In Conversation: DeNita Carani, Pet Wants

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“Chew Bar.” It’s typically at the front of the store with dozens of different types of chews and many of them are really unique and exotic—antlers and coffee wood and bully sticks, pig snouts, rabbits’ feet. It’s just that uniqueness of being able to get things that you really can’t find in a big box retailer. That is typically what greets a customer in any Pet Wants store is the Chew Bar near the front door. The rest of that experience is unique, is that one-on-one education with either a store associate or a franchise owner, the ability to buy their dry food by the pound instead of in prepackaged 5-, 10-, 20- and 50-pound bags. Let’s say they have found their animal likes a mixture of two of our formulas. They want to have a mixture of the chicken and brown rice and the salmon and brown rice and that’s the perfect sweet spot for their dog. Well instead of buying two 25-pound bags of one of each they can buy 10 pounds of each and either we will mix it for them or they’ll mix it at home. They get the exact amount that they need for their pets’ needs and their budget.

One of the things we strongly suggest is what we call rotational feeding. We really recommend that pet owners, dog owners in particular, that they rotate the main protein in their dog’s dry food. Maybe they’ll start with the chicken and brown rice and then they try the salmon or the turkey, or we have grain-free options. We have a white fish and duck option and we really recommend that they rotate those through, of course eliminating any that their pets have sensitivities to. But rotate those so the dog is constantly getting introduced to new proteins, new tastes. We love pet owners that start with a base of kibble but add broth or freeze-dried toppers, again, things to liven up the dish and also provide additional nutrients. How does Pet Wants support and advocate for its franchisees?

Once a franchise owner decides to join our network they’re immediately assigned to an onboarding coach, and that onboarding coach helps them through some of those initial phases of their business, of getting their business plan together, of understanding their market. We introduce our marketing team in that onboarding phase as well so they can really begin to dive into the specific zip codes they are targeting and what are the demographics of that area and how can they reach those consumers. They have a full week of classroom training in our Cincinnati headquarters. They get so much nutritional training, we walk through with them a full marketing plan, we talk about how to educate and pitch to customers on different things. And when they leave here, they’re ready to open. But they stick with their onboarding coach for the first six weeks after they leave training, and then they’re transferred to a franchise business coach. And this is somebody that early on will meet with them typically every other week to really go over what is going on in their business. Are we achieving the short term goals that we have set out? How can we make some adjustments and pivot a little bit if something isn’t working? Our marketing team is available to them, they leave training with a full marketing plan and launch plan. And we help them come up with what should be on that, how should they budget for it and how should they execute on it. We then have monthly training sessions with different departments in the company. We have an annual conference that is typically two and a half days of intensive training; the key relationship throughout the whole thing is with that franchise business coach. They meet with them every other week in the first 90 days or so and then typically they move to a once a month call and that’s really diving into what’s working in their business, what metrics should they be looking at, how can they make some adjustments to get better results. That relationship is really key as a business owner, to have somebody else who’s not in it every day, hold you accountable to what you said you’re going to do, to help you evaluate your results and has suggestions for ways you can make it better.

What is the ideal mix of products to achieve the ideal store?

For a Pet Wants store, our food, our private label proprietary formula food is our showcase. It’s our centerpiece. For us, both the kibble that we make and anything that accentuates the health and nutrition of that—freezedried, broth, other toppers—are all, for me, that’s the showcase piece. That to me would need to be at least 50 percent of what is carried in the store, is talked about in the store. Then the chews, that’s a great seller for us, and it can be beneficial for the pet to have different collagens and different things that they can get from a chew so that’s going to be a big chunk as well. Supplements are a smaller percentage but can be really important. CBD products for anxiety or hip and joint pain, different enzymes that can help with digestion are going to be a smaller percentage, but it’s really important. And then finally it’s the fun stuff. It’s the toys, the leashes, the bakery cookies treats, things like that would be the smallest percentage but they’re still important to our customer. Our stores are typically going to be a much smaller footprint than your big stores and so it really forces our franchise owners to make very specific decisions about products they carry in their store because they don’t have room for everything. They really have to think about is this part of our mission of nutrition health and wellness. We don’t carry 10 of this particular thing because we’ve investigated and know these are the top three.

What are your goals and priorities for Pet Wants during 2023?

One of our top priorities is always how can we help our existing franchise owners grow their sales profitably, how can we bring more products to them not to overfill their stores or their farmers market booth but that are meaningful to the health and wellness of the pets and they can sell and make a profit on. So constantly investigating the industry being able to make recommendations to them, that’s always going to be our top priority. We do want to grow our brand. We think the space is really open for us right now, and so we would like to add 30 locations this year and we have a goal of being over 200 locations by 2025. We want to push towards that in markets we have in major cities where there is two or three or five, it really benefits them because the brand becomes much more recognized and it really helps to drive that understanding of who we are as a special type of retailer.