🚨 Bark Air is launching flights for dogs for less than $1K

Flights from NY —> FL starting Feb ‘25

THIS WEEK'S TOPICS:

• 🤝 $4M+ borrowing people’s dogs

• 🍽️ The first fine-dining dog restaurant

• 💼 A look into pawffice culture

 🤝 $4M+ BORROWING PEOPLE’S DOGS

Over in London, BorrowMyDoggy is reshaping the pet care landscape.

Founded in 2012 by Rikke Rosenlund, this simple startup idea has grown into a thriving community of over 1M members across the UK and Ireland, connecting dog owners with local dog lovers.

The concept is brilliantly simple yet effective: match dog owners needing care and/or socialization with people craving canine companionship.

This approach solves dual problems - providing care for dogs when owners are busy and offering dog-time to those unable to own pets full-time.

BorrowMyDoggy's success is evident in its steady growth.

Since raising £1.5 million through crowdfunding in 2015, the company's estimated annual revenue reached $3.9 million by 2019.

With its unique subscription model - dog owners paying £48.99 (~$60) and borrowers £12.99 (~$16) annually - potential revenue could now range from $6.5 million to $24.5 million, assuming a mix of free and paid accounts.

The platform's affordability sets it apart from traditional pet care services.

While dog boarding and sitting can cost between $10 to $60 per day, BorrowMyDoggy offers a cost-effective alternative.

Member stories highlight the platform's impact as well...

Clare, a dog owner, shares how BorrowMyDoggy connected her with Neille, whom she calls "Uncle Nellie".

After losing his granddog, Neille found a new purpose by walking Clare's Golden Retriever, Bobby.

Their connection even led to a charitable walk in memory of Clare's father.

The platform's success has opened doors for similar businesses globally.

Trusted Housesitters (who we’ve covered before), for instance, has taken the concept international, connecting pet owners with sitters worldwide with a focus on overnight stays.

This trend suggests a growing market for peer-to-peer pet care services beyond the UK. China & India currently have the fastest growing pet populations.

As urban populations grow and pet ownership becomes more challenging, services like BorrowMyDoggy fill a crucial affordability gap.

The potential for similar platforms in other countries is significant, especially in areas with high pet ownership rates and busy urban lifestyles. Not to mention the shift of workers going back to the office in the US.

However, challenges remain.

Building trust in a community-based platform is crucial, as is ensuring the safety of both pets and people.

BorrowMyDoggy's success in implementing verification processes and insurance coverage provides a crucial blueprint for future marketplaces.

🍽️ THE FIRST FINE-DINING DOG RESTAURANT

When you picture dog friendly dining, you probably think of somewhere that you order at the counter and then go sit on the patio with your pup.

For the most part that is the extent of it. But recently in San Francisco a couple decided that dog friendly could mean a restaurant FOR dogs.

So check out Dogue, a food company that offers not only fresh packaged food, but also has a cafe that offers a tasting menu for dogs to celebrate special occasions or just cause.

Now yes, this is the most San Francisco thing ever, but they boast a 4.5 star rating on Yelp and as you can imagine have received a ton of media attention.

The shop is the brainchild of Rahmi Massarweh and his wife Alejandra.

Rahmi is a professional chef who trained in classical french cuisine. The couple always knew they wanted a dog, so reasonably settled on getting four instead.

Early on their first pup Grizzly wasn’t very into his food, and Rahmi decided to use his food knowledge to provide him with fresh, seasonal options.

As many entrepreneurs we’ve covered, the couple took the unique thing they were doing and started offering it to others. 

First off it was just fresh prepared food, but after a few years they decided to add their retail / restaurant location.

The restaurant portion is reservation only and offers a multi-course tasting menu for a pricey $75.

You’ll find dishes like organic, raw steak with fermented carrot and beet powder.  For dessert you may get an antelope heart tart or a venison cake ball.

You can tell that Rahmi approaches the food like a high end human restaurant, both in preparation and in presentation.

There are of course a lot of different reactions to a dog restaurant that charges 75 bucks for a tasting menu.  Words like “bougie”, "unnecessary", “ridiculous”, and many others get thrown around.

Despite that, Dogue boasts 23k followers on Instagram, continues to get press coverage, was on Shark Tank, and still has customers for the restaurant and shop. 

So there is a desire out there.

And while a fine dining restaurant for dogs is new, we’ve seen restaurants for humans start to cater more and more toward their four-legged clientele. 

Michelin starred restaurant Angler (also in SF) recently added a 2 item menu for dogs that join them on the patio, and the concept of the “yappy hour” has sprung up across the country.

💼 A LOOK INTO PAWFFICE CULTURE

We often write about trends we see in the dog industry to help take advantage of opportunities for the entrepreneurial minded folks out there.

Today however we have something that is not a trend that we think should be more of a trend.

And that is pets in the workplace.

The idea of pets in the workplace is not something that is new, but we think there are some strong indications that this opportunity's time has come

The Signs

It's estimated that 11% of workplaces allow pets currently, so there is a LOT of room for growth. It used to be even lower, but slowly that number has crept up to where it is now.

If it's so low, do people really want animals in the workplace?

We think so.

According to some survey data we found via Petco and a variety of other sources, the demand is there but not the supply:

• Over 50% of employees believe that allowing animals at work would improve job satisfaction and work-life balance

• 80% of people feel less anxious when their pet is present at work

• 70% of employees would take a pay cut to have animals at work

• Of employees that work in pet friendly offices, 90% report feeling a strong attachment to the companies mission compared to 65% at workplaces that don't

• 53% of employees would consider leaving their current company for one that allowed dogs in the workplace

The Ideas

But first let's address the elephant in the room, this is a HUGE undertaking for a multitude of reasons:

• 🤧 Allergies - Some (unfortunate) people are very allergic to dogs. Can't just say "sorry Gary, deal with your windpipe b/c the dogs are here"

• 🥊 Dogs don't always get along - No one wants to be in the middle of a dog fight, or have their workplace turned into a turf war

• 💩 Poop - No need to ellaborate

• 🏠 Space - Where are they going to go? Do you have a separate section of the office for the dogs or people who want to bring their dogs?

• 📄 Company policies - There is likely a bunch of policy and liability work that needs to be done to even take a sniff at this possibility

These are very significant hurdles and is the reason that the full on dogs in the office idea is going to be pretty challenging to pull off.

However, if you are a company exec or owner, you are going to get some big benefits if you are able to provide some sort of solution.

You will retain employees longer, you can entice people back to office, you can hire better talent, and you could see better performance with increased job satisfaction.

So how could you take advantage of this?

We've got a few ideas of different scale:

Full on in-office pets

This one's the hardest but the best. Let people bring their dogs in!

Whether you allow this at your company, or you offer a service to develop and roll this out for companies there is likely a good appetite for it.

Some things we'd consider:

• Survey employees - you don't want to spring this on people and you want to know who is in, who is allergic, who would take advantage of this, etc.

• Be able to have a dedicated floor or space where people who want to bring pets in can (you’d need enough office space)

• Write up some policies for what owners need to do to qualify.  Likely waivers, clear rules for what would cause a dog to be disqualified, etc., etc.

Some of the big guys like Google and Amazon allow this so there is a well known precedent.

Support dogs

This would be a lot more feasible and already exists in the form of Pet Partners, but the idea is that you provide therapy dogs that you could routinely bring to businesses during specific times.

This helps remove a lot of the hurdles of around people having to police their own dogs, worry about space, and a bunch of other issues.

This would be a great program that companies could provide to boost employee satisfaction.

Attached doggy daycare

This is probably better done by the company themselves, but the idea here is to have a doggy daycare attached or very close to the workplace. 

This way employees could travel to work with their pups and visit them during the day.

This could be a full on perk to help bring people back to office or a subsidized service.

If you wanted to try and provide a service like this to companies and you own a daycare, you could look to provide transportation at a cost to the company and then charge the employees for the daycare services (maybe a bulk discount for employees?).

DOGGYDEX™

Winner 🏆: BITCOIN

Proudly introducing the DoggyDex™, an index comprised of 10 publicly traded companies whose primary focus is the dog/pet industry.

List of tickers used can be found at the very bottom of the newsletter.

The yellow line-plot in the chart represents these companies above (DoggyDex™) and their combined performance against both the S&P 500 and Bitcoin on a weekly basis.

Pawformance is measured by % gains & losses.

• 🏄 Surfing Pug: Check this pug catching a wave and busting a 180 on the board.

• ✒️ Dog + Human = Tattoo: Tattoo artist Shani tattoos a client’s 13yr old Corgi/Pittie/Heeler mix, where she combines her pets face with a human body.

• 🥹 A song about a girl and her dog: Brittany Moore plays an original acoustic song about her dog’s impact on her life.

• $CHWY - Chewy: E-commerce platform for pet supplies

• $IDXX - Idexx Labs: Vet point of care instruments and vet software

• $FRPT - Fresh Pet: Pet food company

• $ELAN - Elanco: Manufactures pet disease prevention products

• $PETS - PetMeds: Online pet pharmacy

• $ZTS - Zoetis: World's largest producer of meds and vaccines for pets and livestock

• $TRUP - Trupanion: Pet insurance company

• $WOOF - Petco Health & Wellness co.: Pet health & wellness company

• $BARK - BarkBox: Subscription service providing dog products, services, and experiences

• $PET - Wag! Group Co.: Tech platform that allows pet owners to connect with industry professionals for services such as, walking, training, etc.