The once-lucrative trade has died a natural death due to competition

WELL-KNOWN dog food vendor, Mark Sealey, who has his business at A and B Cemetery Road, Georgetown said that he believes the dog food business is dying because there are too many vendors.

Speaking to the Pepperpot Magazine he added that to stay afloat he also sells other pet-related products such as dog bowls, collars, food bowls, chains, medicines, shampoos, Purina brand puppy chow and dog chow along with the local cooked dog food.

When this newspaper visited the location on Thursday, Sealey was tending to two large pots of dog food that were being cooked on coal pots.

It is a daily routine he starts from early in the morning, after which when the food is cooled, he packs it away in individual two-pound bags which sell for $100 each.

The dog food pot consists of rice, seasonings, salt, Chinese spices and cassareep, eddo leaves, pumpkin and the by-products of beef and chicken and this recipe is basically like home-cooked cook-up-rice-without the coconut milk.

Sealey told this newspaper that his cooked dog food is nutritious and wholesome but the business has seen a decline over the years in the city, especially, since “everybody and their mother is selling dog food on the street corner,” he said.

The 48 year old added that back in the days when the dog food business boomed he had two employees but within recent times he had to let them go because now he only makes two pots of dog food.

Back then Sealey used to prepare seven pots per day, but now, he said, there isn’t the market like before.

“I cook two pots daily and sometimes a portion would be left on my hands and since it is perishable I cannot re-sale the next day, and I lose money because I still have to buy ingredients for two fresh pots daily,” he said.

Sealey related that for him, his business went down by more than 50 percent and he now operates alone to keep the business going, and it was then that he introduced other dog products for sale.

This businessman reported that he started the business in 2012 when he returned to Guyana but before that, someone else used to sell dog food at the same location.

Sealey said, “Dog food ain’t selling like before, there is a lull in business because people ain’t got the spending power and everybody complaining how things bad.”

He is always thinking of new ways and ventures to keep his business going. Presently, he is considering having a push-cart hot dog business which he will entrust to someone to operate for him, but he also has a grocery store which his mother manages.

Sealey has a genuine love for dogs and has three of his own, a Pitbull, a Dachshund and a Tibetan Terrier, which are all high-maintenance breed dogs that he has to allocate lots of time to take care of.

Sealey is a very ‘people person’, and is a friendly customer-oriented kind of a guy who is always willing to assist his customers.

For him vending dog food is more than just a business and he ensures that he sells quality products to ensure that dogs are taken care of and fed nutritious foods.