Montreal continues to blaze a trail for people who love their coffee with a side of pet canoodling. North America’s first two cat cafes, Le Café des Chats and Café Chat L’Heureux, opened in Montreal last fall. And this week canine lovers got a coffee shop of their own in the form of Le Doggy Cafe.
Le Doggy Cafe under construction in December.
Unlike cat cafes that usually have resident kitties for you to pet for an hourly rate, Le Doggy Cafe is more of an exceedingly pooch-friendly establishment. The menu includes homemade treats and biscuits for canine customers, and vegetarian and vegan snacks for their humans; we spotted organic smoothies, salads, and gluten-free baked goods on the cafe’s Facebook page. Eater Montreal reports that the cafe also hosts obedience workshops and canine cuisine demos.
According to MTLblog, Le Doggy Cafe isn’t actually the first canine cafe in the city. There is Brandy’s, a combined cafe and health center that welcomes both cats and dogs, and Hot Dog Café, a pet center and cafe that’s across the water on the south shore. However Le Doggy Cafe is the first canine-only cafe on Montreal island proper.
The U.S. already has a number of cat cafes, so it’s not hard to imagine dog cafes opening soon in this Fido-loving country. If you’re wondering how this phenomenon came about, Eater has a video that explains the Asian origins of the cat cafe, which started in Taiwan but really took off in Japan. Although, Japanese animal lovers have since moved on to bunny and owl cafes.
[via Eater Montreal]