THE WIZARD OF PAWS
HOW A HALIFAX PET STORE BUILT A MASSIVE CULT FOLLOWING ON FACEBOOK.
Af t er waking up and making himself a coffee one morning in 2012, Rodney Habib opened his computer and was greeted by a barrage of red notification icons.
Hi s e mai l program warned him it had reached maximum capacity. His Facebook notification counter, meanwhile, simply read “99+." Scrolling down on his timeline, he started to realize that “99+” was a massive understatement.
The night before, Habib had arranged all the i ngredients in a bag of commercial dog food on white plates, including corn gluten meal, chicken byproduct and dye colouring. He took a picture of the unappetizing result, labelled the ingredients and posted it on Facebook.
“I kept s crolling and scrolling. It was endless. I was like, what is going on?” Habib said. “I looked down at t he counter and saw half a million shares and thought, ‘ Oh my God.’ ”
You may not have heard of Habib’s Planet Paws Pet Essentials, a small pet food store in the community of Dartmouth across the harbour from Halifax. But judging by its Facebook reach, it’s one of the most powerful brands in the country.
The Planet Paws Facebook page has about 860,000 l ikes, appearing in 110 million news feeds every six days. The Finan- cial Post could only find five Canadian brands with more Facebook likes than Planet Paws: Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Air Canada, Cirque du Soleil and Shoppers Drug Mart.
Habib is tapping into a growing skepticism of the health and safety of processed commercial pet food, which mirrors a similar trend for human food made with fresh and natural ingredients. “THE MOST DANGEROUS PET CHEW EVER: RAWHIDE!” reads one of his posts; “TURMERIC PASTE: THE POTION OF LONGEVITY,” reads the opening shot of a video.
Habib is a proponent of a raw food diet for dogs, a trend that currently represents just 1.6 percent of U.S. pet food sales but grew by 33 per cent year over year in 2015, according to market research firm GfK.
This trend runs counter to recommendations from the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Calgary veterinarian Danny Joffe co- authored a review of studies examining raw food diets for pets that found no evidence of any health benefits. He said people are right to ask questions about the food they feed their pets since the Canadian industry is underregulated, but urged them to make decisions based on science and evidence.
“People are always looking for that panacea. And unfortunately, raw food is not the panacea for pets,” Joffe said. “This whole topic, unfortunately, is like arguing about religion. You’re never going to win.”
But public health position statements and scientific literature reviews don’t have the emotional impact or massive social reach of stories about owners who believe their pets’ lives were saved after switching to raw food. For instance, Habib believes a raw diet and care from an integrative, or holistic, veterinarian in 2008 saved his first dog’s life after she got so sick from treats tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical, that traditional veterinarians recommended he put her down.
“What happened to my dog literally changed my whole life,” Habib said. “I ended up researching and learning what those treats did to her.”
At the time, manufacturers recalled thousands of pet food products contaminated with melamine, linked to ingredients imported from China. It’s unclear exactly how many pets died, but some estimates put it in the thousands.
Maria Lange, who analyzes the pet retail industry for GfK, said the melamine- tainted pet food scandal that started in 2007 sparked an interest in natural pet food that has grown from a trend to the norm, with the US$ 5.5- billion category representing 70 per cent of all pet food sales in the U. S. in 2015.
Another factor fuelling natural dog- food sales is that young people, in delaying childbirth, are treating their pets like members of the family. As a result, t hey’re more willing to spend top dollar and intensively research what to feed them, Lange said. “You care for it so much, so you want to feed it the best possible food.”
Habib has found success by feeding the growing appetite for pet food information. In a typical day, he’ ll wake up in the morning, work on his Facebook page, take his three dogs out to play at 11 a. m. and return to Facebook. In the late afternoon, he’ ll head to Planet Paws, where he usually remains until 10 p.m.
Habib said he runs the Facebook page entirely on his own, which i ncludes making all the content he posts. His infographics and videos are impressively high in quality, especially considering he’s working on his own with no formal training.
For all his hard work, Habib doesn’t make any money from the Facebook page directly. He said he’s committed to keeping it free from ads, despite getting pitches from people trying to convince him to post their “offers and marketing gimmicks” every day.
He also spends about half an hour each day preparing meals for his dogs from local, ethically raised meat, organic vegetables, oils, nuts and seeds. “It’s called slow food. It’s how our parents and grandparents ate,” he said.
Habib said he gets about 250,000 Facebook messages each week from people around the world asking questions about pet nutrition, including where to buy the products he blogs about. He’d like to launch an online store so he can ship his products across the country, since sales are currently confined to people who can visit Planet Paws in person, but he’s being kept busy enough with the store and the Facebook pages.
Planet Paws has four employees and Habib said sales have been growing every month since he opened it in 2012 — so quickly that he couldn’t say by how much. “I need to hire an accountant,” he said.
Habib recently migrated the Planet Paws Facebook page to the social network’s Mentions app, which is only available to verified celebrities and public figures. And make no mistake, in this corner of the world, he is a celebrity. Facebook even invited him to speak at an event last year, where he gave tips to other business owners on using Facebook effectively.
“If you want to be able to reach all the people in the world, then you have to go to where all the people in the world are,” Habib said. “And Facebook is the biggest platform in the world. There’s nothing bigger.”