Choice Pet Supplies Hemel Hempstead

16/03/2025

Hello everybody. Lately, we have heard many of our customers talking about the possible sale of the Hemel Hempstead Hillier Garden Centre site, and what will we do if that happens? Well, let me give you 'the skinny' on this.....back in January, we received an email from Hillier Garden Centres command centre, informing us that they had been offered a large sum of money for the sale of the Hemel Hempstead site. The email made it pretty clear that they were going to sell if the planning application gets approved. The planning application was expected to be submitted at the end of January. As of now, the 16th March, there is still no sign of this planning application. Right now, it is very much a case of nothing-is-happening. If a planning application does get submitted, it will take about two months to go through the process, and give people the opportunity to object. If the planning application does get submitted and approved, we will be granted six months of trading, during which time we will find another premises and inform you what is going on. This business will relocate and continue. The pot has been stirred by a party leafletting local houses about the planning application which does not yet exist, and so locals are talking about something that has not yet happened.
However, right now, and I cannot emphasise this enough, nothing is happening. Life goes on, and if we have to move to another site, you can be sure that you will know all about it long before it happens. In the meantime, please carry on being lovely customers and ignore the noise. Stay or go, we will continue. I live right next to the Maylands, and will be very happy to relocate there if necessary.

13/03/2025

Hello everyone. I have recently been working on the website, so that all the great brands we stock get a mention on there. It's not super-slick, but it shows what we have to offer. If you give it a click, it should help it do well in the Google rankings.

https://www.choicepetsupplies.co.uk/

Thank you!

About Choice Pet Supplies is an independent pet store which has been trading from inside Hillier Garden Centre in Hemel Hempstead since 2018. We sell products for dogs, cats, horses, small animals, chickens, indoor birds and more. Our main strengths are a huge range of frozen raw foods for cats and....

08/03/2025

Good evening everyone. Tomorrow, on the 9th March, Choice Pet Supplies will be exactly seven years old. Also tomorrow, the Radlett store will be exactly one year old! There was no design to this, it is just the way things panned out. Both stores started trading on the 9th of March, six years apart. Yesterday I was talking to a customer in Radlett about how it was our birthday this weekend, and as she left the store, Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday came on the radio! Sometimes the universe just hums along with you.
I bought all the staff a bottle of fizz to mark the occasion, because they are all totally worth it, according to what I hear again and again from our customers. Right now I am making sure it was a good bottle. It's alright! Today both stores have been nice and busy, and the sun has been shining, and I am feeling grateful.

05/03/2025

Normally it is a bit of a wrestling match to get a dog on the scales. This little guy however, decided that this is where he would like to hang out while his owners looked at some dog coats.

01/03/2025

We now have Purrform frozen raw cat food in our Hemel store! We have 70g pouches, which are £1.29 each, and also some of the larger 250g and 450g tubs, plus some raw frozen treats. This premium raw food is produced and packed in St Albans, and they have an office in Abbots Langley, so we are keeping it nice and local!
https://www.purrform.co.uk/

19/02/2025

I am thinking of introducing a couple of new frozen raw brands to the mix. One is Purrform, who supply nice little 70g pouches which start at just £1.10 each, and the other is Dougies, who provide frozen raw dog food in packs of 4x140g blocks, which start at just £2, depending on the meat option. Feedback and thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

https://www.purrform.co.uk/
https://www.dougiespets.co.uk/

16/02/2025

New colours of water-resistant fleeces.

13/02/2025

Today we signed up for an account with the UK distributor of Ziwi Peak dog and cat food. Super premium foods from New Zealand, made with 85% fresh meat, which is gently dried. If this is of interest to you, then please let us know which options you would like us to order in. You won't find these foods in any of the big retail chains.

08/02/2025

Not Hemel, but look at him! Lucky boy.

One of today's very good boys, with his jumbo moose toy which he picked for himself.

07/02/2025

We are now stocking water-resistant fleeces for Dachshunds, in a range of sizes. We are only stocking the green and the mulberry to start with, but if you look on the Pawsome Suits website, there are lots of other colours you can order through us. The stock is in our Hemel store, and it will be landing in Radlett from 9am tomorrow.

05/02/2025

We have this new Kong Cat Punch Bag in both stores. The sucker sticks to any smooth and flat surface.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1493346514653058

02/02/2025

We are now stocking Nutriment's 'Gently Steamed' range. A great backup for raw feeders; 68% meat and gently cooked. You don't need to store it in the fridge or the freezer.

29/01/2025

Today I took a video of myself taking one of Hillier's big trolleys from their car park to our shop. It took about 90 seconds, with me only using one hand. The camera was facing downwards quite often, because I didn't want to film the various customers and staff I met on this epic journey.

29/01/2025

So far everyone has been quite kind to us about the new rules for the gate. We can still load your car for you, if your purchase is difficult to take through the garden centre, but the car needs to be parked in the garden centre carpark while you are doing your shopping, and then you can bring it round when you are ready so we can help you load up.
I can't say I'm not worried. The past 12 months have been a struggle since I made the crazy decision to open a second store in Radlett, and the business needs to grow in sales over the next few months if it is going to survive. Some of our customers who used to go to Hemel are now going to the Radlett store, which is great, but this means Hemel is making less money than it did before, and Radlett still needs to grow in sales before it is generating profit. We are getting there, slowly. The total sales for the business have increased since I opened the Radlett store, but they are still being outweighed by the extra staffing and rental costs. The overall trend is upwards, so as long as that continues then everything will be fine. Trust me when I say that we want to offer the best service we can, but we don't want to jeopardise our place in Hillier, so their clamp down on the use of the turn-in for parking is causing us some anxiety. Don't get mad at us, because we want to stay friends with you and we need your business.
I love it that these sort of posts get a lot of reaction; we really do have the best customers, who actually care about how things are going. It goes against the accepted rules of social media posting; 'keep it light, keep it short'. Recent events, including some which I shouldn't discuss here, have given me food for thought. One day we will get our own unit, where we can sell whatever you want to buy, wild bird food, fish food, and there will be parking right outside the store, and we can help you without any mucking around with locks and stress... it will happen one day. This business is what I and some of my staff intend to do with the rest of their lives, so by hook or by crook we are going to make this work.

27/01/2025

Hello everyone, I need to say a few words about the gate by our shop. Hillier's health and safety officer has told us that we must not use the turn-in for customer parking, because at times it can get quite choked there, which is quite dangerous when vehicles are turning in off the busy road. The other issue is that Hillier have been experiencing a lot of theft lately, and so they want that gate kept locked as much as possible.
The gate is only to be used for collecting bulky orders which can't be taken down to Hillier's carpark, using one of their trolleys. They always have barrows near their front entrance, and you could easily cart up to 100kg of dog food using one of these.
The gate is strictly for collections only, and not parking while you shop. If you are disabled, and walking up through the garden centre is difficult for you, then that is different. We will do our best not to fall out with anyone over this, and please don't take offence with us; this is not our garden centre, and not our gate! We don't want to compromise the good relationship we have with Hillier Garden Centres. Thank you!

26/01/2025

One of today's customers, rocking his new Pawsome Stretchy suit. Red is definitely his colour.

23/01/2025

A quick walk through of some of the new toys that came in today.