There is a black cat cafe hidden in the alley of Gulou Street.

A total of six black cats live in this coffee shop hidden in Beijing's hutong. With the British band The Specials's "Friday Night Saturday Morning", come with us to find out.

Photo Source: EmptyCup Coffee

On weekday afternoons, EmptyCup Coffee Shop, located in Dashiqiao Hutong on Old Gulou Street in Beijing, looks a little cold. Push open the door, the first thing to see is an eyeful of coffee utensils and wine bottles stacked with the front desk and walls. An escalator is on the right-hand side, connecting the waiting area in the attic.

Sporadic guests came to the narrow shop one after another and slumped on the sofa in the dim light for a few hours. The music in the store seems to have been carefully selected, and most of them are English classics as popular as James Blunt's "You are beautiful".

At first glance, the address that deviates from the business district is a bit dilapidated, which basically determines that most of the guests come here specially, and the guests can be divided into two categories. One is to drink the shop's main hand-made coffee: a pot, a flannel filter, a filter, relying on the brewer's own grasp of the water temperature, to make a cup of coffee. There are other guests to see the cat. In fact, EmptyCup has a name on the Internet, called "the first Black Cat Cafe in China", because it has six black cats.

When several cats of different shapes and colors stand together, they are like this.

But affected by the overall environment of the coffee shop, in my eyes, they are like this.

The shop has been in operation for more than a year. The shopkeeper, known as "Dragon", whose real name is Ma Xianglong, seems to be in his twenties and is one of the partners of EmptyCup. He doesn't remember the exact date on which he associated the coffee shop with the black cat. At first, he and Li Shihong, a partner nicknamed Maomao, just wanted to open a simple coffee shop. They rough out the attic house in the hutong, decorated it, and then imported coffee beans from abroad. Slowly running a small coffee shop. At that time, Ma Xianglong kept a cat himself, but suddenly one day, the anxious cat ran away.

"later, some friends who could no longer have cats because of pregnancy or something else sent their cats to our coffee shop, and somehow they collected six black cats, and we helped them adopt them voluntarily." Ma Xianglong recalled to the interface reporter. Although people say that these black cats have their own names but still can't tell who is which, Ma Xianglong recognized a lively black cat who was not afraid of people when he came to his hand. "his name is Xiao Hei."

The black cats made their home here. Coffee shop owners consider that the attic coffee shop is always in bad light, giving people a cold feeling, which seems to fit in well with the feeling of "black cat". So they are lucky to be under the banner of "Black Coffee Cafe" and run two themes: "Coffee Culture support place" and "Black Cat Home Black Cat+", which can help the coffee shop attract new young customers.

The waiting area in the attic

The cabin on the left is the black cat area.

Ma Xianglong does not deny that the hot cat theme in recent years has created more topics for them on social media such as Douban. They also cleverly used the words of astrologers who are always associated with black cats-something that will make you happy will happen in the week when you meet black cats. All these boos have helped the cafe bring more guests.

Coincidentally, the hand-made black coffee also matches the image of the black cat, which is not contrary to the partner's original intention. Black cat-themed cafes are so popular in Japan that Nekobiyaka Cafe in the Japanese castle town of Hiroshi once claimed to be the world's first black cat-themed cafe, and EmptyCup drew some inspiration from it.

At first, black cats can come and go freely in the shop, but the large amount of cat hair they shed is likely to affect the dining hygiene of coffee shops. With this in mind, EmptyCup separated a separate area in the space right up the stairs and installed glass windows to serve as a special resting place for cats. This design can not only maintain the cleanliness of the store, but also increase the viewing of the storefront in the form of "cat cupboard".

The cat area has also been carefully arranged, and like the hospitality area, they are affixed with art posters or painted works of art on the walls, which is related to the personal aesthetics and style of Mao Mao, the shopkeeper who has art skills and now works in the theater. The patterns painted on the sloping roof tell the historical story of hand-brewed coffee.

In order to cultivate the atmosphere of hand culture, shopkeepers also make coffee cans with their own logo, or hold tasting, parties, salons and other activities.

But with the increase in the number of guests, it also brings some problems. Ma Xianglong introduced to the interface news: "when the guests come, they will inevitably go in for a hug and tease. At the end of the day, the cats are very tired."

As a result, guests who come now will see some rules in the glass window, such as guests who come to the store cannot catch or lift the cat. Can moderate interaction with cats, can not put pressure on them, while young friends are not allowed to play in the store and so on.

There are many posters on the wall in the black cat window.

After the little black body who likes to play with people, there are John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Coffee shop owner and black cat

Finally, I would like to order a cup of American and Australian coffee for you. The shopkeeper introduced this is the Black Cat Cafe version of "Furei White".

Finally, a cup of "fragrant white" from Black Cat Cafe is for you.

Source: network