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Date: 7/2/2021
CHICOPEE – Shawn Cohen-Sherry opened Paw Street Barkery in 2009 selling homemade dog treats as an online and wholesale business. Cohen-Sherry started the business after many pet food scares between 2007 to 2009.
Tainted pet food from outside of the United States was making many animals sick across the country and Cohen-Sherry said he did not want anything to happen to his own dog.
“I kind of did it for my own dog and started making homemade treats for my own dog and it kind of went out of control from there and grew,” he said.
In 2012 Paw Street Barkery opened their storefront location at 477 Britton St. in Chicopee. Opening the retail location gave the business more room to grow and offer new treats, according to Cohen-Sherry.
“Having a retail location allowed us to do a lot more of the things that we do now, which are a lot of dog birthday cakes, frozen yogurt for dogs… those are things we couldn’t have done had we not had the
Paw Street Barkery now specializes in all different types of dog treats, both gourmet and standard. Cohen-Sherry said that they offer unique treats such as woofy pies, barkscotti, peanut butter cups, doggy donuts and more. They also make many different flavors of standard biscuits.
“A lot of people when they’re going out to buy they think more of that peanut butter and meat-based treats and we do a lot more fruit and veggie-based. So flavors like a blueberry banana, a strawberry honey, sweet potato, apple, a lot of those, but do still have a chicken flavor and a peanut butter,” he said.
All edible products are made in store and Paw Street Barkery also sells collars, leashes, bandanas and toys from local vendors and American-based companies.
“We try to support local vendors to bring their stuff into the store. If it’s not directly local, everything in the store is at least made in the United States,” said Cohen-Sherry.
Cohen-Sherry is a microbiologist by trade which allowed him to develop the recipes and begin the business. The retail store is managed by Cohen-Sherry’s husband, Brett Cohen-Sherry.
According to Cohen-Sherry, he felt it was important to begin Paw Street Barkery to ensure that dogs could have healthy, safe treats and humans could feel good giving them to their pets.
“Having seen what happens when you don’t have control of ingredients and really seeing what happens with that pet food scare and what was added in, I wanted to be able to know what I was feeding my dog. And then seeing how everybody else was really receptive to that, we wanted to make something that was fun, was good for the dogs and could be something that was fun for the owners,” he said.
Paw Street Barkery also has an online store and ships their products nationwide. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the storefront was forced to close and many customers supported their business online instead.
“They supported us greatly through COVID-19. The physical storefront did shut down from the middle of March to June last year and during that time our customers were able to purchase online and have it delivered to their house,” said Cohen-Sherry. “Our customers were very receptive and very helpful during all of that. They continued to support us during that period and as soon as the doors reopened everybody was back supporting us at the location.”
With the retail store open again, Cohen-Sherry said they have seen a great increase in customers which continues to grow. Customers are also allowed to bring their dogs directly into the store where they can try treats to see what they like and dislike before buying.
Cohen-Sherry encouraged people to try Paw Street Barkery because of their healthy, natural ingredients available at a reasonable price.
“Knowing that all of the treats are made with very simple ingredients, very healthy ingredients is something that allows the owner to have fun with what they’re getting, but also know that what they’re giving them is healthy quality ingredients for their pup,” he said.
Those interested in learning more about Paw Street Barkery are able to visit their website at https://pawstreetbarkery.com/ or by calling 437-8014.