About Us — How Max and Rosy Started

It all started because my grandmother loves doing markets.

We would usually go along and help her out, and one day she basically said, “Why don’t you guys also sell something?”

Fair question.

The only problem was… sell what?

So me, Jacques, and my mom, Maliska, started throwing around ideas. We came up with a few things, but nothing really made us think, yep, this is it.

So naturally, we did what any highly experienced business people would do.

We Googled it.

We started looking up things you could make and sell at markets, and somewhere in that rabbit hole we came across dog treats.

And I remember thinking, we can definitely do that.

I love dogs, my mom knows how to bake, and most importantly, we already had two very willing — and very unpaid — quality control inspectors at home.

Max and Rosy.

Our dogs.

And just like that, Max and Rosy became our first official taste testers.

My mom brought the baking knowledge, and I brought my slightly obsessive curiosity of wanting to figure out how we could make the healthiest and best treats possible for our dogs.

Turns out, that combination worked pretty well.

Not immediately, though.

There were plenty of failed batches.

Some recipes were good.

Some were not so good.

And judging by the looks Max and Rosy gave us sometimes, a few probably shouldn't ever be spoken about again.

But we kept changing things, trying again, going back to the drawing board and annoying the dogs with yet another taste test.

Eventually, we got it.

The recipe.

The one where we both looked at each other and thought, okay… this might actually work.

So we made a batch, packaged it, slapped a Max and Rosy label on it and headed to the market.

And boom.

We were officially in business.

Well… technically.

Sales were pretty slow in the beginning.

Then we figured out our greatest marketing strategy.

Give the dogs free samples.

That was pretty much game over.

Once people saw their dogs going crazy for the treats, we didn't really have to do much selling anymore.

The dogs did the selling for us.

What originally started as something fun to do while spending weekends at markets slowly turned into:

“Maybe we should actually take this seriously?”

Then it became:

“Maybe we should try getting into a few stores?”

And before we knew it, we were doing the whole shabam.

Packaging.
Retailers.
Registrations.
Production.
Deliveries.
A website.
And a lot more dog treat

We started with simple treats and somehow ended up developing our own dehydrated dog food called Honde Pap.

And no, it's not really cereal for dogs.

We just thought Honde Pap sounded cool… so we went with it.

What started as a little weekend market project has now turned into a proper family business.

My brother Arno has joined us full-time too, which means Max and Rosy has officially gone from “Mom and son making dog treats” to becoming a bit more of a problem for the big commercial pet brands.

We're still small.

We're still learning.

We're still figuring things out as we go.

But we're far from done.

We started in the Western Cape, and our next goal is to get Max and Rosy across the rest of South Africa.

We're not a company with some massive marketing budget behind us, and that's okay.

We'd rather grow by doing things that actually mean something.

One of the biggest parts of that is helping dogs that haven't been as lucky as Max and Rosy.

That's why we're working with shelters and rescue centres and doing what we can to help feed the dogs in their care.

Our goal?

To help feed 1,000,000 dogs across South Africa.

It sounds slightly ridiculous when you say it out loud — and honestly, it is.

But then again, by any normal measure, we probably shouldn’t even be here. No big business background, no investors, no fancy plan — just three people figuring it out as we go because my grandmother told us to sell something at a market.

And somehow, that turned into this.

And if God allows us to feed another million after that…

We'll feed them too.

We’re only just getting started — and we can’t wait to see how this plays out. Stay tuned, because we’ve got some big things planned.

— Jacques, Maliska and now Arno