Pet Wants has stores and delivery options for its many pet supplies, including food and toys.
Paula and Randall Malone are seasoned businesspeople. Partners for over 30 years, the couple are stepping out into their newest venture with Pet Wants. The pet food delivery brand serves the Cleveland and Chattanooga, Tennessee, areas, and the Malones are just getting started.
“We’ve always been entrepreneurs,” said Paula Malone. “My husband and I just didn’t want that everyday normal life, and we love the excitement of building things to a successful point.”
Pet Wants gives the ability to travel to customers via their delivery options.
Starting out with carpet cleaning service Chem-Dry, the couple built up nine locations throughout Tennessee. As lifelong entrepreneurs, they were drawn to Chem-Dry because their methods were proven and patented. The Malones felt confident with the brand and that confidence paid off with the two owning their franchises for 15 years.
Entrepreneurship wasn’t the only passion Malone had in life, though. As someone who’s very community focused, she wanted to give back. The couple sold their Chem-Dry locations and Malone got to work on another dream.
“I’ve always dreamed of opening homes for children,” she said. “In order to do that, we just couldn’t handle the franchise and do what we needed for the kids.”
Over the next 16 years, the Malones opened a total of four children’s homes for at-risk children in the North Georgia area. Those four houses provided up to 27 children with a safe, stable environment at a given time, and for Malone it’s one of the highlights of her professional life. Her passion for helping children stemmed from her own experience after her own mother was murdered when she was just seven years old.
“It was running great,” said Malone. “We saw so many great accomplishments with the kids and traumas being healed.”
Hardship came, however, when the pandemic began in 2020. Difficulties finding staff limited the number of children they could take among other issues. The board met and decided the group had a good run, but it was not viable to continue running the homes, Malone said.
Paula and Randall Malone opened a Pet Wants in Cleveland, Tennessee as their next franchising adventure.
“If we continued, we really couldn’t see what our vision originally was which was a home atmosphere,” she said.
The Malones then pivoted back toward their passion for franchising and got to work finding their next concept. Malone has two dogs, and one was experiencing dermatitis. On the hunt for food to relieve her dog’s discomfort, she found Pet Wants.
After using a variety of products provided by the concept, Malone saw her dog’s skin clear up within a few weeks, she said. Because she saw the effect firsthand, Malone knew it was a good brand to get behind.
So far, the Malones have one Pet Wants location that delivers throughout the Cleveland and Chattanooga area. The two plan to open more territories over the next couple of years. Malone also hopes to get involved in the pet community, such as donating leftover fresh food to animal shelters. However, the main focus will be on growing the business and finding future territories.
“We decided that Pet Wants was our new adventure,” she said. “It was something we could do to help other people with because it helped us and our dog.”
The investment needed to open a Pet Wants franchise ranges from $131,350 to $202,500. In 2022, Pet Wants’ average unit volume was $555,017, with sales ranging from $151,388 to $1.7 million across 26 franchised locations. For mobile units, the range is $18,385 to $616,357 across 67 franchised units.