09/02/2026
It’s been long enough.... time for another boring Ryan business post.
Let’s talk about opening our second Paw of the Family location in Melissa.
From the outside, expansion probably looks pretty simple:
Find a building.
Sign a lease.
Put some shelves in it.
Fill it with dog food.
Open the doors.
Unfortunately, spreadsheets, contracts, permits and processes have a way of ruining that simple fantasy. 😂
Our Melissa store is going to be about 1,500 square feet.
But before we sell a single bag of dog food, we’re dealing with things like:
• A loan
• Buildout
• Signage
• Fixtures and shelving
• POS equipment
• Freezers
• Initial inventory
• Deposits
• Licenses
• Permits
• Architect and design work
• And approximately 9,000 miscellaneous things nobody thinks about until they open a business
AND THEN THERE IS THE LEASE.
First, I can finally say:
THE LEASE IS SIGNED AND WORK HAS BEGUN!
The lease itself took about four weeks to get to a final agreement.
Why?
A few reasons.
First, just the normal back-and-forth delays that happen anytime attorneys, landlords, tenants and multiple people are reviewing documents.
Second, every revision has to be read carefully to make sure there aren’t any little “gotchas” buried somewhere in 40 pages of legal language.
And then there was my personal favorite…
The original lease did not allow pets inside the building.
That had to go.
We are literally called PAW OF THE FAMILY.
I ain’t signing a lease that says my fur babies can’t come inside. 😂
To be fair, it was just standard boilerplate language and the landlord had no problem removing it.
But it’s a perfect example of why these things take time.
So now the lease is signed.
Surely construction starts immediately, right?
Nope.
This is the stage where we spend a bunch of money and do a bunch of work while absolutely nothing looks different from the outside.
Our contractor connected us with the architect, and together we had to figure out exactly what the store is going to look like.
Where do the walls go?
Where do the self-wash rooms go?
Where do we need electrical outlets?
Do sprinklers need to be moved?
Where does plumbing need to run?
What needs to be demolished?
What needs to be built?
Where do the freezers go?
Where does everything physically fit?
The architect then takes all of those ideas and turns them into actual construction drawings that tell everyone what needs to be built.
Then those plans go to the City of Melissa for permitting.
That is the stage we’re at right now.
We’re waiting on the last pieces of documentation from the landlord, and then the plans are being submitted to the city.
The permitting process with Melissa is expected to take roughly 4–6 weeks.
So think about that for a second.
Between negotiating the lease, designing the store, preparing construction documents and getting through permitting, we can easily be TWO MONTHS into this project after signing the lease before somebody can bring the first piece of construction material into the building.
And every month that passes is another month closer to rent, loan payments and other expenses starting.
This is one of those parts of business expansion that customers never really see.
But we haven’t exactly been sitting around waiting.
While all of that is happening, we’ve been working with distributors and vendors, planning inventory, buying fixtures, getting equipment ready, ordering things with long lead times and storing everything until the building is ready.
At this point we are renting a storage space roughly the size of a small office building just to hold everything we’ve bought.
Because apparently the first step to opening another pet store is accidentally opening a warehouse. 😂
The store itself is going to be pretty awesome.
The architects did a great job with the design.
We’ll have:
• Two fully enclosed self-service dog wash bays
• A break room
• A bathroom
• Freezers along the back
• And a big, open retail floor
We intentionally wanted most of the store to stay wide open and flexible.
That way we can continue our Paw of the Family tradition of completely changing the store layout every other week because Ryan suddenly decided something would look better somewhere else. 😂
Now for the part I always find interesting:
HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY PAY FOR ALL OF THIS?
The answer is:
Lots and lots of saving.
And then borrowing money. 😂
We’ve spent years building the business and saving money so that we could eventually do something like this.
But opening another location still requires a pretty significant amount of capital.
We took out a $150,000 loan for the project.
And yes, Ryan is the personal guarantor.
So if Paw of the Family decides not to pay it back, I have a feeling I know exactly whose phone is going to start ringing. 😂
By the time we add together construction, fixtures, equipment, signage, inventory, deposits and all the other startup costs, we expect the entire Melissa project to land somewhere around $200,000.
And that is before this store has sold a single $3 dog treat.
That’s the part of expansion I think is fascinating.
People hear “second location” and naturally think:
More stores = more money.
Eventually, hopefully!
But initially, another location means the exact opposite.
You suddenly have another rent payment.
Another electric bill.
More insurance.
More inventory.
Another set of utilities.
More payroll.
More equipment.
Another $50,000-ish worth of products sitting on shelves.
And now a $150,000 loan that needs to be paid back.
So Goal #1 financially isn’t going to be:
“How much money can we pull out of the Melissa store?”
It’s going to be:
“How quickly can we get that loan paid down?”
Interest rates aren’t exactly giving away free money right now, so getting rid of that debt as quickly as reasonably possible will be a major priority.
Once that loan is gone, that cash flow can go toward things I actually enjoy spending money on:
New products.
More inventory.
Employees.
Better equipment.
And continuing to grow the business.
Which leads to another part of our plan.
Until Melissa gets established and that debt starts coming down, Jessica and I plan to run that store ourselves basically every day it is open.
We may rotate some of our existing team between Anna and Melissa, but we aren’t planning to immediately load the new location down with a giant payroll.
That means there’s a pretty good chance that if you walk into Melissa during the first year, one of us will be standing behind the counter.
And that’s intentional.
We want to learn the customers.
We want to learn what sells there.
We want to see what Melissa customers ask for that Anna customers don’t.
We want to understand the neighborhood before we start making assumptions about it.
Because opening Store #2 doesn’t mean we suddenly forgot how Store #1 became successful.
A lot of it was simply being there, talking to customers, changing things that didn’t work, buying things people asked for and slowly figuring out what Paw of the Family was supposed to be.
The difference this time is that we get to start with five years of mistakes already paid for.
And that might be the most valuable thing we’re bringing to Melissa.
Anyway…
Thanks for attending another episode of:
Ryan Meeks the nerd makes everyone read a spreadsheet on Facebook.
Absolutely non of what you read is COMPLAINING! Everyone including the landlord has been wonderful and it is a fascinating process with lots of scary bumps and turns.
