*Transcript by Descript*
Not only is our value proposition resonating with our existing customers, but also for new customers. So we were thinking, you know, the chewy name our, our customers know us. The 20 million of them, they will come in easier, you know. Easier kind of resonance with them, but we’re seeing that more than 40% of the people that walk in our door are brand new to Chewy  Retail.

Unwrapped is a weekly podcast hosted by Shelly Cohan from the Robin Report. Each episode dives into the latest trends and developments in the retail industry. Join them as they discuss interesting topics and interview industry leaders keeping you in the loop with everything retail.

Welcome to Retail Unwrapped, where one of the topics that we always like to explore is innovations that are reshaping the retail experience across industries. I’m Shelly Cohan, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Mita Mara,  who’s the president of Chewy Health. Which by the way, is the fastest growing chewy business segment, I think with about over 3 billion in net sales.

Mita. That’s right, Shelly. Well, I appreciate you having me. Very, very happy to be here today and look forward to talking about all the fun things, uh, you know, around pet health and uh, chewy Vet care. It’s great. So last year, uh, chewy expanded beyond just being e-commerce and you opened up your physical veterinary clinics, um, I think it’s like literally a year ago.

So, um, congratulations on your one year anniversary and really helping us to transform pet care. So maybe you can start by telling our listeners a little bit about Chewy’s ambitious journey into veterinarian care and what this means for the future of pet healthcare. Yeah, no, that’s the, that’s it. I, I love talking about this.

It’s a, a topic very close to my heart, and, uh, thank you for congratulating us. We, in fact, did reach one year, you know, a few weeks ago, super excited about it. Uh, you know, so Chewy was, uh, based on the premise of delivering the experience of a personalized service of a neighborhood pet store. With the convenience of e-commerce, and we’ve basically taken the same ethos and we’ve developed our veterinary clinic.

When you come in, you feel like we know you. The care is for you. We take care of, you know, we, we basically deliver the whole experience around you. And, you know, not only we wanted to do this for the pet parents and clients who walked in, but also for our care teams, people who work in the practice every day.

And, you know, in, in the past basically, you know, one year what we’ve seen is. We’ve been able to deliver all of this, you know, our commitment, uh, to our customers and pets and to our care teams in this manner where, you know, you walk in the door and we know who you are, and the care is customized to your pet and customers love it.

Effectively, our care teams are very, very empowered to deliver that personalized care to take care of the pet. You know, not only their medical needs, but also like taking care of the whole pet from the perspective of like, we already know you. So like, can we, you know, they’re, they’re trained to listen to cues that, you know, come out from, from customer conversations, from just, you know, generally what they know from Chewy about the pet.

And then that also empowers them if they’re happy working there. ’cause they’re like, Hey, we’re delivering the best care. We’re empowered and we’re very, very happy to be here. So I think those two things, working in unison where you know, you’re taking care of the customers, walking in, you’re taking care of the employees that work there collectively, I think has, we’ve been sort of something that we’ve been very proud of and has really kind of powered through the first year, and the results have been phenomenal for us as well.

Well, that’s amazing. And I was very excited when I saw all the photos last year. I haven’t been able to visit a clinic yet, but if you could tell a little bit about our listeners. I’m not sure they know. How many veterinarian clinics do you have? And I don’t think you call them clinics. You probably call them pet care.

So we have 11 so far. So when we last chatted, we hadn’t, we didn’t even have bed zero, we were opening one. So now we have 11 across, uh, south Florida. Texas, uh, Denver and Atlanta. Uh, and, you know, it’s 11 in a, in a span of a year has been, uh, quite a journey and we’re excited ’cause we’re about to open eight to 10 more this year.

So really sort of continuing down the journey of constant build with these practices. So just remain super excited about the path in front of us.  That’s exciting. So what have you learned over the past year and can you share any insights with us about your first year under the Chewy Vet Care?  I think maybe I should start with, you know, what is it that we were seeking to do with these?

And then I’ll kind of, you know, balance it with insights. Perfect. And really, you know, when we were opening these practices, there’s, there’s other practices out there, right? Like, there’s so much happening in this space and you know, as we were opening these, our mental model was  obviously you wanna deliver the highest quality care.

Like that has to be table stakes, right? People walk in the door. You have to take care of, you know, medically, you know, for the pets and, and the pet parents. But then beyond that, what do you do? What differentiates you from like excellent medical care? And I think from my perspective on our team’s perspective, we said we wanna be able to deliver a memorable experience for everybody who walks in that door and for our care teams, right?

What do I mean by memorable experience? Right? Memorable experience in my mind is one that, um, you, that is not expected, that is unexpected, that is not par for the course, right? That is something that you will likely talk about when you are not at our practice, right? And actively talk about, and those things are, you know, sometimes.

Easy to, um, think of, uh, in a maybe nonclinical setting. So like Chewy does that very well. So Chewy sends you pet portraits, you know, that’s great when you talk about these, how do you do that in a clinical setting? And I think those are the things that we were really, really, um, wanting to kind of infuse within our practices is how do you make, you know, the experience memorable for clients.

And, you know, I have been, uh, super proud to see, to say that. Our care teams are delivering this incredibly well, right? We basically have trained them to listen for, and again, outside of medical care, listen for cues. When, when planned parents come in, what are they talking about? You know, is there a kid that walks in with them?

What are they saying about their pet? What cues can you pick up from all of the chewy data that you have? ’cause I mean, we have 20 million customers, so we know so much about these people, right? So what do you know about them? How can you infuse some of that magic into your conversations with them? And I think that has really sort of.

Um, driven so much, um,  customer love and care team love towards customers and the practice itself. So I think that has been really, really empowering to see. So like I give you a small example. This is a, perhaps a silly one, but I think and, and, and, and, and a fun one. So there’s a, a customer that walked in with their little daughter, with our practice with, with her little dog.

Um, and you know, she, the, the, the daughter’s like, oh mom, like, I would like an a nice coffee. And, you know, our client can see her just like, okay, well. Mom, it’s, it’s a girl. Like, is she allowed to have coffee? And she was like, okay, yeah, sure, you can give her a cup of coffee. And the, and the concierge is like, okay, well I’ll give you some coffee.

So she made a cup of coffee and the girl was like, well, I wanted iced coffee. This is warm coffee. We don’t have, I mean, we have general coffee, we don’t have iced coffee. So my client concierge is like, okay, well how do I solve this problem? So she took it upon herself. She went and she got a glass cup of ice from the, the restaurant next door.

Put the coffee and it gives it to the little girl and it made her day. But like, it’s a very small thing. But effectively, the mom was like, I can’t believe you did that. I cannot believe you took care of me. And, you know, they’re just really empowered to do, you know, to do these kind of things that leave a memorable impression.

And now this mom is gonna talk about us, right? Another one is within our, um,  Texas, uh, practice. Austin practice. We had a, a customer who had moved in from California, they moved to Austin and they were. New entrance into Texas. ’cause their home was destroyed by all the wildfires. So, you know, not, not, not a great moment.

But they shared that with our, you know, with our, with our team. The team is like, okay, well we need to do something special for them. Right? And it’s in an unexpected moment. The customer went home a week later, they got, you know, a portrait for the, a little pet in the mail. They got, uh, you know, a little kind of mug with California, um, and a little bear hugging a tree.

Like, just little things like that, which then just make the, the experience memorable. And these things are, you have to teach for this, you have to empower your team, but the team must deliver against that, right? So I think these things have been very, very empowering for us to see. So back to insights as to what are we seeing, you know, what are these things doing for us?

I think the biggest insight I can tell you is embarking upon this journey. Practices in vet care was new to Chewy. So we’re very, very careful about customer experience. Right. So I’m proud to tell you that all of our, uh, NPS scores, our customer experience scores are Google reviews. ’cause, which are, you know, publicly available, of course you see are all like 4.8, 4.9 stars.

So like, that’s been really empowering to see. So our value proposition is resonating with customers really, really well. So that’s, I think that’s kind of insight number one that we’re proud of. Um, I think second learning has been, you know, not only. Is our value proposition resonating with our existing customers, but also for new customers?

So we were thinking, you know, the chewy name our, our customers know us. The 20 million of them, they will come in easier, you know, easier kind of resonance with them. But we’re seeing that more than 40% of the people that walk in our door are brand new, chewy. Which like is incredible for us to see. ’cause that tells us there is that need for, you know, modern, predictable, trusted healthcare outside of just our customers as well in general.

So like we’re proud of that fact. So I think those two kind of are big stats. And then also I.  I think finally the convenience portion is resonating with customers. So effectively, you know, as these customers come in, we hear a lot about, oh my goodness, I didn’t realize I can walk out of this practice with, you know, this, this, uh, chewy app that has everything for me, my medical records, my vaccine records, invoices, all that’s integrated.

You know, so many people will tell us like, oh, I wish I had this for my human health. I don’t even have it for my own self. Now I have it for my pet. Right. So I think these are the things we’ve invested in over time that are resonating and we’re just super proud of all of these. Oh, that’s great. So I wanna go back.

I love your story and I’m going to tell you I don’t have daughters, but I have sons. That was my son in the waiting room. That is something my son would’ve absolutely walked in and asked for, and he would’ve had that same experience. So, um, tell me more about these modern pet parents. Like what other, uh, snippets can you tell us about what does this look like today?

Yeah, no, that’s good. So, you know, modernization in the new pet parent is, it’s, uh. We, we talk about it so much. ’cause millennials and Gen Zs, they are the largest pet owning population now. And if you look at the stats that we’re seeing, 70 to 80% of them want to use technological and e-commerce resources for their research about pet care.

That’s how they wanna access care. Right. And, and, and, you know, all of these, I mean, they’re not any different than kind of how we’ve sort of, you know, in the, the, the industry that we’re growing up in, even outside of pet care, right? Like. You want fast delivery, you want everything at your fingertips. You want the information that you want.

And we’ve had to design all of our experience for these pet parents. So like examples are.  Some of these sound very simple, but you have to appreciate that they don’t really exist at scale within the vet space. So like, I wanna be able to book my appointment from my phone and my app immediately. Okay, great.

You can do that with us. I want access to 24 7 healthcare. Like I have a question, you know, I don’t care if it’s like 6:00 PM and your practice is closed, or if it’s like, you know, midnight or it’s like, you know, 8:00 AM so what do I do? So, you know, practice is closed at 6:00 PM but you know, that’s where the power of Chewy comes in.

’cause Chewy’s never closed. We’re always here. So we have like, you know, a, a team of, uh, care professionals who are always there 24 7. They can pick up the phone, they can access records, they can talk to you. So those things are, you know, that that’s kind they want. So access to care, you know, uh, convenience they want.

I think second thing is, um.  Within the access and convenience framework. Medical records is a big thing. I want everything at my fingertips all the time. Right? Okay. So I need it in my app. I need my invoices, I need my vaccine records, I need medical records very easily. I don’t wanna sift through stuff to find them.

Great. We can give you that. Right? So I think these are the kind of big things we’re seeing with them. And then finally the delivery convenience factor of, okay, well if you don’t have this in practice, but I need this, can you get it to me quickly? And that’s where like in the power of Chewy comes in.

’cause with our e-commerce engine on the back, yeah we can get it to you next day. So whether it’s your medicine, your food, et cetera. So really sort of looking for that one place that can be their companion, but it has to be efficient, it has to be very easily accessible whenever they want. And you know, it has to give them access at their fingertips effectively.

So I think that’s sort of what they’re looking for and we’re building toward. That’s great. So it’s a mix of technology and uh, one thing that you’ve always talked about and in the practices, this is something that you’ve really focused on and that’s removing stressors. Yes. So, stressors on the visits.

Stressors during stressors. Can you talk a little bit about, other than what you just mentioned, which in my opinion. Actually removes a lot of those stressors by having all those, you know, abilities to connect and get information. Are there other ways that you’re looking at taking away some of the stress of, you know, I mean, normally when, uh, people are going to take their pet in, it’s not a joyful experience.

Maybe for the normal checkups are, but normally it’s, you know, something outside of that. That’s right. So how are you removing those stressors? Yeah, that’s, it’s a great question. We’ve put so much thought and we’re very deliberate about how we remove these stressors, and you’re absolutely right. You know, it’s many a time it’s not, uh, it is stressful for both the pet parent and the pet.

And especially like if you have feline patient, if you have kittens or cats, it’s even more stressful. So we’ve been very thoughtful about how do we sort of. You know, remove these stressors from the perspective of both the pet, the pet parent, and our care teams. ’cause they get stressed as well. Right? Of course.

So a few of these examples are just starting out from how we design the practice itself. So if as soon as you sort of walk into our practice, right, it’s the whole thing is designed to be, it feel like a spa. Um, it doesn’t feel like a vet practice at all. Right? So when you come in, we have soft curves, you know, we’ve used, um, we don’t have any fluorescent lighting because.

Pets can actually hear those frequencies that, you know, we don’t hear and that can cause them stress. So we don’t have that. Our flooring is sort of traction flooring, so when pets walk, they don’t slip on the flooring. You know, these things sound simple, but when you see them in practice, it’s like, oh my goodness.

Like it’s, it’s easy for the pet. Separate waiting areas for dogs and cats. So just kind of minimizing those lines of sight so you know, dogs and cats don’t look at each other again. Sounds very intuitive. We all grew up hearing about dogs and cats don’t get along, but yet when go into practice. Putting this, you know, in, in, uh, in, uh, in practical life has been interesting to see.

Um, and then for our feline patients, like we have, um, we, we spray these pheromones that are, uh, call it happy pheromones for cats, and they quite calm them down and, you know, they’re, they’re kind of happy. Being there and kind of lowers the stress level a bit more. So these are the kind of things we’re employing in practice to reduce stress level.

And then finally we deploy fear free practices. So like, um, you know, we have peanut butter that always works for, for every pet, so we can give them that, right? We don’t restrain. So like these kind of things we do and that, that just makes, you know, makes, makes the pet kind of more common, more happy. And then like, you know, for the pet parents themselves, when they walk in.

We just try to make it easy for you. We greet you nicely, we talk to you, we offer you coffee, we offer you water, we take care of you. Right? So you are taken care of. Your pet seems less stressed ’cause the whole experience is designed around that. I think that just basically, you know, minimizes and um, I.

Makes being there a very happy moment. And then I think finally for our care teams too, we’ve done invested in stuff like we don’t have ringing phones, right? Ringing phones make nobody happy. They cause our team stress, right? Because if you’re sitting on the front desk, your phone’s ringing, a person is walking up to, you don’t want that.

So we want our care teams entire focus to be on the pet parent that walks in, the pet that walks in and not having to worry about ringing phones or anything else. So like. Stuff like that we’ve done as well. Just sort of make it a very calm and inviting space, uh, where people are and pets wanna come in and, and, you know, be happy.

That’s amazing. So initially when we talked about removing stressors, I was only thinking of stressors for like the humans that are bringing in the pets. But you just listed out a ton of things that you’ve done in the design of these, uh, practices that actually remove the stress from the pet. Yes. Which is amazing.

It’s, it’s very important for us. And, you know, we’ve designed, uh, most of our practices are design, I call them designing at the nose level because you see.  As a human. ’cause we see here, right? The pet sees here and the, and their nose is kind of their, um, how they experience the world, right? So that’s how we’ve designed it.

So you went, as you’re walking in, our treats are at that lower level. So when they walk in our door, they can smell the treats. They wanna come in, the treat pulls you in, right? So really like how do you design the whole thing such that the pet and their line of sight is what you’re thinking about as alongside the human line of sight.

I think that really helps us kind of bring the whole experience together. I love it. So I wanna go back to something you said earlier about your chewy ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about how that really helps move forward your work that you’re doing at Chewy Health? Yeah, so I think I, uh, we wanna just start with Chewy is the only.

Place or the only company right now that has first party proprietary technology built across our entire ecosystem. So if you look about, you look, think about just chewy.com in general, all of the technology that powers Chewy. And you think about Chewy Vet Care now, all of the technology that powers Chewy Vet Care, we, it’s all proprietary to us and we’ve custom built all of it.

So the, the benefits you get with that, it every, is that everything talks to each other very seamlessly and you can connect it very seamlessly. And we have data that can flow back and forth very seamlessly, right? So you can use now this technology and the seamless connectivity to sort of power the entire ecosystem.

So what do I mean by that? Right? So with this first party technology, we believe that we now have, um, a very unique ecosystem that can help us drive kind of the care. Commerce and convenience flywheel for customers in a very unique way that nobody else can in the industry. And you know, some examples of that are, as customers sort of walk into our practices, I said over 40% of our customers are, are brand new to Chewy.

When they come into Chewy Vet Care, like immediately we can acquire these customers and put them on autoship  through Chewy, right? So you can actually do that cross sell opportunity. You can develop the customer, you can acquire them in that way. Um, we can expand the share of wallet of our existing customers.

We know you, so as soon as you know, we know where you are, when we open a practice, we can reach out to you. We can bring you in as you come in, you know, we can, again, we can, we basically expand our share of wallet with you. ’cause you will now experience new Yvette Care. Again, we can put you on autoship.

Like those kind of things help, right? So the flywheel mechanism or effect that we’re getting through commerce is, um. Very beneficial, you know, unlocks a lot of value, not only for the pet parent and even for the customers themselves. ’cause they get the convenience factor, but also for Chewy from business perspective and our shareholders as well.

Right. So the, the, the, the ecosystem piece there is very, very compelling. I think another one is around, I was talking about access to care. Um, so like our practices are, they are, you know, usually close six or 7:00 PM depending on which practice you are. Chewy is never closed, right? chewy.com is never closed.

So we have the, we have, uh, connect with the Vet, which is our tele triad service. They’re always open. So you need us, you know, after hours you can call Chewy, and we have access to your medical records. We can have the conversation with you. So the continuity of care is maintained through the power of Chewy behind you.

Right? Um, similarly, you know, we have, um, uh, we talk a lot about pharmaceuticals and the need to have pharmaceuticals delivered to your door consistently and predictably. Uh, we have the number one pet pharmacy in the country. Our network is such that we can get to you within, you know, a single day and customers love that.

And our care teams and practice love that as well. ’cause again. In vet practice, it’s not you. There’s no way you can, you can keep, uh, you know, every medicine that you need, you know, every, every, um, food that you might need. Right? Right. So with Chewy, they get an endless shelf of like, pharmaceuticals of medicine, and they can immediately, as customers come in, we can immediately set you up and we can deliver it to you next day.

Right? So the power of the ecosystem kind of standing behind the practice and really kind of putting ourselves around the whole customer is very, very powerful and. We can deliver that just based on the technology that we’ve built and how we’ve connected everything together. Yeah. That’s amazing. So when you, when I say to you, what’s a five star experience look like, you know, what does that, what does that mean to you and what’s that?

Uh, actually, what’s it mean to your, uh, customer? Yeah. I think to me, like, you know, the fi I would again, go back to saying the, we have to deliver memorable experiences, right? So when you deliver a memorable experience, you know, people talk about it and that is what, uh, that is what we wanna drive. So, my goal and our goal, you know, I, I’ve told my, my practice teams that every customer that walks out of Chewy Vet Care, I want them to have a story to tell.

And they need to have a story to tell about you, about the experience they had in the practice. About the medical care they received or whatever it is that happened to them there. Right. And that is what we should seek to do with every customer. And I think that is what Five Star experience is, right? And a lot of times they’re like, yeah, what, what do you mean by like, I don’t understand.

What do you mean by that? And I’m like, let me, let me give you an example. I love to give a restaurant example. Like let’s say  you frequent a restaurant, right? You’re a frequent diner there. You go to this restaurant again for dinner, you have a good experience you love, you order the food they bring you, you know, the food is, it tastes great.

You were seated immediately. Uh, you know, food was warm. Amazing. They’re very efficient. They bring you the bill when you want it. You were in and outta there as you want. It all went amazing and went great. Right? And you leave  that I would call an expected experience, right? Yes. It was great. You were happy.

It was fine. Like you, you know, great. But it’s not something that when you leave, you’ll talk about, you’ll be like, oh, that’s a great restaurant. Somebody asks you, we’ll say, oh good. It was good. Like, I like them. I want, I go there frequently, right?  But then you wanna turn that into something you wanna actually talk about.

And I wanna make you an evangelist of me. I want you to have a story. How do I do that? So now the same restaurant, you come in, I know you by name. I’m like, hi Shelly, how are you? You know,  how have you been? How’s you know? How’s your children? How’s your husband? You ask the con, you know, ask the questions.

Then I go take you and be like, would you like to sit at the same table that you sat last time? So, prefer a quiet spot or. Or, or just you wanna try something different today? No, I prefer the quiet spot. Okay, great. I take you to the quiet spot. You go and sit there.  What? What can I get you? Do you really, really like you really like the wine?

Last time you had this one, would you like that one? Something else this time? Okay. Something else this time. Okay, great. Let’s do that for you. And then, you know, you, then you deliver this standard experience. You get your food, you get all that, and at the end I’m like, Hey, thank you for being a loyal customer.

We really appreciate you. Um, the chef wants to come say hello to you, right? Okay. Maybe you do that, or I say, okay, well, why don’t I give you, why don’t I get you some dessert today? Right.  So now, now it’s the same restaurant, it’s the same everything, but I’ve now taken you and you’re more likely to go talk about this experience with your, with your friends and your family, et cetera.

Right? So how did you take something that was par for the course and delivered well, but really like amplified it and made it made, made it kind of five star or seven star, such that you will actually talk about it. That is not memorable, right? So how do you sort of do that every day in our practices?

That is what we have to do. So that’s what we tell the vets, that what we tell our care teams is everybody needs to have a story to tell. Now it’s you are empowered and you can do, you basically, you can  govern what story you want them to tell, right? But that should be kind of your north star. And I think that is what’s resonating with the, both the teams and our customers.

That’s amazing. That’s the wow experience, and you already do that online and you’ve been doing that for years online. There’s constantly people that always talk about their chewy experience. So it’s great to see you’re translating that into the practices. Um, can you give us some insights into what trends are shaping the future of pet healthcare?

Yes. So, you know, pet healthcare, uh, in the US is about a $47 billion market. Uh, yeah, it’s passive. Wow. And again, fueled by millennials and Gen Zs. And these are the biggest kind of pet owning, you know, uh, cohorts now, they treat pets as their children. Um, and when you treat pets as your children, right, your willingness to, they’re very high.

They’re hyper aware.  They’re willing to spend a lot of money on their pets, right? So the need for sort of pet health is continuing to rise and we just project in the future it will, you know, sort of continue to rise going forward as well. Um, I think the second sort of trend that we think about actively is again, these are also the people who are very technologically forward, right?

So they consume, uh.  Call it information, call it healthcare or call it anything in their life. They wanna consume it very quickly. They wanna consume it, you know, through technology and they want everything to be fingertip, right? So you have to basically, when you imagine what health pet health will be in the future, it has to be sort of based on something that’s easily accessible, something that is, um, you know, uh, um.

Effectively can be delivered very quickly to these people and always kind of healthcare in their pocket is sort of what I call it. So very, very convenient to them. So I think those are the two things we’re thinking about. And then I think finally, uh, just the demand for veterinary care will also continue to grow, right?

’cause as you think about the other dimension is, is, is vets themselves. And as you know, the, the customer friendships hire. The demand for vet care continues to rise as well. So I think on the other side, we’re also looking at how do we continue to innovate for veterinarians and, um, you know, the, the industry itself such that we can make existing vets more efficient, such that we can have more vets kind of coming into the pipeline and people, you know, sort of, uh, wanting to kind of join this profession more rapidly.

’cause we both have to sort of work simultaneously so that we can sort of keep changing the shape of the industry going forward.  Yeah. And I’m sure that you must have a vetting process, no pun intended, uh, but to kind of work through. There’s probably a lot of veterinarians out there that wanna join the Chewy family.

And so how are you vetting ’em out? Is this a big concern for yours about finding high, highly talented vets that also are going to be able to deliver on this great promise of surprise and five star, you know, experience? Yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a great question. I think generally speaking, Shelly, like.

The demand for vet care today far exceeds the amount of vets available. Right. So just ’cause like we’ve, you know, the, the, um, the pace of, uh, acquisition of pets like Pet Parenthood is sort of far exceeded. The vet production or the people graduating from school has been kind of static, right? We have an added more, more vets, right.

So that there’s already a disconnect there. So it’s, it’s, so it’s, you have to keep in mind, the mind that there’s already deficit for vets in the industry in general. Right.  Where Chewy comes in is we obviously want to get vets into our ecosystem, but also we have to make them a lot more efficient, otherwise the the deficit will continue to grow.

Right? Right. So from our perspective, you know, we welcome  any and every vet that wants to work with us. We welcome them into our ecosystem. I think what we basically have said is like, you know, we recognize vets are the healthcare professionals. We recognize all of them have, you know, the clinical quality of care they bring is, is generally excellent.

We’re not training or teaching for that. What we wanna just make sure is we do two things. One, we talk about the, um, we call it delivering here the Chewy way. So like we talk about, you know, how do you, uh, the communication aspect of it, right? The, and, and, and these are the things that, again, if you haven’t been exposed to it or expect to do it.

Before. Before you just don’t know it. It’s, it’s within all of us. It’s just exposing you to it and just talking about like, Hey, here’s how we can have the conversation. Here’s how you do it. And then you immediately see people see it and magic happens, right? So I think that’s what we do. So we wanna talk about that with them a bit.

And we find that, you know, it resonates with, with. Nearly all of them that that walk into our door is one. I think second is just also giving them career paths, right? And also giving them like, hey, creating a culture where they want to work also attracts them, you know, towards us as well. So a lot of the, you know, graduating vets now are, it’s predominantly female, the vet profession, and, you know, younger vets who are female, you know.

Just have different needs states, right? You are working moms, you wanna pick up your child from school, you wanna go attend, you know, something, you want Flexible scheduling, stuff like that. So like, we’re creating these also, um, benefits that pe that vets do wanna work at Chewy. So kind of becoming the employer of choice.

So, you know, these things are now starting to resonate within the industry. ’cause it was different when we had zero than we had one. Now we have 11. At the end of this year we’ll probably have, you know, 21. And it’s a small industry. People talk and I think what’s been empowering for me to see is like our message is getting out and now we are getting a lot more vets who are like, Hey, like.

I’ve heard this about you, I wanna come talk to you. I wanna try you. And what we find is when they talk to us, when they come, you know, and when we talk, talk about how we’re thinking about the care team and their experience, how we’re thinking about customer experience and the behaviors we’re expecting, you know, all of them, we all want, we all want the same thing, right?

We all wanna uplift the pet. We all wanna uplift the pet parent. We all wanna uplift kind of the experience in the industry. So I think we’re very aligned in how.  Vets think and Chewy thinks about, you know, it’s just about kind of connecting the two together and us having the conversation with them.

That’s amazing. And I, of course, I’m a firm believer about employer of choice, so I was excited to hear that term and um, I’m sure that Chewy is gonna continue to grow. I can’t believe we’re out of time. I could literally spend the entire day talking to you. Um, but we are out of time, but I do wanna give you the opportunity

Is there any closing remarks that you would like to kind of touch upon before we leave?  I think I, I only wanna say, you know, we are, uh, at Achieve at Care, we’re committed to delivering high quality care and committed to delivering memorable experiences. Uh, we are very, we’re at the outset of our journey today.

You know, we know we’re shaping an industry. I believe it’s a journey, and we’re committed to it. And, you know, we’re just excited for the opportunity that’s in front of us. And it’s, it’s a massive one, but we believe if anybody can do it, it’s, it’s chewy and we’re committed to the cause.  Well, thank you Mita so much.

I know our listeners learned a lot from me today, so thank you and I hope you’ll come back and tell us more about your growing business. Thank you for having me, Shelly. It was great talking to you as always. And yeah, love, love to do it whenever, whenever we have had the chance. Next.  Thank you for listening to Retail Unwrapped.

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