Most negative reviews of the Corgi Cafe, a new 24-hour coffee shop in the Financial District, share the same complaint: There are no corgis.
“ZERO CORGIS HERE. NIL. NOT A SINGLE DOG IN SIGHT!!” one reviewer posted on Yelp last week.
“Very misleading! We felt scammed! Talk about false advertising,” wrote another.
It’s not false advertising, but it is startup advertising. The Corgi Cafe is not a Japanese-style cafe full of furry friends, but an elaborate marketing play created by an AI insurance company called, of course, Corgi.
“It’s like the Capital One Café,” said Erika Lee, Corgi’s head of brand, noting the need for software companies to pull off increasingly spectacular advertising campaigns to distinguish themselves in the AI boom. “A lot of people just do the traditional ‘let’s buy a billboard.’ I haven’t really seen anyone do this.”
The Corgi Cafe opened Feb. 13, and runs out of the retail space beneath Corgi headquarters at 9 Claude Lane, between Kearny and Grant. The last tenant was a hair salon that closed in 2019, and it sat vacant through the pandemic.
Nico Laqua, Corgi’s 26-year-old CEO and co-founder, said that when he applied to rent the office space on the fifth floor of the building, renting the retail space was a required add-on.
“I thought the landlord was making it up, to be honest, but they insisted it was true,” Laqua said. So he signed the lease and weighed the options: He could sublet it out or use it for the company.
“I thought that making something for the startup community could be cool,” Laqua said. The team quickly settled on a 24-hour cafe, a rarity in San Francisco’s still sleepy downtown, geared specifically toward founders in the AI space. “For people who really want to work, for builders.”
Getting the cafe ready for business took about three months, during which they renovated and furnished the space, equipped and stocked the coffee bar, and hired eight baristas. “It was somewhat expensive,” Laqua said, declining to give specifics. According to one barista, the wage is $20 per hour and does not include health insurance.
Laqua said Corgi’s investors, who at the time had just funded the company’s $108 million Series A round at a $630 million valuation, also “absolutely hated” the idea.
But Laqua does not worry too much about what investors think. He and co-founder Emily Yuan went through the Y Combinator startup accelerator in 2024, and are committed to building a trillion-dollar company, no matter the cost. They require all team members to work seven days a week, and Laqua estimates about four or five of them currently live at the office. (The building at 9 Claude Lane is zoned for residential use, according to Dan Sider, chief of staff of the city’s Planning Department.)
Corgi employees with spouses or partners “just really integrate their partners into the company [culture],” Lee, the head of brand, said.
“Nico will always say, ‘You’ll find my charred body here if there’s a fire!’” Lee giggled. “He’ll say that all the time.”
The office above the Corgi Cafe is strewn with cereal boxes, protein powder, kitchen appliances, computer equipment, cardboard boxes, and sleeping bags. A small kennel near Yuan’s office houses Trudy, Corgi’s corgi. To coordinate Trudy’s care, the team uses an AI chatbot on the messaging app Telegram that tags different people to feed her, walk her, and report on her poops and pees.
(When I met her on my visit to the Corgi offices last week, Trudy was energetic, friendly, and appeared well taken care of, for anyone wondering.)
Trudy does visit the cafe occasionally, much to the delight of the dog lovers who stop by hoping to see a corgi. But the clientele is overwhelmingly startup founders and bleary-eyed AI obsessives.
In the short time the Corgi Cafe has been open, venture capitalists have come to know it as a hot spot for scouting talent, Laqua claims. “You know on the African savannah how there are the watering holes and all the animals need to go there and the lions wait by the watering holes? It’s like that,” he said of the VCs.
Since opening, the Corgi Cafe has gotten some buzz on LinkedIn and X, as well as some rave reviews online: “Instantly became a 10x founder as soon as I crossed the door, 10/10 highly recommend to anyone,” one engineer wrote. Several startups have hosted events at the Corgi Cafe. Y Combinator alums get a 20 percent discount on the menu, which includes a standard coffee bar, some specialty lattes, and $14 Erewhon-style smoothies. (Editor’s note: I stopped by before Cydney’s visit and ordered an ube latte; it tasted charred and immediately made my tummy hurt.)
The cafe remains pricey to operate and has not directly translated into sales for Corgi’s insurance product so far. “We are losing some money on it,” Laqua said with a laugh, again declining to give specifics. “We are not making a profit on it, I’ll tell you that much.”
There are plans in the future to potentially open more Corgi Cafes in other cities where Corgi has offices, including Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and London. Here’s hoping they have corgis (and better coffee).
