Support Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium

Aim

We're on a mission to outlast Covid and save jobs! Join us by shopping our special Pay it Forward pre-sale crowdfunding campaign.

Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium is the UK's longest running and original British Cat Café. Crowdfunded in 2013, we've enjoyed 7+ happy years with our community and Covid-19 is putting us, like so many others, at risk.

It has been our joy and privilege to bring happiness to Londoners and visitors over the years and we're committed to adapting and outlasting the pandemic with our full contingent of staff along with us. This is why we are joining the Mayor of London's Pay it Forward Scheme for support through these troubled times. Your pre-purchase now will help us weather the storm with our remaining 8 lives!

During the crisis we have dramatically cut our intakes to ensure our guests can safely socially distance. This is viable only for a short time and the longer the pandemic continues, the greater risk Lady Dinah's faces of closure. The safety of our staff and guests is paramount, so we are seeking crowdfunding as a means to help ride out this challenging time, rather than increasing available bookings (and consequently increasing risk to our guests and staff) to drive revenue. Your support will help us to remain the safest cat cafe in town!

Since we were required to lockdown in March, we've continued for as long as possible to keep our team on 100% pay and we have made no cuts to staff.

We don't want our team to join the ranks of job-seekers until they choose to, and it is our earnest hope that a pre-sales crowdfunding campaign and mayoral support will help us maintain cash flow to keep everyone employed until London returns to better trading conditions. We know from reviews and feedback from you that the humans in the cafe really make the experience extra special, so we hope you'll join us in this effort to safeguard their livelihoods.

In addition, we will step up to the Mayor of London's challenge to use these funds in accordance with the Pay it Forward initiative's eligibility criteria. Some of these funds will therefore be used as follows:

Purchasing electronic equipment e.g. IT kit, monitors, etc.
We will be purchasing the equipment required to set up a Cat Cafe Live Stream, which will run regularly to provide a cats-eye view of life at the Cat Emporium during lockdown #2.

Investing in a customer relationship management tool
We will invest in a new customer relationship management system. Our current systems are all hosted by different providers and using a more comprehensive system would allow us to consolidate all this information and offer better service to our customers.

Investing in measures to make your business premises covid-secure
We have purchased a number of screens for our dining tables and we need to purchase more. We also have increased costs associated with sanitising chemicals which these funds will help us cover.

Investing in an e-commerce solution to help you trade online
Funds will be allocated to paying our online store costs and procuring a wider range of merchandise to build our online retail presence. We aim to stock local handmade goods and help support small makers in our area.

Thank you for visiting our project page; we hope you find something you like among our rewards and we look forward to seeing you at the Cat Emporium! 

Reward Artwork

We'd like to give you a little preview of the rewards we're designing!

Land on your feet mug artwork:

Catmas Mug artwork:

Catmas Card artwork:

Cat Face Coverings (4 pack)

This project successfully funded on 29th November 2020