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Jaymie Crook didn’t start off thinking he would be an entrepreneur. He married one.
But even the two of them couldn’t have guessed that their luxury dog kennel would branch off to a dog cookie empire stretching across the United States.
Co-Founder of Bosco and Roxy, Crook has had to learn entrepreneurship on the go; from pivoting during a pandemic, and building a corporate culture, to taking the leap to expand operations - this episode has all of that and more.
The Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
Eric Morse
You're listening to the entrepreneur podcast from the Western Morissette Institute for Entrepreneurship, powered by Ivey. My name is Eric Morse, and I will be your host for this episode. Jamyie Crook didn't start off thinking he would be an entrepreneur, he married one. But even the two of them couldn't have guessed that their luxury dog kennel would branch off to a dog cookie Empire stretching across the United States. Co-Founder of Bosco and Roxy, Crook has had to learn entrepreneurship on the go from pivoting during a pandemic, and building a corporate culture to taking the leap to expand operations. This episode has all of that and more. You didn't start out as an entrepreneur, this was something you kind of came to with your wife and but tell us like how did this journey begin? Did you always want to run your own business? Or did this just kind of happen?
Jaymie Crook
Yeah, there's no question. So Michelle is my wife. We've been married for over 30 years. We're actually highschool sweethearts. So from as, as long as I remember, she's been "I want to be a boss." That was her complete explanation for entrepreneurship. And she did went through a bunch of iterations, she made curtains and throw pillows and she was really the entrepreneurial driver in our relationship. And I was a first responder, a public servant and, and I loved my job. And she got to a point where it's just like, I want to do something that that is for myself. And that kind of launched the the pet business.
Eric Morse
Okay, so tell us how you started in the pet business. And then we'll get into kind of how Bosco and Roxy's really took off.
Jaymie Crook
Sure, yeah. So we built a dog boarding facility, we had gone away to get married, and we left our two dogs with a with a local kennel. And when we came back, our dogs were just not the same, they were altered. And we thought we could probably improve on this model. And how do we do that? Give people peace of mind, you know, while they're away, because more and more dogs are, you know, they, they would leave their dogs in places that they weren't happy with. And, and and that was kind of the impetus for for dog care.
Eric Morse
Yeah, this is this is not your typical kennel. This is like a luxury resort for dogs. TVs and couches and I mean, this is a little different. And cookies on occasion I understand.
Jaymie Crook
Well yeah, so the dogs in our care, we are always looking for incremental revenue in between dog walks and grooming. It was my wife would bake some treats and we'd celebrate birthdays with dogs and so on. And so we'd find that the customers were wanting to take home doggie bags of these treats. And that's kind of where Bosco and Roxy's launched it's like, could we could we offer these treats to to a wider market?
Eric Morse
So as clients came in, they were always asking about the cookies. Like where's the cookies? And AHA light bulb went off, I think and so, you know, pretty much an overnight success 10 years in the making?
Jaymie Crook
Yeah that's right. Exactly. We were making cookies on our kitchen counters 13 years ago. And, you know, we were not, not bakers. I remember sitting in the kitchen, and we were wondering why the cookies weren't rising. And you know, I'm on Google, and how do you make cookies rise? What do you use, like, we really had no clue what we were doing in terms of baking, we just had the vision and our cookies are very different. They're their celebration based. They're holiday based and seasonal. And so we know that people celebrate with their dogs just like their children. And so Christmas and Valentine's and Thanksgiving and all those. That's how we kind of market our treats as they're, they're a fun celebration.
Eric Morse
Yeah and if any of you were thinking dog cookies, like the old milk bone, that's not what we're talking about here. These look like human cookies, they're celebration with another member of your family. They they actually taste pretty good, too but we'll get to that later. Some of you know me are laughing already. Um, I know there were some tough times as you came through COVID. And there was some pivots that you had to go through, can you can you kind of walk us through some of those pivots? And how, ultimately, as you know, the market really took off then as well.
Jaymie Crook
It did, I think, you know, fast forward, we were, we were a pretty decent sized company getting 200-300 orders a week from independent pet stores across Canada in the US. And I boy remember that fateful week with COVID and everything kind of ended. We went from that many orders to five or six in a week, and we really thought we were we were done. And Michelle and I it was a Wednesday night. I remember it very clearly. And we had a meeting the next morning at 930. And we were going to let everybody go there was no choice. And, you know, Michelle's fading asleep on the couch and I shake her and I say, Michelle, we're a bakery. We're not just a Dog Bakery. We're a commercial bakery with all of the fixings and people are going to need food. Stores are closing, restaurants are closed, we can do something. And so instead of firing everybody, next morning, we went in and said, Look, we're bakery, I need to taste bread by three o'clock this afternoon, we're going to make muffins. We're going to make bread. And it really evolved. And if anybody can tell you that they can't stand a website up in four days, they're not being truthful, because we did that.
Eric Morse
Yeah, very cool. And so you went through, what, six to six months to a year that way and then pivoted back to dog treats as that market just exploded for you.
Jaymie Crook
Well, it did. Yeah, it. It ran from March till actually just till June. Yeah, it was just a few months. But we brought other you know, a lot of the vendors at the market, you know, Uncle Ben's Pizza and the Perogi Ladies, they all went to zero as well. So we had them make product for us. And we went, it's called drive up bakery. And then the USA market treated COVID Very, very differently. And so there was still a lot of demand for our products. And, and then boy, when the lights came back on, they were like blinding.
Eric Morse
And so one of the things that you've done recently is just moving to a brand new factory and serving a number of clients out of the US. And that's really fueled fueled your growth. Tell us about that decision to buy a new building. I mean, it's state of the art, robotics, it's amazing. You know, what went through that thinking?
Jaymie Crook
Well in a word terrifying. No question. Our our bakery was 27,000 square feet. And we were probably at about 120 130%. capacity, we started to get to the point where we were losing money on every cookie we made, because it was just, you couldn't walk to people shoulder to shoulder anywhere in the building. So it was really becoming inefficient. And we knew we had to make a move. And COVID provided a really great year, which provided some really great financial statements. And we took those to the bank and they said, let's, let's help you build this building. So we built an 81,000 square foot brand new food facility.
Eric Morse
Very cool. And what volume are you making now? And what you know, is kind of the vision for a couple of years down the road.
Jaymie Crook
Yeah you know, we're we're making, of course, millions of cookies would probably make 25 to 30 million cookies this year. And these cookies they sell individually for two to $3. Generally, you buy them like you'd buy a candy bar at checkout. And we're shooting for, you know, well past 80 million in this facility before, hopefully, I have to build anything more.
Eric Morse
Cool. And like I said, these are they look like human cookies. And in fact, they taste like human cookies and muffins. And I've been in the facility with a couple of tours. And you go in and it smells like a bakery, like immediately get hungry and you're starting to look at these things you're going that's frosting right on top of that cookie, do you mind if we eat one and we're on the end of a with a bunch of executive MBAs going through this tour looking at the facility and logistics and everything else. And mostly they just want to try the cookies. But they're really quite good. And they use it's all you know, food grade materials coming in one end and barley and all kinds of things. It's really an amazing thing. To see this for a, you know, dog cookie factory. And then you get to the robotics where, you know, I think this was another pivot that you guys did you just couldn't get enough labor that was willing to do the decorating and had to make a decision on that. Can you? Where did you find robots that would do this type of thing?
Jaymie Crook
Well that's it. So my wife trained every decorator we had. And at one time, we had 40 people that were trained by my wife to decorate these cookies. And we were writing things, you know, happy birthday in cursive and they don't even teach cursive anymore. So how do you how do you write that on these cookies, and it's a good boy, good girl. And all these funny sayings are all on these cookies that we decorated with and you just couldn't get enough people. And of course they need breaks, and they get sick and they have childcare issues. And so how could we consistently produce cookies? So we did some and I know very little about robotics, but we did. So I started with research. I know a lot more now, thankfully. But I had this it's called a cobot, which is a robot can work right beside you without knocking your head off because it's pretty safe unit and I thought maybe if this cobot handed the decorator the cookie, we could speed them up because the typical decorator was doing about five to 700 cookies in their entire shift. And so times 40 People that was our maximum output didn't matter what we did. And so I went to a robotics trade show in California and met. I went into a booth that did robotics had look, I'm trying to decorate these cookies and he pointed to a guy and he said, This is the world renowned expert on cookie decorating you need to talk to him, and he happened to be a Canadian and he was from the Vancouver area. So I spoke to him and we made a deal. And now we have three of his robotic lines, and each line can produce about 3000 and cookies an hour.
Eric Morse
And waterjets cut the cookies, although I understand you're moving away from that, maybe?
Jaymie Crook
Well my wife doesn't like it. So definitely moving away from it, don't need to call a vote.
Eric Morse
But it's it really is an amazing factory. And if, if you ever have the opportunity to tour take it up, cause it's, it's really a great learning success story and congratulations on that, Jamie, you just brought something up, you know, with with Michelle, and it's tough to be, you know, partners with your spouse, and can you can you walk us through I know, it's, you know, really worked out fantastic. And, you know, how important is that partnership for you?
Jaymie Crook
Well, I think it's been everything. I know that a lot of people that are on entrepreneurial journeys, it's, it's pretty lonely. And it's a solo, you know, it's just seems to be a one person event and a lot of cases. And so it was really nice to, to have that partnership. And, and I think the reason we're still married, is because we don't duplicate our skills. And, and we've actually formalized that we've hired an HR consulting firm, because we got to hire some higher level executive people in our company, and we want to examine our culture and hire people into our culture to improve our chances of getting the right fit. And so we've Michelle and I have gone undergone tons of testing. And what we've known all along is we're completely opposite from each other. But now it's it's recorded and down. But ultimately, I think that's why we've done so well as an entrepreneurial partner is that I can't do what she does. It's worked.
Eric Morse
And now your daughter is joining the business as well, which is pretty cool.
Jaymie Crook
Yeah it's amazing. And to some small degree, my son, and we have, we have two kids. And we I think we went Extra Heavy on not making them feel the pressure to join our company, to go and do their own thing. And so apparently, the only place you can become a qualified teacher is New Zealand. It's what my daughter told me. So you got to go to New Zealand to become a teacher. And that's what she said, Dad. So we sent her to New Zealand. And she came back and now she's a member of the Ontario Teachers College but she turned down a full time job just a couple of weeks ago to stay working with us, and we're launching a relaunch of our direct to consumer model.
Eric Morse
Well if she convinced you she had to go to New Zealand, I think she's pretty smart. You need to get her in a business. Well done. All right. We're gonna open it up to questions from anyone in the audience. And we'll see from them. Yeah, go ahead.
Student Question
Thank you so much for sharing your story. Can you elaborate a little bit before your scale? Like, how do you actually go to market? Like, how do you labs like your investors or your partners to trust in you? And how did you build a trust over time?
Jaymie Crook
Yeah this is I mean, this is an interesting story. And I, I read an article just in the, in the paper the other day, where there's a book coming out where a mix of of great entrepreneurship and luck combined seem to be a recipe for a great outcome. And 2009 There was a real food adulteration scandal in China, where a lot of food proteins for dogs was sourced caused a tremendous amount of illness, and this massive rush to onshore consumables in the pet industry. And so I always say that, first of all, I was the salesman back then. But I always say that it takes a really good salesman to sell a really crummy product. And our product was fantastic. So you didn't need me to be really good at selling. I just really answered the phone. And then it was like, Hey, this is PetSmart. We source our stuff overseas, and we want to source it here in North America. And I'm like, Okay, how many cookies do you need? So it was really, that kind of, and then the other phone would ring and it'd be Petco. And that's really where it started for us. So it wasn't, it was like a lot of luck. Unfortunate luck for that case, however, you want to talk about food adulteration. But that was really a launch that was in 2009 2010.
Eric Morse
And you guys were ready to take advantage of the opportunity when it came and, and jumped in there. Yes. It's always good to be an order taker when you can be (Yes, Yes, indeed). Fantastic. We have one over here.
Student Question
Yeah, thank you for a great presentation is really insightful. So I've been learning a lot about operations in school. So just wondering about how your scars are starting to scale your business and starting scale production. Like what are some biggest, biggest challenges that comes out with that?
Jaymie Crook
Well, yeah, I mean, I always believe that and this isn't a surprise to anybody. entrepreneurialism is just a series of problems. That's all you have is problems and your ability to solve your problems is your greatest asset. And I think that's probably my biggest contribution to our entrepreneurial journey. But when it came to the company got to a certain size and, and Eric doesn't prod me to say this at all, but Michelle, and I felt the company kind of slipping from our fingers a little bit in terms of what our capabilities were. And Michelle and I, we like rock, paper, scissors, somebody is going back to school. And I won or lost, she was happy to not go back to school. But I did. I went and got my executive MBA at Ivey, I graduated in 2017. And that really tooled me up. And I really, in my confidence in operations and solving problems, went to another level with that, that experience. So that's really how I'm able to operate a company that has 220 employees now is is just the confidence that came from that process, no question.
Eric Morse
And I, you know, I should add, they really take care of their employees. One of the first things you see when you go in is just a great common area. Well, you have to go through the Gift Store first. Yeah, the fact once you get through the bakery, you know, it's a common area kitchen for the employees. And just beyond that, as a fully decked out gym, like completely, anything you would want is in this gym. It's really fantastic. And so I know you're kind of on the fringes of town. And it was a bit of a challenge to get transportation out that way, for a little while. But that seems to have finally rectified itself. And you have a bus that stops up front.
Jaymie Crook
So yeah I definitely I didn't understand the the transit challenges that the city was having getting buses out to the industrial areas. I kind of just walked into this hornet's nest, and I'm like, "Hey, we're moving to an area that doesn't have busing. So guys, when's the bus coming?" And everybody said, Well, we've been looking for that for 10 years. And I'm like, Okay, I need one by Wednesday. And everybody's like, and so I called, reporter from London Free Press, and I said, Look, we're going to fire 50 employees tomorrow, unless they have a way to get to work. And it hit the Free Press. And within 24 hours, I had that bus on Wednesday. And I was just completely shocked. I don't know what I walked into.
Eric Morse
It was in the news for a while if anyone was following, so yeah, well done. Yeah, it's it's normally a 10 year process and lots of approvals. Yeah. Do we have a one or two more questions? Yeah. At the back there.
Student Question
How were you able to kind of take that first step you mentioned being in on like, on the shelves is really important? How were you able to kind of break in and get your foot into the door when you went from a smaller business to, you know, a bigger business. And then the second one is, when I'm shopping for my dog, I see like a million different brands on the shelf. So how are you able to overcome those challenges in terms of the competition for your business?
Jaymie Crook
Before I forget, I love to do this in a crowd to put up your hand, if you have a dog, it should be about 38% of you without counting your head. That's the market we're addressing, it's larger than people that have children under 18. So it's a strong market, and it's getting stronger and, and how we grew is, is really one at a time. A lot of people like to use I find a lot more in American companies that they think distribution is the is the Holy Grail and find a distributor, they have 1000 customers, and they're gonna introduce you to all these guys. And we rejected that model in favor of just kind of catching them one at a time convincing one store at a time that they should carry our stuff. And then, you know, nobody seems to have just one store, they have five stores. So then you get a chain of 80 stores. And then the big box guys, they always want to look like a small boutique store. So you get a big box buyer that wanders through a boutique store and sees the cookies. Next thing you know that buyers calling you and saying I had a conversation with Walmart, less than 1% of the people who apply to Walmart get actually listed on the shelves. And when I asked her I said What are my chances? And she said pretty good considering we called you. So that's that's really the path and your second question... (How do you differentiate on the shelf) Differentiate? Yeah, so we are a niche in the pet treat because I think the pet treat to portfolio and the dog food portfolio, it's like a Bloodsport. It really is tight and competitive. But we we function outside of that if you go to Pet Smart in Canada, I call it the treat wall of death. And you'll see every single treat there that goes to die in the competitive world that is dog treats. And we're on a stand sitting out in front of that all by ourselves. Because you can buy a treat for your dog's birthday and then get a bag treat from the wall of death. We don't really I don't see ourselves as competitors to that treat business. I see. I see it as like a niche of the pet treats.
Eric Morse
Every time I've seen it. It's always been at the POS or at the point of sale. Right up there next to the register. And you know, it's kind of a last minute Oh, yeah, that'd be cute to take one of those home with me. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic.
Student Question
Just wondering Why and how did you decide to pivot from the bakery and COVID that you've found success in back to dog treats where before you were doing well, but not as well as the bakery?
Jaymie Crook
Yeah, if I left that impression, I wouldn't I wouldn't say we did better with the human bakery stuff, but it kept the lights on, kept my staff. No not, you know, wondering when the hammer was going to fall. A lot of people around that time were saying, you know, am I gonna have a job tomorrow. And I was able to go in and say, look, we got to focus on cinnamon bread, and muffins and cookies, and some of this us stuff. And it really was a tremendous morale booster more than anything more than the money, I think we made in three months, you know, $60,000 with a payroll of 300 or 200 people or 150 people at that time, that wasn't paying the bills. But when the lights came back on, for the companies that let their staff go, they had to get them back. We didn't we just hit the ground running, we transition again, back to pet streets, we preserved all our staff, and we were really able to take advantage of the of the resurgence very quickly. So it was a fantastic. And we were also in our back of our minds, we were worried that that the decorated dog treat business was not going to be an essential service, and that we thought the Ontario government was going to shut us down. And so we're like, Okay, well, if we were a, an essential human food producer, then we would we insulate ourselves a little bit.
Eric Morse
Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. But of course, that's what was going on at the time. Yeah, nice move! The Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Quantumshift 2008 Alum Connie Clerici and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group. To ensure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player or visit entrepreneurship.uwo.ca/podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.