For Lucy Jabrayan, founder of Thrive4Life Holistic Pet Food Store, it’s all about the animals. “I’m an animal lover,” she says. “For me it’s so much more than a business, because when you touch people’s lives, even if someone comes into my store and doesn’t make one purchase, but they leave empowered, they leave excited, that’s a job well done. So it’s so much more than a business for me when you’re touching people’s lives and you’re helping animals. It’s so rewarding.”
Thrive4Life, which opened in 2018 as a retail store for premium pet foods and unique lifestyle products for cats and dogs, is a “passion project” for owner Lucy. Realizing that her holistic lifestyle and expertise could be applied to animal health and nutrition, she wanted to help other pet owners take a proactive approach to their pets’ health by bringing them quality products, knowledgeable information and research. “You are what you eat,” Lucy explains. “The closer we get animals to what they were biologically made to eat, the better they do. But I also treat each dog and cat as an individual. I put the animal first.” Lucy recognizes that understanding nutrition is one thing, but understanding the pet food market is a “whole other ball game”. “I was teaching people how to read labels, how to break nutrition compositions down and to really understand food,” she says. Nutritional education is a fundamental part of what she offers at her Whitchurch-Stouffville based store. “I’m a pet health advocate first. I could call myself an entrepreneur second but I’m all about the education, because the more we know then the better we can do for our pets. If I can spread a piece of knowledge out there, that’s enough for me.”
When it comes to the products that Lucy chooses to carry at Thrive4Life, she is extremely selective. “I need to try something first, love it, gain personal results and then I will bring it into my store,” she explains. In fact, it was Lucy’s journey with her own cat, Abby’s, health that led her to Smack Pet Foods, which she now carries at the store. When Abby began having health issues - and after multiple visits to vets with no improvements - Lucy found that the only type of food that her cat could tolerate was dehydrated raw. “That’s where Smack came in,” Lucy says. “She thrived on Smack and then when I added supplements, I think that was like the last puzzle piece of her just being a-ok and thriving.” Lucy has been an advocate of Smack ever since. For her, finding a family-owned Canadian pet food company was also something that she really appreciated. “I can’t really name a lot of pet food companies where I can call up and speak with the owner of the brand. I know if I really needed to contact the owner of the brand I can. And there’s something really comforting about that.”
Nearly four years after opening her store, Lucy has no doubts that she made the right choice in her journey with Thrive4Life. “You know you’re on the right path for you, you know you’re in your calling when you take one step forward and everything just falls into place. Honestly, if you do anything with love, it’s never time wasted,” she says. “I joke with my customers, I say that if I won the lottery tomorrow, believe me, come Monday morning, I’m still going to be right here.”
www.thrive4lifepetfood.com