Introducing...Dogmatic Treats

The big pitch! The last couple of weeks my team and I have been strategizing how we can make our product, Dogmatic Treats, come to life. Professor Rohm and Professor Stefl encouraged us last week to come to the pitch with a real prototype of our treat. So this last week we worked on combining oat flour, rolled oats, peanut butter, shredded carrots, and pumpkin puree in different ratios to make a thick dough that doesn’t taste bland, and that we could bake into a crispy treat. We added too much water in our first batch and it only tasted like oats, so we replaced some water with the pumpkin and more peanut butter which worked wonderfully. Although they are dog treats, we tasted them periodically to make sure a strong enough flavor was there.

We also decided to pivot our main message. We planned to pitch the treats to be these eco-friendly, sustainable, and vegan treats that help the environment. It’s a growing trend, especially in our area of LA in Playa Vista, to be making health-conscious decisions that benefit the environment. Plus, our research suggested that people will extend those decisions to their dogs once they were educated on their dog’s carbon footprint. However, after consultation with our professors and interviews with friends and family, we decided to make the sustainability of our dog treats a secondary benefit, with the purpose of them to be healthy dog treats with only 4 ingredients. More people will be likely to buy a healthy, homemade treat their dog will love compared to something abstract about the environment.

This was our first big presentation in front of people that were not our classmates, and we wanted to nail it. We were nervous, excited, proud, and eager all at once. And it went well!

The circled ingredients are proven to be unhealthy for dogs

The judges loved how we had a batch of treats already made, and were impressed that only 4 ingredients were used. I think the photos from our research showing the ingredient lists of treats branded as healthy were full of artificial ingredients we could not even pronounce, and ingredients like corn that are proven to be bad for dog’s digestion systems, helped our argument tons.

Dogmatic Treats Ingredients

I am proud of our group. We showed we were passionate about our product, we did not stumble on our words, and we spoke confidently. At first, we were shocked and bummed we received the lowest budget allocation: $250. But we realized that our group had one of the cheapest products of the class to make, which was a competitive advantage on our end. We would need to be clever in selling our products because we would not be able to make the Facebook Ad Campaign or afford the fee for the farmer’s market.

BUT THEN we got an email from Rohm granting us with DOUBLE the budget! We were thrilled!! We’ll be able to follow through with these activations like we hoped which will increase how many people we reach and increase our sales.

Our biggest challenge from the pitch presentation was the pricing numbers. Makenna has an accounting minor and was able to quickly do the math in her head and provide solid answers, but it signaled to us that we needed to figure out the financial end of Dogmatic Treats in more detail. My area of growth shown in the presentation is being faster on my feet in answering questions. I need a few seconds to fully understand the question then form my thoughts. I think by rephrasing their question aloud will make sure I understand it correctly while giving me time to think.