Based in Brooklyn, New York’s Woofbowl is a colourful food truck serving healthy, human-inspired meals to dogs. The initiative is the brainchild of Ron Holloway and his wife Solo. The Wag spoke to Ron about Woofbowl, and why it’s been life changing.
TW: What is Woofbowl?
Woofbowl is a food truck for dogs. We focus on culture, community and fun, and so we’ve been doing this for about five years.
TW: What prompted you to set it up?
Basically, a long story short, when I got out of the military, I was diagnosed with PTSD, and my dogs were emotional support dogs and helped with kind of like service dogs.
They helped with my anxiety, and so I wanted to give them the best possible life I could.
And my kind of philosophy was that if they’re helping keep me alive, I want to do everything I can to keep them alive.
The best way to do that was through diet and nutrition, and so one thing led to another.
I was so excited and inspired about what I had learned about the pet industry and the food in particular.
Then I said, how can I do this? How can I teach people what I learned but make it cool at the same time?
And that’s kind of how we came up with the concept.
TW: So it’s a food truck for dogs and obviously, a lot of thought has been put into providing really healthy food.
Oh, 100%. Well, it’s like us, you know, if we eat well, we’ll live well and we’ll probably live longer.
And it’s the same thing for pets. And I think for so long, pets have been neglected in terms of nutrition and nutritious dense items, mainly because they can’t advocate for themselves.
And so we’re kind of giving voice to the voiceless.
TW: And what sorts of food do you offer here?
Anything you can get for a human, we have it. So you think pizza, tacos, burgers, dog, ice cream, you name it, yes.
So just think of whatever you can think of at a burger spot or fast food for dogs for humans, we do that for dogs.
TW: What has been the response from dogs and their owners?
You know, the response has, I think people have responded more to our story. We have such a passionate story.
People have really rallied around us because they consider our company to be a company with the soul.
And I think that more than anything, because you’re seeing a lot of companies that have more money than us and have investors and things that are not necessarily survived.
But I think we’ve been able to kind of survive the ups and downs because there’s a really powerful story behind why this started and what we do.
So we’ve had people cry with us, emotional testimonies. I mean, it’s, you know, people told us we actually saved their lives or in COVID because we gave them a reason to come outside and to socialize.
So to me, this is bigger than dog treats or dog foods. And that’s kind of what the response has been.
TW: You’ve obviously been through quite a journey Ron. How has setting up Woofbowl impacted on you?
It’s been life changing. I tell people, once you learn that it’s not about you, just like dogs, they understand that it’s not about them. That’s when all of the universe opens up to you.
