Peters personal chef makes switch from gourmet people food to canine delicacies
Peters personal chef makes switch from gourmet people food to canine delicacies
Kim Smith of Peters Township, former personal chef and food blogger, posted a recipe on her blog, “Grativibe,” in 2019 after one of their four dogs was diagnosed with cancer.
That post eventually changed her career path.
When her dog, Andy Bobby, was diagnosed with cancer, she was making her recipe for chicken and rice with green beans nearly every day to support the ailing dog’s appetite.
On a whim, she posted the chicken and rice recipe for anyone else who might be dealing with canine dietary needs.
She noticed that the recipe was getting a lot of attention.
That’s when her husband decided he wanted his dog treat recipe posted too. “He wanted his slice of fame,” said Smith.
To her surprise, both recipes became two of the most downloaded recipes on the blog.
Smith began to wonder what a dog treat business might look like.
A job change moved the couple unexpectedly to Kentucky and while there, she rebranded her blog and separated the human food recipes from the dog recipes and searched for a name. She landed on Yappy Kitchen.
The opportunity came to move back to the South Hills and rather than returning to the personal chef business, she decided to pivot from cooking for people to making treats for man’s best friend.
“Every dog wants treats, but those treats don’t have to be junk food,” said Smith.
She researched, took classes and then began adding to her repertoire of treat recipes.
Smith uses whole produce and pantry staples in every recipe.
“I developed every recipe with the intention that every ingredient in each recipe has a health benefit for dogs,” said Smith. Soon her packaging will share the benefits of each ingredient.
The treats Smith developed are vegetarian with no added sugar, salt, preservatives or additives.
“A lot of animal proteins are triggers for dogs and for allergies. So I don’t use any meat in them.” There’s eggs in some recipes, except for her specialty collection.
Three years ago, Smith applied to sell her dog treats at her first farmer’s market, Bethel Park market in South Park.
Fast forward to this year, and she is now selling at six markets, five in the South Hills (Bethel Park, Robinson, Upper St. Clair/Bethel Park Rotary Farmer’s Market and Greentree and Carnegie) and one in the North Hills, Bellevue. Yappy Kitchen treats are also sold at Mort’s Fresh and Local in Mount Lebanon.
Her three recipe collections include a peanut butter collection, classics collection and the specialty collection. The peanut butter collection includes treats made with banana and peanut butter; apple and peanut butter; and blueberry and peanut butter (her husband’s recipe).
The classics collection includes treats with cheddar and parmesan; sweet potato and cinnamon; and pumpkin, cranberry and sage.
Her specialty collection was developed for sensitive dogs and those recipes are beet with apple and turmeric; green bean with carrot and ginger; and pineapple, mint and parsley.
Grain-free treats are the beet, apple and turmeric and green bean, carrot and ginger.
Her large treats are one inch in size and sold in six-ounce bags for $13 (Specialty Collection bags are $15), and her smaller treats are a half-inch in size and sold in four-ounce bags for $11 (Specialty Collection bags are $13).
She intentionally made her packaging helpful to pet owners.
On the back of every bag is a nutrition label that humans are most familiar with, containing ingredient analysis suggested by the AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials). The organization guides feed producers with labeling standards and ingredient definitions.
Her packages also have freshness dates, 10 months from the time they are dehydrated. “Because I’m a chef, I feel like I should date everything,” Smith explained.
At this time, Smith prepares her recipes in her home kitchen in compliance with The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture requirements. But she’s quickly outgrowing that space.
Her No. 1 seller is banana peanut butter; the crunchiest is the sweet potato treats followed by blueberry treats.
“I strive to purchase locally as much as I can. The peanut butter that I use is (made from) USA grown peanuts and it only contains peanuts. There’s no palm oil; there’s certainly no sugar, no salt. There’s nothing else in that peanut butter except peanuts,” Smith said. She buys 80 pounds at a time.
While some ingredients can’t be purchased locally (like pineapples), she sources her apples from Simmons Farm in Washington County and then freezes them, and purchases the herbs and spices from Spices Inc., a family-owned Pennsylvania company.
Smith and her husband, Doug, now have two dogs. After losing Andy Bobby, their basset hound, Paisley, passed away in June. They have a 13-year-old Australian shepherd-border collie mix named Cassie and a beagle named Honus Wagner.
Her dogs are the first taste testers in line.
“They don’t get to be sampled by other dogs unless my dogs eat them with gusto,” Smith said. “They are the best little taste testers,” she admits, along with her husband.
She does taste tests as well. “I need to know what they taste like. I can tell you that the banana peanut butter is very banana forward. The cheddar Parmesan, when you first eat it, it doesn’t take like much, but then the cheddar comes in later and then your are like, ‘Oh, there it is!'”
While Smith said she does miss her clients from her personal chef days with Relish Kitchen and Catering, she loves dogs and her work with Yappy Kitchen. And she still loves to add to her Grativibe blog.
“I had some really amazing clients that I miss seeing, and I catered some fabulous events. I was at a point with that business where I had to make a decision, do I want to somehow give more of myself to grow this bigger, or do I want to do something else?”
Being a business owner and personal chef, “I took what I knew about developing recipes for people with dietary needs and transferred that knowledge to developing recipes for dogs,” Smith said.
What started as an impulse post for others who might have dogs with special dietary needs has brought Smith a new-found joy in the kitchen – this time for those with four legs.
Purchase treats at an area farmer’s market, or go to https://yappykitchen.com/.