Preppy Puppy provides snacks for the pooch

Dec 28, 2010

There's a bakery in the Industrial Park that churns out tasty treats for canine companions that look good enough to be human food, and occasionally are human food.

Located on Kendrick Road, Preppy Puppy Bakery bakes, decorates, packages, and ships gourmet dog treats to doggie boutiques as close as Mashpee and as far as Canada.

“We want to make the treats appealing to people," said Amy Singelais, owner of Preppy Puppy Bakery.

The focus of Preppy Puppy is to make treats that are nutritious for dogs, and aesthetically appealing to humans, said Singelais.

Instead of chocolate, which is poisonous for pooches, bakers use Carob, a cocoa derivative, and a yogurt-based frosting. Treats are often appropriately given dog-oriented names, like the Aussiedoodle and the Boston Terrier Pie, for example.

While some products are made by hand, Preppy Puppy's automated “molder machine” allows workers to produce 70,000 dog bones per day.

All of the ingredients are “human grade” according to Singelais, who recalls a stint working at a doughnut manufacturer where “literally all the scrap went to dog food.”

Preppy Puppy products are also wheat, corn, and soy free. Singelais doesn’t approve of using cheap ingredients, she said. Perhaps that’s part of the reason her company continues to grow in size and reputation.

Preppy Puppy has been in operation since 1994, and recently upgraded from a 4,000-square-foot bakery to a 9,000-square-foot facility. It is strictly a wholesale business, and while the bakery is in Wareham, Wareham lacks gourmet dog food stores to sell to. The closest place to purchase Preppy Puppy goodies is at Hot Diggity in Mashpee.

Singelais relies largely on word-of-mouth and trade shows for promotion, which appears to be working. She expects sales to double this year, which she hopes will allow her to expand the facility once again, she said.

“It’s kind of like ‘if you build it they will come,'" Singelais said. "It’s really easy to sell this stuff.”