TASTE OF SUCCESS

GIGGYBITES, CHADDS FORD, PA

The Great Recession crushed her dog bakery and store traffic. She survived by becoming an expert on healthy premium pet food. 
BY KENNETH BURNS

Start a small retail business. What could go wrong?

Well, for one thing, the global economy could collapse.

“When we opened, it was 2007,” says Stephanie Rossino, co-owner of GiggyBites, a dog-centric bakery and store in Chadds Ford, PA. “Then everything just kind of went to hell.”

Initially the emphasis at GiggyBites was the treats Rossino had been baking professionally since 1992, as well as items like leashes, collars and toys. Other than treats, Rossino says, “We had no intention of selling food.” 

The store opened in May 2007. At first, business proceeded normally. Then it didn’t.

“Six months or eight months after we opened, we started to notice the change in the traffic,” Rossino says. “We had the realization that people aren’t going to come here for stuff they don’t really need” — meaning luxury items like baked dog treats. “We kind of had to adjust our whole plan.”

Rossini had been baking dog treats professionally since the early 1990s, when she began offering Stephanie’s Gourmet Dog Biscuits to customers at fairs, flea markets and dog events, while working full time in IT at a health care company. She expanded her home-based business to the internet and developed a national customer base. “It was kind of taking up a lot more time than just a weekend business,” she says. “So we decided to give retail a shot.”

Something else happened in 2007. That’s when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration started receiving complaints about pets being sickened by treats from overseas. “There was a big focus on the jerky treats from China that were causing all kinds of problems,” Rossino says. The reports were an inspiration. GiggyBites got into the healthy dogfood business.

“We had to turn things around, and turn (food) into a reason to shop here besides treats,” Rossino says. “So then we kind of turned ourselves into the local experts on raw food and premium diets and fresh foods and things like that.”

To learn about natural pet foods, Rossino sought help from manufacturers’ representatives. “And our distributors were very helpful with product selection and education,” she says. Her education included feeding natural foods to her own dog, a Chihuahua. “She was, I guess, 6 at the time, and she wasn’t really interested in food. But when I switched her to raw food, everything changed.”

Rossino recognized that profit margins on pet food were slimmer than on other categories. “But people would need them frequently,” she says. “So we went for the volume idea instead of the big bang.”

The new strategy worked, and the business is succeeding. Rossino even updated her bakery offerings to reflect the new focus; they now include wheat-free biscuits. When the retail space next door became available, GiggyBites expanded to 1,800 square feet, more than twice its original size — “because of the need for additional freezers,” Rossino says, “due to the volume that we were selling.”

Sounds like a dream coming true.