How Woof Gang Keeps Personalized Service While Adding 200 Locations

Ricardo Azevedo, CEO of Woof Gang Bakery & Grooming, and Diego Suarez, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, have more in common than the company they lead. Both are dog owners. And, needless to say, both are pet lovers.

That shared passion extends to all of Woof Gang’s corporate employees and local franchise owners at more than 250 locations across the United States and, as of recently, Canada. After the success of the first-ever Woof Gang’s bakery — opened by Paul and Cara Allen in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, in 2007 — the company began expanding across the state and beyond.

Alongside its gourmet treats for dogs, the company started offering personalized grooming services in 2013. Today, grooming makes up a majority of Woof Gang’s business, alongside the traditional retail experience.

Diego Suarez: We’re deeply committed to the health, happiness, and well-being of pets — and to how they’re celebrated. That’s why our gourmet treats are always all-natural, made with ingredients we’d feel good giving to our own dogs. No artificial additives, ever. Operationalizing it is a labor of love, but it’s worth it because it’s what our customers expect. As pet owners, we only sell treats that we would be proud to give to our own pets. We know what it is like to want to treat your pet while ensuring what you’re giving them is good for them.

In each location, we have an iconic treats table — the cookies are wheat-free, corn-free, and soy-free. They’re great for pets but they look like human cookies. They look delicious. You can stop and smell the peanut butter. Some look like a Chick-fil-A burger or a Coca-Cola can or a taco. There are different seasonal themes, and some resemble human food. That’s a staple of the store.

We have these pink buckets — we like to call them the “Farmer’s Market.” They’re set at the level of dogs, low on the floor. When the dogs walk into the store, they smell the buckets. We’ll have a shoplifter here and there. The treats provide an experience for pet parents when they visit. And then, of course, we have all-natural bag treats, and it’s basically the same concept. It’s what makes our treats special and what makes the pet parents come back for more. When you walk into a Woof Gang, we know your dog’s name, their favorite trick, and their favorite treat. That kind of detail and care starts with what we put on our shelves.

Ricardo Azevedo: Every single one of our stores has a local ownership that manages the store for their neighborhood. That’s the only way you can have a personalized experience for pet owners and pets. It’s very hard to replicate in a large, corporate environment. Our franchisees have the freedom to bring their personality and community spirit to life through events like Yappy Hours, adoption drives, costume contests, and even custom photo backdrops.

Every store reflects the neighborhood it serves, and that authenticity is part of what makes Woof Gang feel so local and loved. Mixing that ownership structure with the franchisee being in the store, and a delivery model and experience that’s common across the board — that’s the beauty of Woof Gang.

Our universal grooming experience is designed to be less stressful for the dogs.  You don’t drop off your dog in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. Instead, you have your timeslot, the groomer comes out, they’ll analyze what the dog needs and speak to the pet parents.

Diego Suarez: Basically, we create a calm, personalized salon environment focused on one-on-one care. Each dog is scheduled with a specific groomer and receives individualized attention from start to finish — no assembly lines or rotating hands. Our salons are designed to minimize chaos, with AKC [American Kennel Club] safety-certified groomers, strict sanitation protocols, and thoughtful scheduling to reduce wait times and anxiety.

Ricardo Azevedo: The products we use are proprietary — they’re created by Hydra, one of the largest companies for dog cosmetics. We get to know the pets by name.

Diego Suarez: When it comes to catering to different locations, one of the most rewarding things I get to see when I visit stores is the owner interacting with customers. You really feel like you’re in a neighborhood pet store. Plus, stores have lots of events — for Halloween, there’s a costume contest. For the winter holidays, they go all out. They do charity events with local shelters. Our franchise owners go above and beyond for the community. We like to say we don’t serve the community; we grow with it.

Diego Suarez: Since the essence of the brand is being that neighborhood pet store, it’s really word-of-mouth and grassroots marketing that goes the furthest. We provide stores with a full marketing playbook that includes word-of-mouth strategies. This includes attending local events, hosting pop-ups, distributing flyers at dog parks and coffee shops, and partnering with nearby pet-friendly businesses. We also suggest bringing branded giveaways like treat bags or coupons, which are always a hit.

When a store first opens, there’s going to be a higher activity in that market. In addition to word-of-mouth, we see the strongest performance from going out into the community — into dog parks and other dog businesses — and also from paid social and paid search. We do super locally focused creative targeting.

Since we launched a new aggressive customer acquisition campaign via these digital channels, we are seeing a 2.5-times increase in the number of weekly average appointments for the first week, compared with stores that opened without a paid media campaign.

Ricardo Azevedo: Generally, for customer acquisition, we start creating anticipation of new stores 10 days before they open. When we do that, stores start getting bookings early. They’re holding first-time-customer offers.

Over time, our franchise owners build relationships with pet parents. When we know one of our furry friends has passed away, we send them flowers and a card to console them for their loss. And that says a lot about what the brand represents from the action standpoint.

Diego Suarez: A good example is the opening of the Beltline location in Atlanta, Georgia. It opened around two years ago in April. The Beltline is a really walkable type of area in the city, where you have a lot of bars and restaurants but also people jogging and walking their dogs. The store has a nice outdoor little space with some boxed grass. We did a whole celebration, with balloons to draw attention, and we handed out flyers. We had a caricaturist come in to draw dogs. We often do free treats for a year for the first 20 dogs that come the first day. That builds momentum. People are there and talking about it.

With paid social and search building momentum, it worked very well. We attribute that result to the multi-prong efforts of our new customer acquisition campaign on social and being active in the community.

This is more on the brand side, but last year we went to PetCon and announced a partnership with three famous dogs — Tika the Iggy, Dexter the Balancing Dog, and Akira the Black Pit — who would be picking their favorite Woof Gang treat, and then we would sell a branded treat bag with a drawing of the dog on the front. It was a big hit, and people were obsessed with the bags. They'll be in stores later this year.

Diego Suarez: Definitely Instagram and Facebook. We live in a world where if you don’t take a picture, it didn’t happen. People love posting pictures of their dogs. It makes it easy for us to leverage that user-generated content. Each location has their own social channels and their own website landing page.

Ricardo Azevedo: To me, you can never communicate enough, so we have a lot of touchpoints with franchise owners. We have a monthly webcast, which is an hour-and-a-half to two hours, where we discuss everything that’s happening that month — results, plans, market problems, and whatever franchisees need to know to operate the stores and what’s happening with our brand. Some franchise owners will present during the webcasts. And that’s the benefit of being in a franchise system — you can learn from a different range of owners who believe in the experience you’re trying to replicate. Every department also has a cadence of sending out communications, through email and other channels.

Diego Suarez: We send out monthly newsletters and provide an editorial calendar and suggested events to do in your store. We share ideas for community outreach or in-store events. For example, we regularly recommend seasonal activations — like the Yappy Hour and adoption events — and fun themed days like Pupcake Saturdays or Treat Tasting Bars. It’s about giving the store something fresh and exciting to do every month. We like to do a more involved event every quarter. It’s about brand love and retention.

When you bring your puppy in for their first groom, the store gives you a certificate that says “Puppy’s First Groom.” We also have Grooming Report Cards at some stores. Just giving the stores more ideas for their toolbox goes a long way.

Ricardo Azevedo: Many of our franchisees also attend the annual Global Pet Expo in Orlando. We have a big meeting room in our headquarters there, so we have that moment each year when we all get together. We also hold regional meetings where leadership travels across the country to meet with franchisees and understand their needs.

Diego Suarez: We’re starting to dip our toes in AI to see what works and doesn’t work. We definitely use it to complement the tools we already have. Some of what has worked well for us has been integrating AI into our reputation tool, so that stores can use AI to respond to Google Reviews. We’ve spent some time training AI on our brand voice and tone. That’s where we’ve seen the most success so far.