Photography by Jessica Turner
Yolanda Herrera needed treats for her mini-Australian shepherd, Blue, in 2020.
“There wasn’t anything that didn’t have so many chemicals,” Herrera says. “If it doesn’t look like something I would eat, why would I give that to my dog?”
She wanted healthy, organic treats, and that was impossible to find, but she wasn’t going to settle for unappealing treats. She took matters into her own hands and began baking her own dog treats. Herrera has always been a baker, and she started by following recipes online, tweaking them with vitamins and supplements.
“This is where I came in and started doing research,” says Lola Rodriguez, Herrera’s daughter-in-law.
They began selling treats to neighbors, friends and people who found them through word-of-mouth. Their quick growth wasn’t completely unexpected.
“I knew it was going to do well because my dogs would just eat it up,” Herrera says.
They launched an Instagram account for Pawlicious Cookies about a year ago, and Rodriguez runs it.
She is a teacher at St. Cecilia Catholic School, and she and her mother-in-law are Oak Cliff natives.
“We want to make sure people know that we are baking from home and baking with love for their fur babies,” Rodriguez says.
Pawlicious Cookies has participated in many local events in the past year. They did a pop-up at Kendra Scott for an SPCA donation drive in April. Much of their success can be attributed to their involvement with other businesses in our neighborhood and the connections they make, they say.
When the business started, orders were placed through Instagram, but now, Pawlicious Cookies are carried at Everyday Works, a coffee shop and convenience store, and Pressed by Perla, a juice shop. Even at this larger scale, Herrera still bakes all the treats herself. Almost every morning, she bakes 800-1,000 treats, and they’re not frozen.
“It’s important that we make treats with natural fresh ingredients, and the treats are fresh wherever they’re being sold,” Herrera says.
They’re currently in the market for a manufacturer and a distributor so they can continue growing.
Baking on such a large scale has never felt like too much work, Herrera says.
“I think baking is in our culture,” she says.
Pawlicious Cookies works with clients to produce custom treats. Whether that means modifications such as no bacon, adding CBD, or even stamping the dog’s name onto the treats, Pawlicious can do it all.
One of their most recent developments is packaging. Many in the pet industry use the same distributor, but Rodriguez and Herrera didn’t want to replicate everyone else. They traveled to Austin to find a packaging distributor they liked, and now all bags of Pawlicious Cookies feature an image of Herrera’s dog, Blue.
Herrera and Rodriguez recently purchased some land that they aim to turn into a commercial kitchen, where they can host events.
“Being a Latina-owned business is the most important thing,” Herrera says. “I want to host a big social event for all the women business owners. It’s not easy to start a business, especially during a pandemic.”
Herrera says Pawlicious Cookies had its doubters.
“All my friends are shocked. You know how you start something, and you never follow through with it? Or they say ‘Oh, she’s going to do this for a few weeks and then she’s going to drop it.’ I don’t think people believed us,” she says. “We poured our heart and soul into this, and it’s paying off.”
