Pups and Cups is the one and only dog cafe in Pullman that is both a traditional coffee shop and has a dog-friendly environment. 

CJ Roberts, Pups and Cups owner, opened up the cafe in 2017 and has worked to create an environment where each customer and pup feels special. 

Kaylee Hollis, a regular customer at Pups and Cups, brings her rescue dog to the cafe because they feel most comfortable there, she said. 

She said the cafe is very open and she has become good friends with the owners and baristas. 

“I like the peacefulness,” Hollis said. “It’s nice because my dog really enjoys people’s attention and so she always gets a lot of that when we’re out at the cafe.” 

Roberts said they host a variety of different events from game nights to live music.

On Mondays they host themed trivia nights with over $100 worth of prizes with themed drinks, food and trinkets, she said. 

Roberts said her trivia is not like all the others because she went to every trivia night around Pullman throughout the summer and got a feel on what they were like so she could design hers differently, she said. 

Pups and Cups has anime and K-pop trivia and aims to make their trivia challenging yet nerdy, she said. 

On Wednesdays, they have a gigantic eight to 10-person table where people can go in and play upper-level adult board games and on Saturdays, they host live events such as open mic night and live music, Roberts said. 

One of her favorite memories was from an open-mic night when someone sang a Micheal Jackson song and everyone joined in and started dancing, she said. 

“I think there’s kind of a stigma for Downtown Pullman, especially at night where we just don’t have as much of a night crowd as closer to campus [does],” she said. “But we’re getting there, the more people realize that there’s now restaurants open at night downtown, I think that we’re gonna see a continued growth,” she said. 

She said Pups and Cups has not only typical cafe food and beverages, but they have beer, wine, wine slushies and mimosas. 

They have really affordable specials, especially for students who are already having enough of a hard time paying the bills, she said.

Instead of having to purchase an $18-20 pitcher of beer, Pups and Cups lower their prices to just $10, she said. 

Roberts said the team at Pups and Cups are proud of the fact that they work to make people feel special and have made genuine friends with them over the years.

“It’s a pretty fun and unique working environment,” she said. “We all just genuinely care about our customers and what their experience is.”