We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marcy Lambert-Pellegrino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marcy below.
Marcy , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
The idea was bopping around in my mind ever since my first and second Labrador retrievers had passed away of cancer, which left my family heart broken. After some time had passed, my family and I adopted Barkley, our Silver Lab. Barkley has environmental/food allergies and a sensitive stomach. We made a concerted effort to feed him hypoallergenic food/treats with top notch ingredients. I knew that I could not be the only person that pondered what was healthy and all natural for our pups’ to eat.
Happily, Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® was born at this time in the Fall of 2021, where I made my homemade, handmade, beneficial dog treats for friends in the neighborhood and family. Our human grade, limited ingredient, dog cookies are all natural and irresistible for all pet parents and their four-legged best friend. Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® dog treats are made with ZERO of the following: Egg, Soy, Gluten, GMOs, Animal By Products, Wheat, Artificial Preservatives, and Dyes. And you can ACTUALLY SEE the ingredients in most of our treats and eat one yourself!!
Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® has developed 4 scrumptious biscuit snacks that even smell fresh: Natural Pumpkin Apple Bites, Diabetic Veggie Bites made with peas and carrots that you can see as well. In our Diabetic dog snacks, we use the all-natural plant, Gymnema- as it may help attack heightened sugars in diabetic dogs.
P Nutty Bites and Cheese Bites. Our mission is to provide and benefit your Fido with healthy and wholesome dog biscuit cookies across the nation whether, your pup may or may not have allergies and/or sensitive tummy. Our treats are all natural and made with the power of plants to provide vitamins and minerals to support your fur baby’s health. The Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® difference also incorporates the all-natural Superfood Dandelion Root, in which acts as a prebiotic and probiotic for a healthy gut and digestion.
I have a 20-year background in Advertising, as well as developing brands and I knew that Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® could be a household name. So immediately having my goal and mission set, the next step was developing a recognizable, welcoming brand, It is always extremely important to stay true to my Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® brand. Trade marking the name was a tad of an obstacle (laughing) considering the dog treat market is very saturated and humans today have an extremely short attention span. Getting your mission and goals to translate into an exact visual to get noticed would be a task. I knew that Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® was positively different and I was up for a challenge.
After much of my research, market analysis, and pure intuition I created the the Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® brand from logo, brand guidelines, to marketing and creative campaigns and it was time to launch!
I had gotten so much fantastic feedback from local customers! And anything negative I paid a lot of attention to create an amazing customer experience and product.
Today we are currently on Amazon.com, in stores in Tampa and St Petersburg, Florida as well as selling online at marcyspetkitchen.com. We are excited to be moving on to working with distributors to bring the Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® deliciously healthy, treats to stores near you.
Marcy , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® is so proud of our passion to support your four-legged best friend’s sensitive stomach and/or allergies with our all-natural dog treat cookies made with the power of plants. Our all natural, gluten free snacks are made superfoods, vitamins and minerals giving your furry bff an amazingly wholesome tasty treat that is sure to give you extra tail wags.
We are thrilled to be partnered with The Onyx and Breezy Foundation in NY that provides funding, help and offers various initiative to help save the lives of dogs, cats and horses!
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® was started with $300. I purchased the fresh ingredients and cute kraft bags to put our tasty treats in. I was sure to create my marketing and branding utilizing my Advertising and Marketing background. This saved me so much money, as I did all print/branding collateral, advertising campaigns on digital platforms such as Facebook and Instagram and everything in-between! As the company further developed, I was given financial help from my family to grow Marcy’s Pet Kitchen.
By the time August 2022 came around I had raised my sales by 1000% and was ready to find a partner to help fund Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® that would keep the same synergy and passion as me. In October of 2022, I met my amazing business partner that immediately took Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® to the next level. By Dec 2022 we were on Amazon and soon to be Walmart online! My business partner, as well as best friend, was the pivotal point in Marcy’s Pet Kitchen® to get my product to a wider audience.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Following the branding guidelines that I have been built for Marcy’s Pet Kitchen®, I remained consistent throughout the digital platforms of Facebook and IG. TikTok soon to follow. Consistency and Content are keys to getting followers. Talk genuinely about your product and service. Give people behind the scenes sneak peaks of your interaction, process, and product. Keep your audience engaged. And be sure to support other small businesses by tagging, liking, or sharing their posts if relevant to you.
Reach out to nano influencers as well as people with 100k followers or more. Send samples and have them tag you and share to their audience if they are relevant to your service or product as well. And ALWAYS LISTEN to your customers, industry professionals and your intuition. It will take you very far.
Contact Info:
- Website: marcyspetkitchen.com
- Instagram: @marcyspetkitchen
- Facebook: Marcys Pet Kitchen
- Linkedin: marcy Lambert pellegrino