helped us to offset the costs incurred with running the store.
Nevertheless, the costs are still too high to maintain on the same path we are on. So we came to a crossroads where we now had to decide our future. The easier business decision for us is to shut down the cat forest and only run our pet supply business and cafe. However we truly see the impact that the cat forest has made over the 13 months that we’ve been open. We’ve saved over 300 cats from life threatening conditions, and we’ve served over 30,000 guests, many of whom come to us regularly for animal therapy and to relieve stress. Our cat forest is just too important to Catoro to shut down.
For this reason, we have decided to instead make some significant changes to our online business related to the delivery services and also the loyalty programs we offer. Since we started, we’ve tried to make our pet supply offerings as beneficial to our customers as possible. We’ve wanted to offer quality, hand picked food and supplies that you and your cat can enjoy. All at reasonable prices and delivered with care by our team. This has been the Catoro experience that we’ve come to be known for. However this model has been running with narrow margins for a long time now. In order to sustain our business and ensure we can remain open in all aspects of our business, here’s a few items that have now changed, effective immediately:
We hope that with these changes our store can continue to operate for many years to come. We also thank you all for your continued understanding and support that you’ve always shown us. It is our wish that with these changes, we can now focus on our growth and continue to offer you a better in-store and online experience in the upcoming months.
Thank you for believing in what we do and for supporting us to save more cats!
Nathan Chan
Founder - Catoro Cafe
