Community Highlights: Meet Millie’s Treats

Today we’d like to introduce you to Millie’s Treats.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Millie’s Treats was more of an overnight idea that was created in the middle of the COVID19 pandemic shutdown. I (Keelie Armstrong – Owner/Creator) had been laid off at the time due to the pandemic shutdown and spent a lot of my newly free time educating myself about my dog Millie. Millie was my first dog, so I had really never known much about dogs aside from the basics. Over time, I learned that not everything you’d think to be dog safe, beneficial, and healthy was actually that. It created a growing anxious feeling, and I began being scared to treat my girl with a yummy snack for any of her good behavior. So I began making them myself. It began with something simple: peanut butter, plain greek yogurt, and coconut oil frozen in an ice cube mold. Shortly after it grew to biscuits, doggie donuts, pupcakes, pawptarts and much more! I decided to then take a HUGE leap, and invest in myself and turn it into a business. Millie’s Treats launched soon after on June 27, 2020 (Millie’s 1st birthday) with the goal and promise of creating “Treats you can trust, and your dogs will love” using all-natural, 100% dog safe and beneficial human-grade ingredients. We grew faster than I could have ever imagined, and once being able to go back to my day job, it was hard to keep up, I had to make a hard decision that would be an even bigger leap.

And in September of 2020, I began working full-time for Millie’s Treats. When 2021 came around we began appearing at local and nonlocal events and markets every weekend! We were making appearances and local events such as The 2021 Perry Dogwood Festival, Rigby’s Entertainment Complex’s Adoption Day, Market Square North Macon, Herrington Brothers Fall Festival, and much more! By the end of 2021, we had attended 100+ markets and events AND had also shipped our products to all 50 United States of America. With the beginning of 2022, we have slowed down with our weekly markets and events as our next goal is brick and mortar…a doggie bakery! But we can always be found every last Thursday of the month at The Patio at Rigby’s for Pups & Pints! We are also celebrating our upcoming 2 years anniversary (this June 27, 2022) with being nominated as the BEST of Georgia by the Georgia Business Journal. Throughout the years, the support Millie’s Treats has been given has been so overwhelming but I’m truly thankful for every bit of it. It’s so funny when taking Millie out to parks, people know who she is, and we both love it! When we started out, I never thought a girl who grew up in a small farm town (Peach County, GA) could create something that would grow and be known all over!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Starting a business is never a smooth road. You hit your obstacles…especially when you decide to be crazy and put everything you have into launching your business during a worldwide pandemic shutdown. But you overcome them and always take five steps forward from taking two steps back. We’ve gone through problems that range anywhere from postal/shipping issues to recipe issues. But I’ve learned as long as you stay communicating with your customers, and never let even the smallest thing get the best of you, you will always come out better than before.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
At Millie’s Treats we make doggie treats using all-natural 100% dog safe and beneficial ingredients, and what makes us a little different from others is we use absolutely NO PRESERVATIVES. We specialize in making unique treats that can be delicious and healthy for dogs. Some of our most unique would probably be: Doggie Cakes, Pawparts, Doggie Donuts, Doggie Mocktails, and Doggie Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites. One of my (Keelie) favorite things to do when creating a treat is creating based on the idea of a treat for a human, which is what I think sets us apart from the others in the amazing dog treat small business community. One product I am most proud of, and would probably be my most favorite, is one of our very first treats: B-Boy’s Chicken & Biscuits. This treat was created in memory of one of my favorite doggie cousins Biscuit (B-boy). We grew up together and funny enough were the same age, well in human years. This treat is very special not just with the memory, but since Biscuit was a rescue pup, with each bag of this treat purchase $1 is donated to a local rescue in our hometown (Byron, GA).

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Risk taking is probably one of the biggest mountains you have to climb when starting a small business. Launching a business in the middle of the pandemic shutdown was already one of the biggest risks in itself. But then soon after I made another and quit my day job to work for Millie’s Treats full time. I think it’s always worth it to bet on yourself and take the risk because even if you don’t succeed, you’ve proven (even to just yourself) that you are capable of anything.

Pricing:

• Doggie Treats $12-$15
• Doggie Cakes $25-$60
• Doggie Mocktails/Beer $5

Contact Info:

• Website: https://milliesdoggietreats.square.site/
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/milliesdoggietreats
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/milliesdoggietreats
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/Millies_Treats
• Other: www.tiktok.com/milliesdoggietreats