Meet the Owners of Our NEW Metuchen, NJ and Wilmington, NC Dog Franchise Locations

As a dog franchise, Hounds Town USA is steadily growing with new locations popping up around the country. We’re so excited to announce two brand new Hounds Town USA locations that opened in the same week! Franchise Owner Savi Iyer opened her Hounds Town location in Metuchen. New Jersey on December 1. Franchise Owner Scott Weikert also opened his all-new Hounds Town location in Wilmington, North Carolina on December 4.
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Savi Iyer Opens a Hounds Town USA Dog Franchise Location in Metuchen, New Jersey

Savi’s Hounds Town launch on December 1 was an incredibly successful one. In fact, her new location conducted over 214 temperament evaluations for potential boarding customers and booked ten overnight boarding stays for the holidays just on opening day. Savi’s journey into the pet franchise world started with her career in medicine.

“I’m a nurse practitioner now,” said Savi in a recent interview on our Dish on Dogs podcast with Hounds Town USA CEO Jackie Bondanza. “I deal with many different types of patients. I think dogs can be therapeutic to patients, and they look forward to having a dog around. I thought opening something related to pets or pups would be beneficial to patients and their families, and also the community as a whole. I started searching for dog daycares, and then I realized I cannot do it myself.”

This is a major reason why many animal-loving entrepreneurs opt for a pet franchise like Hounds Town. When running a business on your own from scratch, there really isn’t anyone there to offer support, guidance, or training. It’s all 100% on the business owner. Franchise Owners at Hounds Town gain access to in-depth guidance and world-class support from our corporate team. Our goal is to never make a Franchise Owner feel like they’re in the dark about running their business– we’re there every step of the way, especially in the beginning. This is also a big reason why people going through career switches will opt for a franchise like Hounds Town.

When asked why Savi was so interested in opening a Hounds Town location in central Jersey, she noted that she thought a Hounds Town location would be very beneficial to the community of pet owners there.

“The main reason I wanted to open in Central Jersey came down to the fact that we didn’t have the most beneficial doggie daycare,” said Savi, “We have dog daycares and boarding facilities here, but I thought Hounds Town would provide more benefit to the community. Central Jersey is so densely populated, which is directly proportional to the number of dogs we have because of all of the dog adoptions that happened during COVID. So, I just think it’s a great market.”

We’re so excited to see what direction Savi’s New Jersey location will take!

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Scott Weikert Opens His Wilmington, North Carolina Dog Franchise With Hounds Town USA

Like Savi’s Central Jersey Hounds Town USA location, Scott’s Wilmington, NC franchise location had a killer first day. Scott’s new dog franchise facility conducted over 150 evaluations just on opening day.

Scott started his career in the restaurant business, where he worked his way into management positions and ran several restaurants. While many Franchise Owners go through career switches and have little business experience, Scott knew how to run a business and manage staff.

“I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was fourteen, and worked my way up into management, ran several restaurants,” Scott told Jackie in a recent Dish on Dogs interview. “During that time, I also owned several dogs. Anybody who’s been in the restaurant business before knows one of the things everybody has in common is that they are trying to get out. I was trying to think of something that I can do because I’ve never done anything else. And, you know, I asked myself, ‘Well, what have you been doing? What are you good at? What do you love?’ What I loved was my dogs, so it was kind of a natural combination and doggy daycare seemed like a good fit. I looked at a couple of competitor franchises. One franchise noted on their main page that if you don’t have at least a million dollars liquid, don’t go any further. I didn’t have a million dollars liquid. And the general attitude of that whole statement wasn’t very appealing.”

This is a very common roadblock in the franchising world– you need money to make money, but some franchises are extremely expensive and potentially dangerous when it comes to losses. At Hounds Town, we made the choice to do things differently. Our franchising fees and additional investment costs to launch start at just $339,300- about 40% lower than that of our competitors.

In addition to the attractive franchising costs, Scott was drawn to Hounds Town USA’s great processes involving organization, training, support, and simplifying the process of launching a franchise location.

“I related to the organizational aspect of it,” said Scott, “It’s a simple program. Basically just working with the staff training, the importance of repetitively training, what to simplify, getting that back to the basics of allowing the staff to kind of have to develop an ownership of the place and have their part in the success of the store. I mean, that’s very important. They have to be invested in it as much as anybody else. And, you know, it’s very much true of one of the things that were said [at Scott’s Approval Day], which was ‘without your kennel assistants, kennel attendants, you’re not going to be successful.’ They’re the backbone of the operation. So making sure they’re trained properly, they’re hired properly, they have the right attitudes, and they have the same desire to love of animals is the key to make it successful.”

We’re looking forward to seeing how Scott’s new location does in the Wilmington pet market!

Want to Join Our Dog Franchise Family?

Now it’s your turn to take a look at our dog franchise. Our national “pawprint” is expanding quickly and there’s no guarantee that our available territories will last. Visit our franchise website to learn more.

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