How One Chef-Turned-Founder Grew Her Dog Food Business by 67% and Found Funding Without All the Stress!

About The Business.

Jack & Chelo was founded by Esther, the proud mum of two little Maltese Shihtzus named Jack & Chelo.

Esther is a qualified Chef who has worked in a number of top restaurants around Australia, New Zealand and London and she strongly believes that the nutrition of our pets is just as important as it is for us humans.

A diagnosis of Cushings Disease in 2018 for Jack prompted Esther to dig a little deeper into the commercial dog food industry.

She was extremely concerned by some of her findings.

Largely unregulated with vague minimum standards, most factory mass producers and some smaller scale dog food brands only manage to ‘meet’ these very basic industry requirements by creative reporting on the nutritional value and content in the fine print, and the use of fillers with little to no nutritional value.

Armed with the findings of her research, Esther was determined to improve the quality of Jack & Chelo’s diet, using her skills and qualifications to create delicious and nutritious food for her two pups.

Upon seeing the obvious benefits, Jack & Chelo was born.

The Jack & Chelo Growth journey.

As demand grew quickly, Esther moved production into the kitchen of a local cafe, and within a couple of years was outgrowing that space.

In late 2022, while 8 months pregnant, Esther bought an old butcher in outer Hobart.

This allowed not only for much more space for production, but also the addition of a small retail shop at the front in mid-2023 - which has been wildly more successful than she, or we, thought could be possible.

Key growth points:

Sales: in FY24 they were 67% higher than in FY23, and almost 2.5 times that of FY22
FTE: went from 1 full-time equivalent team member in 2019, to 5 at the end of FY25, and
Subscribers: are on track to triple subscribers from three years ago.

The business continues to grow profitably.

#1 Growth Challenge: funding to grow.

By early 2024, with the new location set up, and business booming, other growth challenges started to emerge, including:

No cash to invest in paid marketing
The website and other systems were buckling under the pressure of such great growth, and
Esther was still wearing too many hats.

The business needed funding to keep growing, otherwise Esther would have to slow things down.

The first funding success was to help with the fit out of the shop and production facility in the butcher Esther purchased, she was able to secure a 5 year loan from the State government.

Their advisers said “we’ve never seen a financial model so comprehensive, or a business that tracks so much useful data with their scorecards”.

And the business has secured a number of grants, thanks to how professionally Esther presented the need for grants to support their growth.

The next exciting funding milestone came in mid-2024, with Esther successfully raising $100,000 from 11 happy and loyal customers.

Again, all the work Esther and Troy had done around the numbers and strategic planning gave the investors confidence to join Esther as minority owners.

How else our Strategy Program helped Esther.

In mid-2022, Esther started working with Troy, the Founder of Grow A Small Business.

He had just finished putting the 4 week Strategy Program together, and took Esther through it.

As we believe “small business strategic planning starts with the numbers”, they first put together a 10 year financial model.

This allowed Esther to see that the heart of her business was the subscription service she offered.

This then created greater focus on all things subscription, including:

Lowering customer churn
Knowing what the LTV (Lifetime Value) and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) was for an average subscriber, and
What LTV:CAC ratio was relevant for Esther’s business to achieve each financial year.

The last point was extremely powerful as it gave Esther confidence to invest more in paid marketing, which just added fuel to her already growth fire!

Since completing the Strategy Program, Troy and Esther catch up every two weeks for 30 minutes to help Esther stay focused on the right things, and review their scorecards - to make sure the business not only continues to grow and be profitable, but Esther can have a balanced life and enjoy stress-free time with her son and latest dog, Milo.

“We repeat 80% of our teachings that help small business owners grow their business with ease, no matter the industry. To allow more precise help in the 30 minute one-on-one’s, owners take in our lessons through a structured course - only needing 30 minutes a weekday over the four weeks. It means we can help more owners, and faster.”

Troy Trewin

Other benefits that came from Esther completing the Strategy Program, were:

Having a sales plan to work: by setting the targets in each sales channel, and wanting to grow some faster than others, it made it really clear where Esther needed to focus her time and marketing budget
Creating a human resources plan in the 10 year financial model: this allowed Esther to plan when to add new team members, especially for the various hats she still wears. And, it showed when she hit certain subscriber and sales milestones, it was time to hire the next person, which would allow her even more time to spend on marketing the business
Sharper focus: by having a 10 year plan, then cutting it down to a simple quarterly strategic plan, allowed Esther to say ‘no’ or ‘wait’ on new exciting ideas that were not going to add value to the business now. It meant she spent more time on projects and activities that had a real impact on the growth and profitability of the business, and
More time invested in marketing: thanks to the human resources plan, and Troy’s guidance on what to delegate down, systematise or stop doing, Esther was able to dedicate a lot more hours each week for marketing. This has been a game-changer for the latest level of growth the business is experiencing.

What Esther said about our Guidance.

“Without Troy’s guidance, and especially knowing my numbers back-to-front, there is no way I could have kept up with the fast growth of my business, and helped many more dogs. The 10 year financial model, scorecards and other strategic documents we put together have helped us raise the funds to take the stress out of the growth.”