Positive Approach: Tacoma's Top Local Spot For All Things Dog
Take a journey to the beautiful Pacific Northwest this week and visit the evergreen state! Grandma Lucy’s Northwest Territory Sales Representative, Brooke, stopped by Positive Approach Dog Training and Daycare in Tacoma, Washington for a chat with Assistant Manager, Dawn. Positive Approach truly does it all! Offering doggy daycare and boarding, training, grooming, and all the healthiest eats for your pets, Positive Approach is dedicated to serving pets’ and pet parents’ every need. Grandma Lucy’s is proud to have Positive Approach as a retailer, and truly appreciates the compassion and education they provide to our customers and helping us on our mission for dogs to eat their way to health.
Q: How long has Positive Approach been open for?
A: “Around 25 years. The owners now purchased it [Positive Approach] …around 10 or 15 years ago.”
Q: What is your favorite Grandma Lucy’s product?
A: “I can tell you our staff loves the [Organic Oven-Baked Treats], because our staff eats the cookies! The most popular items we have here are the [Pumpkin Pouches and Simple Replacement].”
Q: What is your most popular flavor of the Organic Oven-Baked Treats?
A: “It’s a toss-up between the Apple and the Blueberry.”
Q: What is your favorite part of being in the pet industry?
A: “There’s a lot! I think it’s [mainly] just that animals are non-biased and…love people and trust[them]. [Animals] are so much better than people! Everyone here is super passionate about animals, and about dogs in particular.”
Q: What first interested you about the pet industry?
A: “I came from a restaurant background where I was dealing with people all the time…and it [was] a very stressful industry and being in customer service [and] in a management role, a lot of times you are only dealing with unsatisfied people. Coming here, people love their dogs and they’re a whole different type of people. Our customers here are amazing and they’re like family, and they do the most amazing things for our staff.”
Q: What is your favorite Grandma Lucy’s treat to hand out to dogs that first visit?
A: “I would say the [Organic Oven-Baked Treats.] They [the dogs] love them and we love trying to get their owners to taste them too! Most of them do because most of [our customers] don’t want to feed their dogs anything they wouldn’t eat themselves. That’s a big benefit for Grandma Lucy’s; having [a product] that’s human-grade.”
Q: What changes have you seen in pet parents since you first joined the pet industry?
A: “I know with COVID a lot of people have taken this time to get new pets because they’ve been home; just the amount of pet [owners] has exploded and I think that people really do a lot of research to find out what are in products and new, trending things for their animals too. We get a lot of people that ask us specifically for advice on [what] to feed their dogs and [value our input.]”
Q: What do independent pet retailers bring to pet parents that big box stores don’t?
A: “We genuinely care about [customers and their pets] and look at them as family. If somebody’s pet is hurt, we feel for them [and] we feel like they’re our animal as well. I think [our customers] really trust us; they ask for a lot of advice [and] they know we are pet owners so they know we aren’t going to sell something we wouldn’t give to our pets ourselves.”
Thank you, Dawn, and the Positive Approach team, for your time and all you do to help pet parents! Grandma Lucy’s truly appreciates your time and all that you do for the pet community; our independent retailers are the life force behind the indie pet community. If you know of a retailer we should feature, let you local Grandma Lucy’s representative know the next time you see them!