Dog treat baker pivots to make baked goods for humans
“By the next day, we were tasting prototypes of bread recipes,” Jaymie Crook, co-owner Bosco and Roxy’s.
About the company
Bosco and Roxy’s is a manufacturer of gourmet and custom dog treats.
Location: London, Ontario
Industry: Food and beverage
Entrepreneur challenge
According to co-owner Jaymie Crook, Thursday, March 19, 2020 was the day the world ended for his company, Bosco and Roxy’s. That was the day the province-wide shutdown was announced in Ontario and the day that orders for the company’s gourmet dog treats ground to a halt.
“We fell off a cliff,” he says. “We went from hundreds of orders a week to just four.”
After pondering what the future held for the company, Crook and his wife Michelle, who co-owns the business, felt they had no other choice but to begin furloughing employees. But the night before what he calls “the doom and gloom meeting” they had a realization: What if they could use their commercial baking equipment to make human food instead of dog treats?
By 3 p.m. the next day, they were tasting prototypes of bread recipes, which quickly expanded into other baked goods. Within five days, they launched their website Driveupbakery.com, where locals could order products and come pick them up directly at the warehouse. As an avid mentor to entrepreneurs, Crook also partnered with other local food producers to add even more items to the menu.
It was a steep learning curve but all of Bosco and Roxy’s employees rallied together to prove that a quick pivot is possible.
“I’ll never let someone tell me it takes six months to design a website again!” he says.