We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Massiel Kurwahn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Massiel below.
Massiel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I’m originally from Honduras. I moved to Florida November, 2019 with my adorable Boston Terrier name Bowie. On April 2020 I met my now boyfriend Ean . He felt in love of Bowie immediately.
We started noticing Bowie had a lot of allergies and we decided to start cooking his food . We noticed a difference on his health. So one day while we were meal prepping for him I said to Ean we should do some treats for him. That way everything is all natural.
Ean loves to cook so he started getting very creative with the recipes and adding even herbs to it. Then we kept on baking the treats and sometimes we would have left over and I would give to my coworkers.
A couple of weeks later I said to Ean hey why don’t we start selling all this? We thought the food was to complicated for us to start while the treats was easier to make and ship.
My background is Marketing and Ean has always worked on the Restaurant Industry. So I took control of the branding, website and social media. Ean took control of production and recipes.
He was very determined that we should keep our treats only 4 ingredients. Since then our cookie treats have been only 4 ingredients: Peanut ( we make our own peanut butter) , oats and 2 extra ingredients. They can be a vegetable, fruit , herb or even meat .
Massiel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We do all natural dog treats. We bake every week and everything is freshly baked. We don’t use any chemicals or additives. Our mantra: If I won’t eat it my dog won’t eat it.
Massiel Background:
I’m from Honduras. I did an MBA in Luxury Brand Management in Paris. That helped me a lot with our business. I have a clear idea how we should grow our brand and awareness.
Ean Background:
Originally from Ohio and proudly graduated from Ohio University . He has worked on the restaurant industry all his life. He opened and restaurant with his friends and also knows how to be an entertaining. He’s experience has done the production process way easier. With out his advice we couldn’t be were we are now.
Together we complement each other. We are dog lovers. We adopted a second dog her name is Cali and she has more allergies issues than Bowie. So we are working on more fun recipes for those extra sensitive dogs.
Having now two dogs with sensitive stomach and skin allergies keep use researching and working on more healthy recipes.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
Before we even started our business. We decided to do a trial box . We collected 100 dog owners that were interested in trying the treats for their dog.
We hired a commercial kitchen, 4 people to help us and we were ready to do bake. On that first production we realized the way we were making the treats we’re taking way to long. On that trial, we had a girl name Jessica and she loved our idea (because she is also a dog lover) since that day she has been baking with us and now she manage our production and kitchen 🥰
We learned so much from that day, we had so many things going wrong and we were not able to bake half of the treats we needed for our boxes.
After that day, we took notes of everything we needed to improve. We found out better way of baking. We alway say it’s not about working harder but smarter. But, it took us while to get there 🤣
We finally send our boxes and the feedback was incredible. Dogs love them and then we were had confidence on our product .
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
We started our business in this amazing market called Market for Makers. We sold a good amount and we noticed how dogs were loving the treats.
Starting our business on a busy market gave us the boost of confidence we needed. We knew since that day how longs and pet owner loved our product. We loved to see how dog parents appreciated that we bake everything our self, that it’s all natural and that we want the best for theirs fur baby’s
Since then, now we are every weekend on one of the best farmers markets in St. Petersburg Florida (Saturday Morning Market.) we are building our clientele and hope one day to be able to open a store.
We have been also since then at Market for Makers and actually this week doing for the first time the Houston market with them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bowiesbites.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/bowiesbites?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=