At the capybara cafe, people line up to snuggle the world's largest rodents

Washington Post

17-06-2025

The cafe has the traditional staples — coffee, muffins, cookies, bottled water and packaged chips. But the lobby is also full of small and large stuffed capybaras, paintings of capybaras, and mugs and T-shirts featuring the social, round-eared animals.
When customers walk around a corner to a small room, they finally meet the stars: live capybaras who like to hang out with humans.
The Capybara Café in St. Augustine, Florida, claims to be the first of its kind in the United States, allowing customers to feed, pet and snuggle the world's largest rodents, which are native to South America.
The idea for the cafe stemmed from an animal rescue and rehabilitation center needing money to remain open. Stephanie Angel, the cafe's owner, said she was surprised how popular the cafe became after it opened in October; she said she gets about 100 customers per day.
'You work in any other field, you always have unhappy customers and complaints,' Angel told The Washington Post. 'We generally don't have any of that. If anything, our complaints are, 'Man I wish I had more time with the capybaras.''
The cafe is owned by Noah's Ark Sanctuary, which houses more than 100 animals, including foxes, skunks, squirrels, opossums, raccoons, tortoises, snakes, goats, miniature donkeys, lizards and guinea pigs, on roughly two acres in Hastings, Florida, about 15 miles from the cafe.
In the summer of 2024, the sanctuary was struggling to afford medicine for its animals and was on the verge of closing. While brainstorming ideas to make money, Angel, who is a director for the sanctuary, thought about starting a cafe with animals. But unlike at typical animal cafes — like ones with cats or dogs — she wanted people to interact with capybaras, which are common attractions at cafes in Asia.
'I hoped that everybody loved them as much as we do,' Angel said.
The dog-size rodents have become popular in recent years because of their calm demeanors, friendliness and big snouts. Stuffed capybaras have become a fixture at Build-A-Bear Workshop, and stores across the United States sell capybara toys, plushies, socks, purses and slippers. Videos of capybaras receive millions of views online.
In St. Augustine, Angel rented an office building to transform into the cafe. She obtained two capybaras from breeders and named them Latte and Mocha.
The rodents live in a 1,200-square-foot enclosure in Hastings with a pond. Employees place them in secure crates most mornings and transport them to the cafe in a van.
The cafe's motto? 'Don't worry, be Capy.' (People may find it corny, but the capybaras don't care.)
For $50, customers can sit on the floor, on couches or on chairs a few inches off the ground, place blankets over their laps to protect their skin from the capybaras' nails and spend a half-hour with two or three capybaras. They can cuddle them while petting their coats, which feel like a coconut's exterior. They feed them hay, kale, collard greens, apples and oranges — treats that motivate the capybaras to approach customers.
Employees share facts about capybaras with the customers, such as how they can hold their breath for over four minutes and can run up to 22 mph. They sometimes train the capybaras to stand on their hind legs, encouraging them with treats to touch a target on a training stick or simply holding a corn of cob a few inches off the ground. Customers enjoy watching, Angel said, but the training also allows employees to check the rodents' bellies for injuries, cuts and ticks.
The sanctuary now has five capybaras that it rotates for what it calls 'encounters.'
There's Latte, who is about 1 year old and loves attention, sitting in customers' laps and welcoming scratches. Mocha, who's also around 1, is the alpha of the group. She's the first capybara to hop onto a couch or start eating from the hay barrel in the room.
Macchiato, around 8 months old, is obsessed with kale but sometimes shies away when customers try to feed him other snacks. The relative newcomers are Beans and Espresso, who are each around 6 months old. Beans loves to eat, repeatedly approaching each customer for food. Espresso is laid-back, wanting to climb on a customer's lap and stay there for the whole session.
'None of the capybaras have loyalty,' Angel said, because they like whoever offers them food.
Employees only allow fruits and vegetables into the encounters — which are in a room adjacent to the cafe — because capybaras often try to snag customers' snacks. The cafe wrote on social media June 1: 'No refunds if a capybara steals your snack. They're fast, sneaky, and way too cute to be mad at.'
While capybaras' large teeth could cause injuries, the animals are docile.
Other than eating and sitting on customers' laps, the capybaras chase each other and make high-pitched chirping noises, which Angel equated to the sound of lightsabers, when they're happy. When employees give the capybaras massages on their partially webbed feet, the rodents sometimes wobble and fall over in relaxation, Angel said.
When customer Diane Dyal, 64, visited the cafe in April, she fulfilled a lifelong dream.
As an 8-year-old, Dyal read a fictional picture book that featured a capybara. She thought the large rodents were just part of the story, not real animals.
But when she later learned capybaras were real, she wanted to see one in person. In February, her friend sent her information about the Capybara Café, about 180 miles southeast of Dyal's home in Tallahassee. Two months later, she fed Mocha, Latte and Macchiato hay for a half-hour.
She bought a handful of stickers featuring images of capybaras and a black T-shirt that playfully lists capybaras' anatomy, describing their 'big snoot for boops,' eyes that 'can give some serious side eye' and 'fluffy cloud ears.'
'I just felt really satisfied that after all those years, I got to see one in person,' said Dyal, an artist.
When Brigid Gibson visited the cafe from Tampa in December, she covered her legs with a black blanket featuring capybara images. After feeding kale to Latte and Mocha, one of them fell asleep on her lap. Gibson, 33, didn't want to stand when her 30-minute session ended.
Angel said that's a common experience.
'I have to make them get up when it's time to go,' she said about the capybaras.
The sanctuary is now thriving financially — so much so that it's donating money to other Florida animal rescues, Angel said. The sanctuary plans to build a free animal hurricane shelter for the state.
Plus, the cafe is planning to open another location in St. Petersburg, Florida, next month. Watching new customers meet the capybaras won't get old anytime soon, Angel said.
'People come here and they're always happy; they're always excited; they're always laughing,' she said.