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Family values at Pet Valu
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Photos courtesy Pet Valu
By Jeff and Rhonda Riley
Even with our combined experience in retail and franchising, buying and running our Pet Valu franchise in St. Catharines, Ont., seemed like a steep challenge from the outset. Fortunately, with the support of a great staff and our community, we were able to nearly double our sales—and expand our store’s footprint—within the first two years of the business.
Jeff
I was born in Guelph, Ont., and raised in St. Catharines. We made the move when
I was four years old because my dad was a bank manager and he got transferred to a different branch. He continued to get transferred, but nearby enough that he could commute for the rest of his career, so we were able to stay put in St. Catharines.
My older brother and I grew up with pets, including dogs, fish and hamsters.
I spent my time hanging out with friends, playing road hockey and watching TV. In my teenage years and through my 20s,
I did a lot of curling.
I wanted to become the prime minister (PM) of Canada when I grew up and I was always passionate about politics. At school, I got involved in organizing events and activities. My accomplishments included getting hockey and cheerleading teams back to the school. I was even a mascot!
In terms of academic subjects, I hated English and French and enjoyed math, geography and social sciences. One realistic goal, given I was the son of a banker, was to become an accountant. I did find
I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps.
After high school, I went to Brock University—which is right here in St. Catharines—for one-and-a-half years. Then my best friend passed away and I got into a really dark place. The loss changed my focus in life.
At 20 years old, I started to work at Canadian Tire as a floor sales clerk. It was a great fit and a year later, I became supervisor at another location in Dundas, Ont. I oversaw a night crew of anywhere up to 18 people at a time.
I worked at that store for almost three years, during most of which I lived with a friend in a student house not far away in Hamilton. Next, I got a job as a day manager at another Canadian Tire in Port Colborne, Ont. I stayed at that location for two years, moving up to retail assistant manager and department manager.
It’s not uncommon for customers to bring their dogs along with them into the store.
In retail, I found I loved all of the customer interaction and constant change. I also loved trying to make every aspect of a store look polished and finished. I learned a lot of high standards from the company.
While Canadian Tire has a progression plan to help turn today’s staff into tomorrow’s dealers, I decided it wasn’t what I wanted, as the time commitment would be too much for me.
As I had a knack for merchandising,
I decided to do that on a freelance basis. I worked mainly on projects in Toronto during that stint. That was when I first got married. It didn’t work out, but we had two awesome children.
Canadian Tire hired me back again, but at the corporate level, as a field merchandiser. This involved travelling all across Canada as a project co-ordinator. I also started to help build their PartSource automotive shops, to help them compete with National Automotive Parts Association (NAPA) stores and the like, selling name-brand parts to commercial customers and people who work on their own vehicles.
Once you’re in the automotive world, it can be very hard to get out! I became a corporate store manager for NAPA out of Toronto. Then my district manager left NAPA for PartSource in St. Catharines and he offered me a job that brought me back there, again as a corporate store manager. That was when I met Rhonda, who worked at the bank.
Rhonda
While I was born in Kitchener, Ont., my family moved to St. Catharines when
I was just two years old, so I really grew up here. I loved animals, was always a pet person and wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up. My family had dogs, cats and guinea pigs over the years.
Jeff: One of the keys to Pet Valu’s success is the high quality of the food it sells. Our customers are more health-conscious than price-conscious.
As a kid, I played ringette and baseball. I wasn’t a huge fan of school, but liked math and science classes, which I followed through on after high school. I also went to St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ont., to study animal care for a year. That program is just enough to get you in as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic.
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Then I got pregnant, so veterinary school was out of the cards. I went to work for McDonald’s, which I found trained me very well in business. Specifically, I worked for a franchisee who owned six locations, which took me from Kingston to Grimsby to Beamsville and back to St. Catharines.
My career with McDonald’s lasted 15 years, the final two of which I spent in the franchisee’s offices learning the back end of the business. I handled payroll, administrative work and scheduling for his six restaurants. It was a tough business to run with many part-time employees, but I liked how the franchisor provided instructions for everything and helped us continue to develop their brand. They really helped us be as successful as possible.
I worked closely with the franchisee and his children, who were in their 30s and contributing to the business. I watched how they did everything. All of that experience prepared me for working at a bank next.
That’s where I was, working as a teller for the Bank of Montreal (BMO), when I met Jeff in 2008. He was with PartSource and would come to the bank as part of running his business. We had mutual friends who helped us connect on Facebook. Each of us had two kids. One day, the six of us went to a bird sanctuary. We started hanging out more after that and got married in 2013.
Our franchise has a great team, including store manager Lindsay (left) and dog groomer Sam (second from right).
Jeff
From PartSource, where I really developed my business-running abilities, I went on to serve as a district manager for Mr. Lube Canada’s corporate-owned stores, with a territory stretching from Windsor, Ont., to Montreal. I had met Rhonda by then and the job proved to be a tough gig, given we had a young family of four children between us.
Around 2009, however, cutbacks eliminated Mr. Lube’s middle management roles. I found myself selling automotive parts locally again in St. Catharines.
The problem I found in the automotive world is the purchases feel negative and rushed. No one wants to spend hundreds of dollars on repairs, after all. And as a result, I was becoming a negative person myself.
Shortly after Rhonda and I got married in the fall of 2013, my brother and
I decided to buy a dog for our parents as a Christmas gift. Driving back from the kennel, we stopped to buy a leash and collar at a Pet Valu store in Welland, Ont. They really wowed the socks off us! Not only was the customer service great, but they had a whole new look. I found myself awed by the wooden floors and muted wall tones—it was merchandising heaven!
I had considered working in a pet store in the past because, in comparison to an automotive shop, every purchase in a pet store is a happy one. I had applied to be a store manager for a PetSmart location and lost out to an internal candidate.
Rhonda: Since I quit my old job in September 2016, I’ve been learning everything about running the franchise. Jeff and our staff have also taught me a lot and I now handle the bookkeeping, among other duties.
Rhonda supported me looking into Pet Valu. I went on the Internet and ordered a franchise package. Three weeks later, I was meeting with the franchise co-ordinator. My discovery day was in the spring and by the summer, I had left my job to start training at the franchisor’s head office, where I learned about the back end of the business.
Pet Valu’s training program was second to none and really set me up to succeed.
I also had lots of questions for them, as my parents had owned a Mister Transmission franchise in the past. I wanted to know, for example, how my royalties would be used.
Rhonda
I loved my job at the bank. By the time the Pet Valu opportunity came along, I was a manager, running a team and striving for numbers. Jeff’s a spreadsheet guy and I’d learned from him how to do my job better at BMO. I would tell my team members, “Here are your goals and what you need to achieve.”
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When we visited the Pet Valu store in Welland, I hadn’t been to one in a long time and it looked very different. Like Jeff, I was wowed by the service, but
I also know he’s a bit of a dreamer, so when he first talked about buying his own Pet Valu franchise, I just said, “That’s nice, honey!” But he kept going with it and suddenly a franchise package showed up in the mail.
I figured I’d be working at the bank for a while yet, but once we got our pet store, I knew I wanted to eventually be part of it, too.
Jeff
At first, there weren’t any locations available in St. Catharines, which was a major problem for us. As we both share joint custody of our kids with their other parents, we couldn’t move away. We had to stay in the city.
Therapy dogs always get a free wash.
In the end, the franchisor offered me a local corporate store. It’s in the west end, which is the only place St. Catharines—which is waterlocked on three sides—can continue to expand. And it’s a new store that replaces a previous one nearby.
We’re in a plaza on Vansickle Road, which we share with Walmart, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, Mark’s, Payless ShoeSource, McDonald’s, Tim Hortons and a Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) store. There used to be a high-profile, big-box pet store here, but it closed at the end of its lease. Once it left, there was an opportunity for Pet Valu to move right across the road to this higher-profile spot. We opened on September 10, 2014, and the franchisor sent people in to help walk us through everything and get started.
This is where you want to be in town, where the growth is. There’s a new hospital that opened about four years ago. At press time, Princess Auto was set to open a 20,000-square-foot store here. The whole area has changed since we got here and just continues to grow.
Rhonda
Jeff owned his house and I owned mine. After we moved in together, I rented out mine. That gave us enough equity when we applied for our loan and Pet Valu backed us up.
As he mentioned, there was nothing available in St. Catharines at first and we weren’t about to move, but in the end he got the location he wanted. We took it over just two weeks after it was moved kitty-corner from where it had been.
With the previous spot, a lot of people didn’t know it was there. It had lower visibility. These days, however, the franchisor has been getting into bigger and better plazas and establishing a stronger presence with beautiful store designs.
Jeff
Compared to my earlier prospects in
the retail sector, Pet Valu allows me to have a life, with the freedom to come and go as I please, and enjoy better profit margins. That’s because it offers expertise, rather than a big-box shopping experience. It’s a bit like Home Hardware compared to Home Depot. We’re not just a bunch of high school kids stocking aisle upon aisle of shelves. It takes a certain level
of skill to provide customer service in a Pet Valu store.
You need a lot of product knowledge to work at or run a Pet Valu franchise.
Also, we’re only open 12 hours a day.
I feel like I’d be dead if I were trying to run a coffee shop that’s open 24-7!
Pet Valu promotes not just its own brand, but also the high quality of the food it sells. Our customers are more health-conscious than price-conscious.
I have the greatest staff in the world. Most of my employees have worked at other Pet Valu shops before, including this franchise’s previous location, so they’re already pet experts. And they’re all very open and reliable people.
My store manager, Lindsay, was formerly a corporate store employee. She might become a franchisee herself in the near future, so I’ve trained her to do everything
I do around here.
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Rhonda
With Pet Valu, customers will wholeheartedly trust your suggestions, so you need a lot of product knowledge. We have amazing staff, which is why when new customers come in our door, we usually end up keeping them.
There are always two to three people working in the store at any time. Our customers expect to speak with us in a detailed way, so you need to be ready and able to spend as much time as required with each of them.
We get all kinds of customers: single people, senior citizens, parents with kids who want to look at animals. Some pet owners come in every day just to socialize. And with our dog wash, we get them after they’ve been hiking with their dogs along the trails.
I quit my job at the bank in September 2016 and that’s when I began really learning the business from Jeff. We’re sharing hours as he teaches me. I didn’t do training at the corporate head office when he did, so I’m just now working through all of the online educational modules. This way, I’ll develop all of the skills they taught him. Our amazing staff teaches me a lot, too.
In 2016, we took over an empty unit next to us and expanded our store.
The true difference between a corporate-owned store and a franchised location is compassion for the business. In a corporate store, you hope the manager and staff will put their heart and soul into the business. And some will. But we will do that no matter what, because this business is us. And the customers notice that difference.
Jeff
My wife and kids are very involved in the franchise. We bring our dogs into the store. With our staff, we’re like a big family. We’ve all shared a traditional Christmas dinner, held a barbecue and gone to the movies together.
I also focus a lot on marketing the store through public outreach. We support the local Ontario Hockey League (OHL) team, the Niagara IceDogs, which means we get to display their logo and canine mascot at events. I carry free dog-wash coupons with me and hand them out all of the time. Therapy dogs always get a free wash. We also extend free services to all working dogs. That has helped create a huge sense of loyalty within the community. We also get involved with pet-related charity events for human societies and dog rescue groups.
The store became successful quickly. We recently expanded it less than two years after opening, from 3,300 square feet to 5,000 square feet. I’d love to go multi-unit, especially now that Rhonda is out of her bank job and into helping me run this business, but there aren’t currently any opportunities nearby and we also know this store by itself can support us well.
As Rhonda gets more involved, she will focus on bookkeeping, scheduling and event planning, while I’ll focus more on the store layout, inventory and day-to-day retail floor operations. Our sales figures are now one-and-a-half to two times what they were when we started. And I love my job every day. My wife and I know we are truly blessed people. Everything just fell into place along the way and the struggles and challenges haven’t been too bad.
We put our hearts and souls into this business and our customers notice that difference.
Rhonda
Jeff’s very good at public relations (PR) and putting us out there in the local community. It’s also awesome we can bring our kids and dogs to work with us. Our customers like seeing us with them. That’s how they know this is a family-run business.
And the kids love that we’re in the pet business. We have everything at home now: three dogs, two birds, two rabbits and even two fish tanks! Our daughters wanted the rabbits right after we got the store, where our small animal section includes them along with hamsters, birds and hedgehogs.
Every shift at the store is different and I never know what to expect. All kinds of stuff can happen throughout the day.
We originally talked about opening a second store, which I would leave the bank to run, but as there wasn’t any particular standout opportunity to buy a second franchise, Jeff instead went to the franchisor with a proposal to expand our existing store and they approved it. We had an empty unit beside us where an electronics store had closed at the end of 2014, a few months after we opened. Our expansion finished in mid-August 2016.
We’re big believers in God and we know He had a hand in this. I never thought we would enjoy this level of success in retail, but everything has just rolled along smoothly.
Jeff and Rhonda Riley are Pet Valu co-franchisees in St. Catharines, Ont. For more information, visit www.petvalu.com/location/2282.
PET VALU
Established: 1976
Date of first franchise: 1987
Franchised/corporate units: 523
Investment range: $277,860 – $575,860
Initial franchise fee: $30,000
Website: www.petvalu.com
E-mail: franchising@petvalu.com
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