Meet Rick and Rosie Mueller of Carrot Mountain Dog Treats in Grayson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rick and Rosie Mueller.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
It’s all about family. Our dogs, grand dogs and grand cat, too, are our family. Each of them, came into our lives in a special way. Some were rescued. Some we got to watch grow from their first breath. All of them, have added to the love and adventures that fill our house.

Like many dog families, we struggled to keep our first and oldest dog, Rocky, at a healthy weight as he got older. We tried lots of dog food and dog treats but we had enough as we watched our first fur baby chew himself up because the hot spots he developed were driving him crazy. After researching the healthiest way to feed our dogs, we headed into the kitchen to create dog food and dog treats made from whole foods and real ingredients.

Friends and family told us how much their dogs loved our treats and encouraged us to share the love with lots of dogs. For years, our youngest son wanted to have a booth at our local farmers’ market selling vegetables. It was a long lesson in patience for a nine-year old to learn waiting for seeds to sprout from the soil and blooms to grow into juicy fruit, and the resigned enlightenment that four tomatoes and three cucumbers is not enough to take to market. But, a basket full of yummy, nutritious dog treats is a different story. And, so our family business began.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
One of the first challenges we encountered was simply researching the feed license requirements for selling specialty dog food. There is a lot to learn about the rules and regulations for pet food and every state requires something a little different.

Overcoming a short shelf life was another big challenge we faced. The dog treats in the big box stores can last for months and years because of the artificial preservatives and chemicals in them. After more research, we added apple cider vinegar to our recipe as a natural preservative and developed a baking technique to remove extra moisture, both of which have helped extend the shelf life of our treats from days to weeks.

The most important challenge for us is keeping our youngest son, who is now a teenager, engaged and interested in the family business. A busy booth is definitely more interesting than a slow one (that’s true for the parents as well as the teenager, to be honest). The drive to and from school has proven to be a great time to brainstorm with him about new packaging ideas or ways to improve traffic flow in the booth or to problem solve budget issues and pricing challenges.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Carrot Mountain Dog Treats story. Tell us more about the business.
These are the treats we make for our own dogs. Now, we make them for lots of dogs. We make them in small batches with human-grade whole foods and lots of love but we leave out the artificial ingredients.

Our delicious dog treats are made by hand with fresh vegetables and cage-free brown eggs. Natural peanut butter or roasted chicken pack in the protein. Organic whole oats and whole-wheat flour are healthy fiber. A dash of organic apple cider vinegar acts as a natural preservative.

We make our treats in three flavors: Carrot Peanut Butter, Sweet Potato Peanut Butter, and Green Bean Roasted Chicken. And, we cut them out in four different sizes: tiny, small, medium and large.

We’ve overcome the shelf life challenge that many natural foods face. Of course, there was trial and error to get there. Now, we’ve combined the right combination of our baking technique and natural preservatives to create a nutritious treat that lasts.

We’re most proud that a child’s imagination and creativity paved the way for us to share our love for our family with those who love their families just as much.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We’ve all heard it said that luck equals preparation plus opportunity. I think our egos like to make us believe that our preparation is so complete, so outstanding, so phenomenal that the only thing we need to do is seize the moment to create our own good luck. No one ever says, they seized the opportunity to make their own bad luck.

The opportunities are so not always so obvious, so straightforward, and so timely that phenomenally, outstandingly complete preparation is even possible. And, bad luck happens.

So many times, opportunity actually comes packaged as a challenge. Not only have we not prepared ourselves, we actually learn how to build the plane while we’re flying it — we learn how to manage and handle the challenge while we’re handling and managing the challenge.

You never know when you’ll cross paths with that one person who can help you, or when some other business will turn down an order that will then come your way. Luck is part of the equation; it’s not just the sum.

And, you also need to be ready to seize the opportunity. You need to show up even when you don’t feel like it. You need to say, ‘yes, we can do that!’ even if you’ve never done that before. You need to take the challenge, and rise up to meet it.

Pricing:

• Fun Size Treat Bags — $3.00
• Treat Bags — $5.00
• One Pound Box — $10.00
• Two Pound Box — $16.00

Contact Info:

• Website: CarrotMountainDogTreats.com
• Email: info@carrotmountain.dog
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carrotmountaindog/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carrotmountaindogtreats

Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.