Saint Rocco’s Treats: From Dorm Room Pandemic Idea To Redefining The Dog Treat And Food Industry, A Founder’s Story with Kaleb & Kolby Rush
As an up-and-coming entrepreneur in the dog treat and food industry, Kolby Rush has a lifelong love of dogs combined with his tenacity, vision, and work ethic needed to get their products, Saint Rocco’s Treats (SRT), to market. Responsible for managing the financial actions and operations of the company inclusive of tracking cashflow, budget and production planning, and analyzing fiscal strengths and challenges, he also helps oversee R&D and quality control of SRT products to ensure they are the best of the best for the brand’s four-legged fans and their respective owners. The 2nd founding partner of Saint Rocco’s Treats, (SRT) a recently launched online, wholesale, and gourmet dog kitchen business, Kaleb Rush is as passionate about the brand as he is about dogs. He leads SRT’s wholesale business efforts and fosters new business relationships each day. Outside of his B2B activities he works hard to create community outreach relationships and efforts, he is also responsible for the planning, development, and execution of SRT’s marketing and advertising initiatives. Lastly, he loves making SRT’s customer service as strong as our product. This is an area SRT plans to spend a lot of time focusing over the coming months.
Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up
We grew up in a rural part of Bucks County, PA, and attended Pennridge school district, and were both involved in lots of extracurriculars growing up including sports, school clubs, and church groups. At very young ages, we went to our grandparents and played with cousins daily creating a heavy focus on family. We both felt truly blessed with an awesome family, but more importantly, amazing parents who worked hard (and still do) to provide for us. As a result, important lifelong morals were instilled and a feeling of lifelong support. Our parents played an enormous role in planting the seeds of self-confidence needed to create a successful business and we both attribute a major portion of our success to our formative years, the support of our family, and the values that guide us each day.
How did you get started as an entrepreneur?
We were both sent home from college (like all students during Covid) and lost our summer internships due to pandemic-related issues. Through what felt like an eternity of video games and virtual classes, we wondered how we could better utilize our existing skills and knowledge to make a positive impact on the world. Throughout our childhood, we watched our grandpa and dad work in and build businesses in the dog treat industry. This experience gave us unique insight into how the dog treat industry worked and the rare skill of crafting gourmet, meat-based, dog treats. We knew that dog treats could be made fresher, more high-quality, and in a much more transparent way than we saw anyone else doing. We took our skills, combined our lifelong love for dogs and entrepreneurial passion, and we set out to create a brand for pet parents who longed for transparent, high-quality, and nutritious dog treat craftsmanship. We knew dogs would taste the difference if we made treats that were baked fresh in small batches each week. We knew dog lovers would gravitate to our transparent, artisan baking process and our focus on the quality of ingredients used to craft our treats. Along with our father, we spent months perfecting the 5 ingredient, human-grade, meat-based, dog treat recipes that we sell today.
What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?
Serve your customers, the pursuit of service always beats the pursuit of money in the long term. Love what you do and whom you do it with. Focus on solving the right problems with the best solutions today, this will set you free from problem paralysis. Entrepreneurship is a never-ending cycle of problem-solving.
