September 24th, 2008

The Blank Slate

Standing at the front door of the store

After lots of back and forth with realtors and lawyers (lots), we got the keys to the store. This is a new construction space that has never been occupied. Which is why nobody noticed the leaky ceiling and lack of running water. In other words, we are completely starting from scratch. As I mentioned in the About Us blog post, this store is exactly twice as big as Tracy’s current store. We don’t necessarily need more retail space. But we need all of the cooking and production space we can get. We’re upgrading to large capacity baking equipment and adding new services like our in house printed packaging and we want more than 2 people to be able to work back there without them wanting to kill each other!

Read the rest of this entry »

September 24th, 2008

All Dogs Are Famous

This is the front of a promotional postcard that we're distributing locally.

The catalyst that really got us excited about The Baker’s Dog plan was the custom photo package treats. We know so many dog lovers that have great pictures of their dogs. One of the first things I did was design the label. The base label is a simple black and white design that really let’s the photos stand out. You will also see this design concept carried through to the website, promotional materials and the retail store interior design.

Heres an example of the photo label. Notice we also give information about the dog and photographer. Click for a larger version.

Click for a larger version.

The original idea was to have monthly photo contests and choose a new picture per flavor for that month. But after some quick thought, we realized we should let our customers upload pictures online and order treats with their pups picture on them whenever they like. We bag the treats fresh when you order them anyway, so it really wasn’t that big of a leap. We still need photos for our packages that we sell in the retail store. We’ll pick those from the uploaded pictures if you give us permission to do so. If we pick your photo, we’ll send you some free treats!

The printing method we use is identical to our retail store packages. Since it’s an integral part of our process, we can offer this personalized service with no expensive minimum order requirements or long turn around times. The labels are printed on demand by a high quality, full color Roland printer to a nice glossy white sticker using environmentally friendly inks. The printer also cuts the label out and it is hand applied to each recycled paper bag before we fill it with delicious, fresh baked treats!

We want to photo upload process to be easy. So we are still developing the store part of the website to make it as simple as possible for our customers to upload and manage their photos. Stay tuned!

September 23rd, 2008

About Us

The Baker’s Dog is a pet bakery and retail store located in Myrtle Beach, SC. We have over 10 years commercial pet baking experience in the Myrtle Beach area. All of our treats are made from people quality ingredients with no added salt, sugar, or preservatives. We offer a variety of treats ranging from hard to soft and we even have wheat-free and corn-free nibbles for your allergic pooch.

Contact information and directions are available on this page.

Read the rest of this entry »