A Naples, Florida neighborhood pet store born from a lifelong friendship turned its simple dog treat idea into a national success story.
Wholesome Hound Natural Pet Market’s signature Just Chicken Chips dog treats have grown beyond the retailers Naples roots, becoming a recognizable brand sold to wholesalers and consumers across the country and on e-commerce platform Amazon.
“We wanted to make a single ingredient treat that was like a chip. After five years in this retail business, we had a better idea of what people wanted to buy, what dogs liked, what sold well. The whole single ingredient thing was huge at the time. So, we knew what we wanted to make,” explained co-founder Molly Havig.
Wholesome Hound was founded by Naple natives and best friends since third grade, Stephanie Zaiser and Molly Havig. The pair also big dog lovers walked away from their demanding corporate jobs and returned home- Havig leaving her career in law and Zaiser in journalism and communications.
“Fifteen years ago, I told Stephanie I was moving back home,” explained Havig, “I have my family’s here, and one of my brother’s a veterinarian had also moved back to Naples around the same time. He opened a referral hospital and had done a bunch of market research and things like that on pets and the pet industry, and I always loved dogs.”
The pair opened their pet store in 2015, a year after moving back to Naples.
“Steph kind of thought, oh, that sounds like a great thing. I think I’d like to do that too,” said Havig.
The co-founders were essentially on autopilot when they opened, knowing little about the pet industry. What began with a single freezer and a basic understanding of raw food quickly grew into six freezers. They also experimented with products and ideas shaping the pet store’s identity around Havig’s dog, who became the inspiration for the company’s logo – a dog riding a surfboard.
The shop itself creates a relaxed, beach atmosphere modeled after a boutique Havig had once visited in Atlanta, blending that design with Naple’s coastal lifestyle.
“The dog on the bike – that’s my dog – because when we both moved back [to Naples] we kind of felt like it’s different here; more relaxed, the beach, the surfboard effect,” said Havig. “It’s the brand we created. I want to be really healthy, and I want my dogs to be like that.”
When Wholesome Hound opened, the store stood on a 1,200-square-foot space but it has since expanded to 1,500 square feet at the same location on Tamiami Trail North. Wholesome Hound Natural pet market offers the full range of pet retail staples that includes toys to food and accessories.
One thing that sets Wholesome Hound from other local pet stores is their own line of dog treats. They experimented and introduced their in-house dog treats, called Just Chicken, in 2019.
“We basically started in my mom’s kitchen and had like a KitchenAid stand mixer because we were grinding things up and then putting them into chip form. So, we. got a grinder attachment for that KitchenAid mixer that my mom had and we figured out how to make it slowly but surely,” said Havig.
The pair moved their start-up manufacturing project to the back of the store until demand increased, forcing them to move treat production into a 900-square-foot warehouse in a nearby industrial area.
They refined their process by grinding human-grade chicken tenderloins bought from Publix and US Foods, forming logs and slicing them into chips before dehydrating each batch. The innovative treats quickly caught on with customers leading to orders from local groceries and other small retailers. Distribution representatives soon started knocking at their doors, but they could not scale up because they had not expanded their production operation. They eventually moved into a bigger facility and got an industrial dehydrator.
To keep up with demand, the co-founders introduced Just Chicken and Pumpkin Chips in 2023. This was followed by them introducing a new product, Just Chicken and Blueberry, last year.
“Our 16-ounce bag of regular chicken chips is the best-selling thing in our store we sell a lot,” Havig explained. “From November to May, we sell like 200 of those bags a month just in our store and the big bags probably 120 or 150 of the smaller bags. It’s just incredibly popular here. We’re just adding things into the chicken, as we grind it. We also make sweet potato because sweet potatoes its good for digestion for the dogs.”
Production costs have shaped both pricing and product size. The largest bag, a 16-ounce package that is roughly a pound of chicken, retails for nearly $50. The smaller, 3-ounce size sells for $13.73. The owners say they do not plan to offer larger sizes, citing the high costs of ingredients, labor and energy.
Beyond in-store sales, the brand has expanded its reach online through Amazon. The business also gained a major distribution partner after exhibiting at SUPERZOO last year.
Despite success on the trade show circuit, Wholesome Hound remains anchored in its original retail mission- that of providing high quality nutrition to its four-legged customers. Apart from selling their own produce, Havig says they sell other dog and cat food brands such as Raw Dynamic, Open Farm Pet and A Pup Above. Havig stressed that raw food remains a cornerstone of their business with an emphasis on smaller, independent brands the owners believe offer better sourcing.
“We sell a ton of raw food. We try to focus on the smaller brands that are smaller because I think their sourcing is better before they get huge. We’ve seen a difference in Stella and Chewy from when we used it, and we used to sell so much. It was our top selling food brand, but we’ve seen changes in it from sourcing, I mean the actual product,” said Havig.
As part of its next phase Wholesome Hound says it is looking at expanding into a more nutritional line. They are already experimenting with sweet potatoes, which Havig says offers fiber for good digestion.
“We have Yum Yum Sweet Potato and Chicken, which is a sweet potato that has dehydrated. We grind up the chicken chips, and we put the chicken dust on top and that is great for dogs,” said Havig. “My dogs will not eat sweet potatoes because they like protein, but they will eat sweet potatoes with the yum yum dust, the chicken dust on top. So, it’s great.”
By using the leanest cuts of chicken, Having said their treats differ from competitors’ products which are often greasier and break part easily. Wholesome Hound says the goal is to avoid mimicking heavily processed beef chips and instead offer cleaner, lighter alternatives.
