I Didn’t Build This in a Boardroom.
I Built It on the Grooming Table.
Chase Reed
I started Animal Friends in 2013 with nothing but a pair of clippers and a belief that pet care could be done better. No investors. No business degree. Just me, the animals, and a refusal to cut corners.
In 2018, Hurricane Michael hit Bay County as a Category 5. I had 73 pets boarded. The city lost power, water, and roads for months. I kept every single one of those animals safe, fed, and cared for — sleeping at the facility, rationing supplies, doing whatever it took. Only 9 owners came back for their pets. The rest had lost everything. I found every unclaimed pet a new home through a local rescue. That experience changed me forever.
After Michael, I invested over $120,000 in solar power, battery banks, and a private deep well. I taught myself to code and built the entire technology platform from scratch — the CRM, the AI, the booking system, the photo pipeline, the 500+ page website. I didn’t hire a tech team. I sat at my desk after closing every night and built it line by line because I knew what this business needed and no off-the-shelf software could deliver it.
When you buy this franchise, you’re not buying a brand. You’re buying 13 years of my life — every mistake I made, every system I perfected, every dollar I invested — packaged so you don’t have to go through what I went through to get here. That’s worth a lot more than $30,000 a year. And I think you know that.