Purrs and Pours | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: We have joining us in studio. We have Star and Taylor from Pers and Pores. Welcome, Hello, thanks for having us. Absolutely absolutely Now, well all right let's start here and then you know, you did bring us a couple of gift bags, which where we're going to show for the video of viewers. But what is person Pores?

0:22 Speaker 2: Person Pores is a cat cafe. There's cat cafes are

0:30 Speaker 2: a cafe half and then there's a sally way that you go inside and the other half is where you get to hang out with all the cats. Oh okay, so and they're all adoptable cats. Really yeah, you don't want to bring your own cats there?

0:46 Speaker 1: Okay, that's interesting. I wondered about that part. Okay, so the idea, so, so the cats are adoptable, so it kind of gives you a chance to go and almost like like you know, in the mall, for example, they have what is it, I forget the name of the place, but yeah, the pet story there where you can go and you know, they have dogs and they have cats and whatnot. But but the only way you get to actually hang out with the cats is if you go inside one of the cubicles or whatever. I don't know it's not a cage technically, but but so, but at person Port, so you get to actually hang out with the cats and it's.

1:21 Speaker 2: A free room, like the cats hang out in that area, okay, and they can come sit on your lap, hang out, drink a coffee. Yeah, they shouldn't drink the coffee.

1:31 Speaker 1: Probably not, Yeah, I don't know. Can you give cats caffeine? You probably don't know. Probably not. No cream? Oh okay, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, because I like the idea of being able to go into a room and you know, maybe they'll come over to you and sit on you, you know, because you know, we like to think that we choose them, but in truth, they choose us, right, you know, cats have a way of choosing their their humans. So, oh well, let's do this before we go any further. So I'm gonna put the camera back on me.

1:59 Speaker 1: So for those of you watching it is a radio show first and foremost, but if you are watching the video, so, they brought us these lovely gift bags. Let's see, he's got the person pors. Oh wow, candles mm hmm. Those are nice. So you've got so you sell these at person Poors. I assume.

2:16 Speaker 3: Yes, we partnered with Candle Tree soy candle okay, and conquered. It's on Main Street and conquered.

2:23 Speaker 1: Oh, very nice.

2:24 Speaker 3: The owner's name is Ross and he's he loves what he does.

2:27 Speaker 1: Yeah.

2:29 Speaker 3: This month our sense are New Hampshire themed and it's for maple months. So we got New Hampshire maple syrup. We got cedarn balsom for like the White Mountains. Yeah, we got white birch for the National the State Tree.

2:46 Speaker 1: Got some citrus perfection sweet orange handcrafted soap. That's very cool.

2:53 Speaker 2: Yeah.

2:53 Speaker 3: So Chrissy at the soapre off Main and conquered New Hampshire. She made those two and she's out of all the names. She's very creative. She loves what she does.

3:03 Speaker 1: Oh, very cool, very cool. Yeah, thank you for bringing those. Oh there's a magnet two looks like for very cool. We love all things kitty. We're both Yeah, we we love we love cats. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. So. So, what's what's the current status of person pores in Manchester?

3:23 Speaker 3: So right now we're looking for a building. Okay, it's been kind of hard for us because a lot of the kind of within our budget isn't like compatible for a cafe. Okay, it's not really the cats they're turning us down. We thought our number one like issue would be people are like, oh, we don't want cats in our location, right, but it's just they don't want like the the dishwashers set up and all the Oh.

3:50 Speaker 1: Interesting.

3:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, So if we're trying to find like the perfect building for us.

3:55 Speaker 1: We're trying to find the perfect had to do it to do it? Are you so, are you committed to being in Manchester or are you maybe looking at you know, outside of Manchester.

4:10 Speaker 3: Or we really want to do Conquered New Hampshire.

4:12 Speaker 1: Oh no kidding, Okay, yeah, just because it's.

4:14 Speaker 3: The state capitol in their Chamber of Commerce is like awesome. Yeah, I don't know. Conquered seems like the location for us, and it's closer to us. Okay for her, Manchester would be like an hour drive from her house.

4:26 Speaker 1: Oh no kidding, okay, yeah, yeah, gotcha, gotcha. So you're looking at Conquered, are you also looking like outside of because I just wonder if you know, like maybe outside of Conquered around you know, sort of Conquered adjacent. Yeah.

4:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, we just extended our search like two weeks ago. Okay, we've been looking for two months and conquered and then we're like, hey, we should probably, you know, extend the search because slim pickings.

4:52 Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, now is is person por is? Is it a franchise or what is it? Is it your own thing?

5:01 Speaker 3: It's our own it is Okay. We created our own LLC August of last year.

5:06 Speaker 1: Oh excellent, excellent. Yeah yeah. I wasn't sure if it was like a like a franchise and you and you were buying a location and you just needed somewhere to put it or something like that. But so so this is you, this is.

5:16 Speaker 3: You started from the ground up.

5:17 Speaker 1: Oh that's fantastic. Excellent, No, good for you. No, we love talking to entrepreneurs and so what uh whose idea was it?

5:26 Speaker 2: It was a mix?

5:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, so kind of like what inspired us is we both went on vacation in Hawaii. Oddly enough, different times we went to a lot okay, and she saw the cat cafe. I went on vacation. I saw it too, and then randomly, because we worked together, we're like, hey, like that would be awesome to do a cat cafe.

5:44 Speaker 1: Yeah.

5:45 Speaker 3: That was like two years ago and then just randomly one day, I like messaged here and I said, we gotta do this, Like, yeah, I want to do this. I want to wake up every day to be like inspired by my work and help like orphaned cats like to feel good about us, like this is our time. We're almost thirty, Like let's do our own thing.

6:04 Speaker 1: So, so there are other cat cafes that you've like, like have you have you traveled around and seen a lot of different ones and.

6:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen about like ten fifteen okay, and follow other cat cafes. Yeah, we're trying to see all of them, honestly, Yeah, and make some new ones.

6:25 Speaker 1: Are they all the ones that you've been to? Are? Are they? Are they all similar? Or do you see variations and business models or I'm really curious, like what you know if they all kind of operate in a similar fashion or if some of them are unique or yeah.

6:41 Speaker 3: So for the typical, like for the listeners to understand what a cat cafe is. For the typical cat cafe, patrons come in and they pay a nominal amount to go into the cat cafe and into the cat lounge where adoptable cats are and the cats are free roaming cage free. It allows them to see the cats in their natural environment, almost in like a homey experience, so that they can learn the cats personalities. And then you can get food and beverage and that just helps people stay longer and you feel more comfortable.

7:16 Speaker 3: So we're planning on picking up like that business model. And a lot of people also have a problem with paying the amount of money to go into the cat lounge, but honestly that money goes towards like rent, the cat care things like that. So a lot of people are like, oh, why do we have to pay to go see the cats, But all of that money goes towards the care for the cats because while they're in our care, we have to take care of everything to do with them. We're helping the shelters too by helping them be fed the cat litter, so it's giving the shelters a break as well.

7:52 Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so ideally does does the cafe then sort of team up with the shelters and okay, okay, yeah.

8:04 Speaker 2: There's also like other types that's more what we're going for, like set of wise two separate areas. There are some where they just bring the food in and like from a commercial kitchen and sell it there and then they don't really have like a sitting area and you just go hang out with the cats. I went in one in Florida that was weird. It was kind of cool though. It was literally just a straight up cat room, and then they had like a little small area where they just major drinks and brought it out to you, so you wouldn't even go over in there.

8:40 Speaker 1: Oh interesting.

8:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, So we kind of wanted to have the cafe so we have multiple like revenue streams and can offer people food and drink while they're there. We're also going to do events there like yoga, trivia and I have vandcing there.

8:58 Speaker 1: Cool. You'll have to have the turbocat.

9:01 Speaker 3: That would be pretty sweet.

9:04 Speaker 1: I'm curious too, as you've gone around and you've looked at these different cat cafes, have you seen anything that where you kind of thought, Wow, they're doing something really strange here, that's not something we would do, or I don't see how that. I don't see how what they're doing is going to work long term. You see anything like strange that where you go really, I haven't.

9:28 Speaker 2: Well, I was looking up other ones. There was one in Main. I'm not sure if they're still open. It was temporary closed. And they have like a dispensary style which is really interesting. It's only for eighteen and up, so I was like, oh, that's kind of crazy.

9:42 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's different. Different, that's different.

9:43 Speaker 2: Well, but I don't think they actually have like the dispensary things.

9:49 Speaker 1: Oh.

9:49 Speaker 2: I think it's just like the style of it. It's more for cats. Oh okay, but it's in Main, so yeah, it's a little different.

9:55 Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting. Kind of a weird question. But how do you keep the cats from getting out? That's a great question.

10:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, we will have like a sallly way, which is like a hallway with a door on each side. Okay, that makes only like one entrance for people to go in.

10:11 Speaker 1: That makes sense.

10:11 Speaker 2: You have to like walk into the sallyway, shut the door, and then make sure there's no cats near you at the other door.

10:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the TSA.

10:21 Speaker 2: You go in the one door and when that door closes, then the other door opens.

10:25 Speaker 3: That makes sense already.

10:26 Speaker 1: That cool. Yeah, yeah, no, that does make sense. How many cats ideally would there be on premises at any like you must have a there must be like a maximum capacity or maybe it depends on the size of the space. Ultimately, I don't know, but right like, how many is manageable?

10:42 Speaker 3: We're going to plan between ten to fifteen. Okay, yeah, more than fifteen might.

10:48 Speaker 2: Be a little too much. Yeah, depending, that's a really big space. What else?

10:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, all the cats have different personalities too, so that's a law to manage. And it comes down to the shelters rules too, kind of how we're of created agreement with them. Okay, right now, we're kind of in talks with Pope, Memorial, SPCA and Conquered and we're kind of just trying to figure out how that relationship would look like because they've never done anything like this, and obviously they're nonprofit, so there's multiple people they got to discuss this with. Oh yeah, we got to come to terms of how to take care of the cats because ultimately it's their cats.

11:22 Speaker 3: We're just fostering them, right, So yeah, there's gonna be a lot of training and hands on and kind of like we got to create terms that make sense.

11:30 Speaker 1: For yeah, both of us, Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So what why I mean? I assume you both obviously love cats. If either of you have you done, like you know, if you worked in a veterinarian's office or anything like that, or I'm curious if it like prior professional experience involving cats or do you or do you just love cats? Which is a great reason too, but.

11:56 Speaker 2: Well I love cats, have had them my entire life. My neighbor that lived down the street, they had like a hundred cats.

12:04 Speaker 1: I feel like yeah all the.

12:06 Speaker 2: Time, and we're like, oh, we need to feed them, Moms like stop feeding them.

12:09 Speaker 1: They have a home.

12:11 Speaker 2: And then I went to like my uncle's house. He had a farm, a bunch of stray animal or like barn cats. YEA, loved it, hung out with them, volunteer with animals. Were actually getting ready to start volunteering at the Pope Memorial as well. Okay, just mostly out of fun because we both love hanging out with animals. Volunteer. I absolutely love volunteering. I've been doing it since I was like five.

12:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, good for you, good good? What about you? Star?

12:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, not so much experience professionally. Taylor and I don't have experience, like professionally dealing with animals, but we've grown up around them. We've always loved animals. Growing up, I always wanted to be a vet. I don't really know what happened with that, you know, you know, life happened and I didn't become a vet. Like, you know, this is a way to incorporate animals and our dreams, you know, into our business.

13:07 Speaker 1: What's something that people don't know about about cats that that you think would surprise them.

13:14 Speaker 3: That's a good question.

13:15 Speaker 1: Yeah.

13:17 Speaker 2: I actually was recently talking about this that cats like purring, like the vibration from it actually can help heal bones, like even in people. I don't know how much research they have them like that part, but it actually helps them heal faster and like do better. So I have a cat at home that hurt himself and I'm just like, oh, I need to get you to PERR. And I was like do this. I was like, come on, motivational speaking to this cat. He is doing better.

13:46 Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, maybe it worked. Yeah yeah maybe maybe. You know, we talked to about the shelters, like how big of a problem is that? I bet it's I bet it's a bigger problem than people realize. How many cats end up in shelters.

14:02 Speaker 3: Not so much in New Hampshire, New Hampshire really outsources it from places like Florida. Florida has like a kitten season all year round, Like spring is like the kitten season. Obviously, our springtime is very short in New Hampshire. So yeah, so they usually take them from kill shelters and places in Florida.

14:23 Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that.

14:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, so we really want to partner with a place that will take them from kill shelters to kind of help them get off the euthanasia list.

14:32 Speaker 1: Mm hmmm hm. Oh that's good. Yeah, yeah, I had no idea. No, that's interesting. That's interesting. And then what's kind of the I mean, once, once you find a place and you're open and everything, is there a long term plan to open, like like do you like thinking, you know, five ten years down the road? I mean, do you want to have multiple locations?

14:53 Speaker 3: We want a franchise for sure.

14:55 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's great. And do you have investors? You have people who are now or.

14:59 Speaker 3: Is it no it's just us you're just.

15:03 Speaker 1: Yet not yet.

15:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure about taking on investors because a lot of the times you got to give up a percentage of your company, and we kind of want full creative control and kind of what we do. Yeah, if tough times happen, we can get some angel investors and stuff, But as of now, I think Taylor and I just want to be like, you know, the leaders of this.

15:25 Speaker 1: And no, that's great, full control.

15:26 Speaker 2: It's a lot easier talking to one person than trying to convince a whole group to do the same thing.

15:31 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's interesting. And how about like, are your families supportive of this?

15:37 Speaker 3: Very good? Yeah, my family. You know, the last seven years I've worked in the state prison, which my family was not very happy kidding that I worked there. And now that I'm like, oh, now I'm working with cats and doing my dream because they've always known I want to be a veterinarian work with animals, like that's, you know, my personality type. And they're like, good for you for finally like, yeah, you know, stretching your wings out and doing what you want.

16:03 Speaker 1: No, that's great. Yeah, you worked at the prison at the state prison.

16:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, I still work at a prison.

16:07 Speaker 1: You do what do you do there?

16:08 Speaker 3: I'm an officer there, no kidding? Oh wow, yeah, so different different career field, right.

16:14 Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, you've been there seven years yeah, seven years. Yeah. I had a good friend who did that job, who I think lasted maybe a year and he just couldn't just couldn't hack it. Yeah, because it's you know, yeah, it's hard, right.

16:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, not the best place to be in New Hampshire.

16:32 Speaker 1: I just saying, well, it could be worse. You could be on you know, behind bars and the.

16:37 Speaker 3: Exactly. I'm not complaining.

16:42 Speaker 1: How about how about you? Taylor.

16:44 Speaker 2: So I've worked a lot of like cafes, I've worked in restaurants.

16:50 Speaker 1: Oh that's good. You have good experience for what you're doing, what you're going to be doing.

16:54 Speaker 2: I recently last year just bought a coffeehouse at the Deerfield Fair.

16:58 Speaker 3: Oh love it.

17:00 Speaker 2: The guy that I bought it from, he's basically like a mentor to me. It was great. We also have cats a nursing home that I work at, Okay, and like their amazing residents love them. I'll actually like carry them around on the floor with me. I'm not supposed to have them on my carts. It was like, oh, everybody, they're hanging out with me.

17:19 Speaker 3: Taylor and I actually worked there together and that was the highlight of her day. We'd go up chairs and be like, oh, did you see one of the cat's names was Skeeter? Did you see Skeeter today? And we just like talk about it. That was like the highlight over day.

17:34 Speaker 2: Sometimes I'd bring like a laser with me to play with them. It was like the best thing in the whole world. And then there's another cat there, she's still there, name of Saber. She likes to be spun around on the floor, so you sit there, you keep peddner, she like goes in a circle. I absolutely love it.

17:48 Speaker 1: Yeah.

17:50 Speaker 3: Taylor also has a degree in culinary so this will yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:55 Speaker 2: And then my family thinks that I'm very much like a restaurant type of person. I've worked in hospitality a lot. Yeah, like it goes together, but I absolutely am there for the animals.

18:06 Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, because I.

18:08 Speaker 2: Just there's so much fun, Yeah, so much personality.

18:11 Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. What's a misconception that that people have about cats that you want to knock down today while you're here.

18:22 Speaker 3: Well, cats are cat cafes. There's two different things. So the cats. A lot of people are like, I hate cats, and yeah, it seems like a lot like by.

18:30 Speaker 1: The way, you never hear anyone just say oh, I don't like cats. Uh. They they'll tell you that I hate cats.

18:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, they're so avid about it. Yeah yeah, what your cat ever do to you?

18:40 Speaker 1: It's weird, right yeah.

18:42 Speaker 3: I mean they all have their different personality types, and they're not as like affectionate as like dogs. Well, they're not as obedient, they're not.

18:49 Speaker 1: As expressive, That's how I think of it.

18:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, I've had very oh yeah affectionate cat.

18:55 Speaker 3: Mine will literally like just sleep on my face all night.

18:58 Speaker 1: The cat Jenny and I have is very affectionate.

19:00 Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. But it seems like a lot of the male population too. I don't know if it's like a like a tough guy thing like cats, like you know this a little cute, fluffy thing, like I can't show my soft side. But like it'd be nice to see a lot more males be like, oh I love kitty cats. You know, I'll open up because you can see most of them if they like them. But they're just trying to be like a right hat, right, Like what a little frery thing do to you? Right?

19:26 Speaker 1: Right? Yeah? Yeah.

19:28 Speaker 3: And then cat cafes there's a misconception people people think it's going to be dirty, like the cats are separate from the food prep the cafe area exactly exactly, and like at the same time, it's like do you not eat around your cats at home? Too? Like you know, like, yeah, it's just an interesting thought. Like we've seen a lot of things on social media. People are like that that's disgusting things like that. Yeah, it's like, do your research on it, and it's will keep it clean, we promise.

19:58 Speaker 1: Yeah. If somebody doesn't want to go, nobody's forcing. Yeah, just don't come right right exactly.

20:05 Speaker 2: They get forced they can go sit in the cafe while everyone hangs out with the cats.

20:08 Speaker 1: Okay, mm hmmm, there you go. There you go. So, you know, if people want to want to learn more and keep up with what you're doing as you're searching for a place and whatnot, or you know, we might have listeners who have ideas and suggestions, or maybe they just want to help in some way. Where should they go online? Where's the best place for people to go online to keep up with with this whole project?

20:27 Speaker 2: I would say Facebook and Instagram are like our most popular. We're on a lot of social media, okay, but we also have like a link tree which has like all of our social media on there, and I believe our website is on there as well.

20:39 Speaker 3: Yeah, our website's ww dot person porscatcafe dot com Okay, and we have a contact us link and it's pretty straightforward. Put your information in and put any comment you want and it goes straight to us. We love suggestions. We love talking with our customers. Usually like weekly, we get people just like rooting for us, like with enthusiasm, So that makes us happy. You know, somebody took the time another day just to log in and you know give us a little pep talk like that's awesome.

21:08 Speaker 1: Oh, that's really cool.

21:09 Speaker 3: Yeah, And we're just very transparent, So follow us on social media all the way through all of our collaborations with local businesses, all of the steps like even finding our real estate agent. We're very very open. I think that's important for businesses to be pretty transparent, and like we want to build a community with people as well, so like yeah, yeah, the more followers, the more conversations we can have, like it could be their business too. We're very open to like doing the best for our customers and the animals.

21:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, we actually use social media to fire find our real estate agent too, like a bunch of people were sending us so many oh, which is great. That was really helpful.

21:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's that's excellent. That's excellent.

21:51 Speaker 3: Shout out to Sarah Lang. You're awesome.

21:53 Speaker 1: Is that? Oh? Very good? Very good? Well listen, I thank you both for coming in today. This is this is wonderful. We'll have to have you on again in the future because once you know, once you've got a place, you know, we definitely want to have you back. And you know, Jenny and I we both love cats, and so we're very uh, we're very encouraged to see what you're doing. I know when you're when you're ready and you're up and running, and you know, she's excited to go, so definitely I want to see how it all turns out too.

22:19 Speaker 1: So so good luck to you both, of course, Uh, Star and Taylor appreciate you coming in.

22:25 Speaker 3: You thanks for having us all right, you.

22:26 Speaker 1: Got it, And I think we should close out the segment with we'll play another Turbook Cat song. This one is called My Senior Lady and it's all about his his Senior Lady Cat