San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Dogtopia franchisee makes leap from hotels to doggy day care
After a decadeslong career owning and managing hotels, Deven Bhakta is digging into the doggy day care business with plans to open seven locations of the Dogtopia chain across San Antonio in coming years.
To him, it’s not such a big leap. With hotels, it’s about making the guests comfortable. Doggy day care follows the same concept, except the guests are canine.
“I felt like this was a natural fit for us. Our culture, our mission statement — they almost mirror the things we’re trying to do here. Just change from people to dogs,” he said with a laugh.
After signing a franchise agreement with Dogtopia last year, he opened his first day care center in April on De Zavala Road on the Northwest Side. Two more are set to open in December, in Stone Oak and Alamo Ranch. Another, in Alamo Heights, has a scheduled opening of early next year.
After deciding to invest in the industry, Bhakta was drawn to the Dogtopia brand because of its focus on canine wellness, he said. He points out the lack of chain-link fences in the newly opened center, the rubber floors that are easy on paws, the heavy-duty heating and air conditioning system that keeps smells to a minimum. The center has several expansive play rooms where dogs are segregated by size and temperament, as well as a grooming center. They get plenty of supervised playtime, as well as naps.
With more than 200 day care centers across the U.S., Dogtopia
is growing fast, opening several locations a week, Bhakta said. It is one of several doggy day care brands striving to establish a national presence. Another, Camp Bow Wow, has several centers in San Antonio.
Bhakta is president of ZJZ Hospitality, which operates 11 hotels in the Corpus Christi area. He relates the doggy day care business to the hotel industry in the latter decades of the 20th century, when brands such as Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express spread across the U.S., offering consumers a consistency in quality that hadn’t existed when the industry had largely consisted of mom-and-pop motels.
“That’s what we’re trying to
build — that comfort,” he said. “A place where you can bring your pet where you’re comfortable, and they’re safe.”
His agreement with Dogtopia commits him to open at least seven centers in the local market, though he could open more. He spoke of plans to operate in Boerne, New Braunfels and the Rio Grande Valley. He’s also opening stores in Denver.
Bhakta recently sat to discuss his history with dogs, the concept of canine wellness and the demographics of dog owners. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Are you a dog person? A: I grew up with a fear of dogs. When I was probably 20,
21 years old, some friends had dogs and I started getting used to them. I’m like, “Oh, these guys aren’t scary at all.” I finally got the green stamp from my wife in 2018 to go adopt a dog. We went to the the Humane Society and ended up rescuing this dog and just fell in love with her. The kids’ dog turned into mine and my wife’s dog.
Q: How did you decide to make the leap from the hospitality industry to doggy day care?
A: You know, 2020 rolled around, and here comes COVID, right? Especially in the hospitality industry, restaurants, everybody’s like, “What’s gonna happen now?” By that time, I was already trying to diversify investments and look at different things. It seemed like every week on the news it was pet-this, pet-that. Pet care, pet boarding. I thought, “Wow, this is becoming a big deal.” I first started looking at dog parktype places. You know, food and craft beer joints. I think they have a couple here in San Antonio. There are a lot of them in Dallas.
Q: How did you decide on Dogtopia?
A: They had something like 170 locations at the time. The branding and marketing that they brought in — you know, you start talking to different brands; everybody had a process to a point, but these guys had something a little bit different. They were talking about the wellness proposition of a dog. They’re talking about the healthiness. They have a behaviorist with the company that’s always studying dog behavior. Other companies weren’t doing that.
Q: Did you do anything to analyze market demand?
A:
On a business side of it, I looked at San Antonio. You’ve got the sixth-biggest market in the United States, growing every which way. Growing younger, growing more female.
Those kinds of things bode well with a business like this.
The other side of it is, sometimes the pet care industry is younger generations not having as many kids. They’re not getting married; a lot of people are living single, and they have dogs. It’s a demographic change.
Q: So the younger, female demographic is good for
doggy day care?
A: Professionals — basically, $150,000 to $180,000 household income. Your client can be anywhere from 20 to 80, right? But what we’re seeing, trend-wise, it’s a lot of executive females, a lot of singles. They have that dog, and they’re bringing in that dog five days a week, some of those folks.
Q: Tell me about how doggy day care adds to a dog’s wellness.
A: A typical dog at home gets about 5,000 to 15,000 steps a day. A day care dog gets 60,000 to 120,000 steps a day. During COVID, we all became grouchy, right? Why? Because we’re locked up at home. We’re used to socializing. Dogs are natural pack animals. They’re made to be with other dogs. If you have
your dog sitting at home all day just waiting for you, you can almost relate that to human behavior. Now, you take that dog and they go socialize once, twice, three times a week with other dogs, play around all day. It’s hard to classify a dog as happier, but people will tell you if you bring your dogs to day care, they’re happier, they’re healthier, they have more energy, they sleep better, they eat better. Some people even say their shine looks better.
Q: Do people have more dogs these days than they used to?
A: It is heavily growing. It’s funny. It’s younger people, and it’s seniors. The emotional help for our seniors — my dad’s doctor told him to get a dog. My mom told me she would not
come to my house if I got a dog. A clean freak with everything. Now she calls, she doesn’t ask about the kids, she asks about the dog.
Q: How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the doggy day care industry?
A: Dog adoptions were at a record high during COVID. Unfortunately, after COVID, the return of dogs was very high also. People decided that they didn’t want the dog anymore. Now that they went back to work, it wasn’t convenient; the kids went back to school. The shelters went from empty to full again, and now they’re back to probably about normal.
Q: So Dogtopias are opening across the U.S., right?
A:
Pretty much everywhere.
All the big markets are taken up except Southern California. Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of challenges outside of Texas in this industry. We just, funny enough, bought a store in Denver, so that’s the next place we’re going to expand. Over there, we can only have 15 dogs per employee in a playroom. There’s not a regulation like that in Texas. So once you process 16 dogs, you must have a second person in that room. It’s a state regulation. North Carolina is 10; California is city-by-city. So those have been high barrier-toentry markets because of some of the rules and regulations. A lot easier being in Texas.
Q: Are all of the Dogtopia locations franchises?
A:
A private equity group bought the entire company — in 2019, I believe. They’re developing the northeast coast — New York, New Jersey, very high-barrier markets. Then I think the biggest franchisee of Orangetheory Fitness just signed 75 locations for development.
Q: Are the locations pretty standardized? If I went into a Dogtopia across the country, would it look just like this?
A: Just like every company, they’ve had their growing pains. They’ve been around 20 years. This is the new model. Everything built in the last five years, probably, looks similar to this store. They’re taking out some of the older ones. Houston has some of the oldest stores in the franchise. They’re closing those down and opening new stores within proximity. Is the consistency there today? It is in a lot of markets, but probably within the next two years it will be consistent everywhere else.
Q: Are there any other brands doing what Dogtopia is doing, trying to establish a national presence?
A:
There are a few. As a matter of fact, there’s one nearby called Camp Bow Wow. They have a pretty good presence. I just feel this is the upscale version of where you want to be.
Q: Are you happy with the demand you’ve seen?
A: Yes. You know, it’s not the easiest thing to just open your door and people start walking in, so we’ve done a lot of marketing, a lot of little meet-andgreets, neighborhood activities. We’re doing more and more every day, trying to create more and more awareness. People drive by, they see Dogtopia, they see the sign, they’re not sure what it is. Our goal is to bring that back out in the community and show what we do. And really, this wellness proposition to the dog — if you’ve got a dog you care about, if you have the time and the means to bring him out here, come and bring him out. I think your dog will appreciate it.