Meet Abigail Wucherer

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Abigail Wucherer.

Hi Abigail, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
In 2020, I was in the second semester of my freshman year at NC State University, majoring in mechanical engineering. As the pandemic hit, I moved back in with my parents and sisters. My older sister, Arin, was born with Microcephaly and intellectual disability, and she could no longer attend high school due to COVID-19, so she graduated high school that spring.

When I graduated high school, the opportunities for what I could or would do next were seemingly endless. For Arin, there were very few opportunities, and that was not unique to her. Nearly 80% of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are underemployed or unemployed. However, Arin did have a love for baking treats for her service dog, Posie, or as she called her “Good Girl”. Posie was Arin’s lifeline and gave her access and the ability to navigate the world with more confidence and independence.

Particularly because of Posie’s stomach issues, it was important that she had gut-healthy dog treats, so Arin’s treats she made were all natural and dehydrated as a natural preservative. During the pandemic, we were baking more and more with Arin and starting to sell the treats from our front yard on a table for the neighborhood dogs to enjoy. Arin made three flavors of treats – pumpkin peanut butter, cheese and bacon, and dragon slayer for bad breath. What started as a hobby for Arin and her “Good Girl” became more serious when Arin Graduated.

My mom and I cofounded Arin’s Good Girl Dog Treats, AGGDT, in May 2020. Come fall of 2020, I pitched Arin’s Good Girl Dog Treats and the NC State University Entrepalooza and won the first seed money that allowed us to create our first website and sell online. We also expanded to sell at local veterinarians, shops, and farmers’ markets. While sales were expanding, and other interested bakers who had intellectual and developmental disabilities approached us to join our team, we were still baking from our kitchen at home in January of 2022.

That’s when we moved down the road to bake at the American Legion Post in Belmont, NC, in a full-sized kitchen. This allowed us to bring on more bakers and greatly expand production. Now, roughly 20 individuals with disabilities support Arin’s Good Girl Dog Treats, and we are still growing!

We all face challenges, but would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I am a full-time college student, and I just graduated from NC State this spring. My mom and I started this business together for Arin, and she’s a talented special educator. My mom has since left her job at Webb Street School in Gaston County to run the nonprofit, and she’s all in.

That being said, neither of us knew anything about starting a business when we started Arin’s Good Girl Dog Treats (AGGDT). My mom made awesome adaptive recipe books with universal design concepts to ensure that bakers with varying levels of ability could make treats, and making adaptations in the kitchen came with more ease.

However, setting up our first website, licensing the treats through the Department of Agriculture, learning how to submit taxes, navigating business financials, building a board of directors, finding a graphic designer, and figuring out how to sell the treats were all challenges and new territory for us. This business has been bootstrapped, and we have received donations, but we’ve really relied on being self-sustaining from the beginning- meaning nobody got paid!

Transitioning from volunteer based career development opportunities to now being able to support employees was a really scary transition as we didn’t have a rulebook to follow for making that jump. That jump is part of our mission to provide meaningful career opportunities for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and it’s been a great success and joy to see the dream come to reality.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar with what you do, what can you tell them about what you do?
We are a family-based business. My mom is a special educator, now nonprofit director, my dad is a mechanical engineer who also runs the financials for the business, and I’m now a mechanical engineer (just graduated from NC State) who supports the business whenever I am able to!

In this family, we wear many hats. I’ll never forget being on a “family vacation” at the beach and we spent time fixing an issue with the website domain, moving over to a new sales platform, and having a minor crisis about the website being down. It was after that trip that I realized we were all in on Arin’s Good Girl Dog Treats. This was no longer a hobby project for Arin, and this served a greater purpose. Despite all the annoyances at bay, we were going to work through the challenges and make this work.

My parents’ resilience is something I greatly admire, and I love that my family is known for all-natural dog treats and Arin’s Good Girl Dog Treats! Driving around Belmont, NC, in what we fondly call the “dog mobile” with the business’s big identifying magnets on the car, I am confident that the majority of dogs in Belmont have tried our treats, and most owners are aware of our mission and the quality of treats we deliver.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
A few years ago, my mom, coming back from a trip abroad, announced that she’d found the business a graphic designer who would rebuild our website for free- crazy, right?

Turns out she’d struck gold! Her second cousin, Asher Wallach, is an extremely talented graphic designer living in Germany, and he’s completely rebuilt the new website, branding and marketing materials, and social media content while living abroad.

His beautiful work has completely changed our brand image, and he has donated countless times to AGGDT, for which we are forever grateful. His love for dogs and our mission is evident in his work, and we are beyond grateful for his incredible content, creativity, and endless talent!

Pricing:

• Good-est Girl Monthly Treat Subscription Box – $32
• Good-er Girl Monthly Treat Subscription Box – $22
• Birthday Bones – $10
• Treat Bags (bones or training bits) – $13

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.arinsgoodgirldogtreats.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arinsgoodgirldogtreats/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arinsgoodgirldogtreats/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arin’s-good-girl-dog-treats/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z1VzjkHwQM
• Other: https://www.seed20.org/project/arins-good-girl-dog-treats/