an ode to pet food express
(this was originally written as an assignment in the cca dmba Market insights course taught by Steve DILLER]
When I first adopted my cats a year ago, they had every shelter disease you could name. Despite the cats needing a lot of support and supplies, I absolutely despised going to most pet supply stores. They were confusing and disorganized, and most of the time there wasn’t an employee in sight to help a customer parse through the 80 varieties of wet food stacked on the shelf. I was overwhelmed. Pet Food Express, a local chain of pet supply stores based in Oakland, CA changed that. They don’t sell anything too different from your average Petco or Chewy.com, but the experiences that they provide in giving you that same bag of dry food are remarkable. Hereafter I will refer to Pet Food Express as PFX (pronounced “pffks”), my shorthand nickname for my favorite pet store.
Justice/Duty/Accomplishment
I was initially introduced to PFX through the Rescue that I adopted the cats from. Along with the two bedraggled kittens, I was handed a signed voucher that the person running the rescue urged me to use. Why? By using the voucher, and buying whatever scratching posts and flea meds and kitten foods generally encouraged, a portion of the sale would be donated back to the Cat Rescue. I was skeptical at first, but when I pulled out the voucher at the cashier, they erupted into excited questions about the adoption: where the cats came from, how old were they, if I had a picture, what their names are?! I’d never felt celebrated for using a coupon before, beyond the internal capitalistic glee of saving a couple bucks. But by associating that initial pet supply purchase with a charitable act towards the organization that brought me my newly beloved pets, I was able to build a relationship with PFX based on a sense of Justice & Duty to the cats’ rescuer, through the Accomplishment of getting all the supplies the kittens would need for a new happy life in my home.
Security
Pet Food Express has locations throughout the Bay Area, with the largest concentration of their locations in East Bay and near public transit. This meant in pre-COVID times, that no matter what horror my schedule evoked, I could still fit in a quick trip to PFX on my way home without having to reroute. And if the schedule absolutely did not oblige, their online ordering for same-day scheduled delivery made sure that the cats’ yelling at dinnertime was always met with their favorite canned chicken.
In the immediate COVID shutdown aftermath, PFX continued their dedication to reliability by being one of the first stores to take orders at the door and shuttle products out to your car trunk to minimize contamination. Seeing the care taken, not just to make sure that customers were taken care of, but also that employees could be safe at work emphasized the multifaceted experience of the idea of “Security”.
Community
My favorite part of going to PFX is decidedly not hauling a 40-lb bag of litter pellets that makes the apartment smell like pine forest, or even to get some whimsical new toy. My absolute favorite part is getting to see all the other animals: dogs coming into the pet wash to get de-grimed, senior cats and eyes-barely-open kittens coming in for vaccinations and checkups. It’s the feeling of being a part of a community of pets & pet guardians all along the process, newbie to multiple pet veteran.
PFX also culturally seems to encourage employees to truly go out of their way to help, and to remember a frequent customer! This has meant that when I’ve been in the sad spot of staring at the flea shampoo aisle, an employee has always come up to me to console me in my woeful state, and gently guide me to the differences between the provided options.
Truth
As I mentioned before, Pet Food Express doesn’t offer a particularly different or specialized product offering, when compared to your Chewy.coms and Petcos of the world. What they do provide is a curated offering of foods, toys, beds and pet goods that are vetted for quality and healthfulness. As a shopper, this is encouraging as I don’t have to worry about quality if I decide to try out a new food for my cats. This dedication to quality and honesty is backed by their extremely open & forgiving attitude on returns & exchanges. Considering any pet toy or good will likely be dirtied, slobbered on, or torn apart just in testing if they’ll like it, PFX takes returned goods in nearly any condition, no questions asked, as long as you still have the receipt.
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Photo by okeykat
Sources
https://nathan.com/making-meaning/