When Abe Kanfer and his partner opened Pet Menu in New Hyde Park in October, they saw the store as an opportunity to the build on the business they began in Flushing 22 years ago.
Then Hurricane Sandy struck. And it became something more.
Kanfer said the store, which is located at 743 Hillside Ave., has become a base of support for pets left stranded by the storm, with the store collecting food, toys, bedding and money for the abandoned animals.
“We’re collecting goods and cans and all kinds of pet food,” said Kanfer, who operates Pet Menu with his partner Aharon Blachorsky.
The items collected by Pet Menu are sent to Pet Safe Coalition, a not-for profit that has been caring for pets abandoned after the storm in a section of the athletic center at Nassau Community College.
Kanfer said the donations – including $700 in cash from customers and store owners – began before he had heard about the Pet Safe Coalition initiative at Nassau Community College.
Kanfer said the number of pets being cared by the Pet Safe Coalition has gone down from 100 to 50 pets as pet owners who have lost their homes rebuild.
Others, he said, may be put up for adoption.
“You can commiserate with the situation. And if you have pets, as our customers do, it’s been a pretty successful result in making collections,” Kanfer said.
He estimated that he had delivered $1,500 worth of food, toys and bedding for pets to the Pet Safe Coalition.
He said both Pet Menu stores also have donated to permanent pet shelters.
Kanfer and his partner are also involved in their new community as members of the Greater New Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce.
A Great Neck resident for the past 10 years, Kanfer said he lost power in his home for 13 days in the wake of the hurricane. A pet owner himself, he owns a Shiatsu named Shadow.
“We’re more closely involved with the communities that were affected from here,” he said of the New Hyde Park location. “Here is really where they feel it more than they do in Queens.”
Kanfer said it was a happy accident that he was prepared to lend assistance from the new store location. He said he and his business partner didn’t have a specific location in mind when they decided to expand.
But, he said, they liked the location in the strip mall anchored by P.C. Richards because of its central location on a busy thoroughfare and its proximity to Flushing.
Since opening, he said he’s found that many former customers of the Flushing Pet Menu now live in the area of the new store.
“It made a lot of sense. We had some name recognition already,” Kanfer said.
Kanfer had attended college with Blachorsky’s brother Sam and said he remembers telling him that he wanted to start his own business and he loved pets.
The Blachorsky family already had a pet supply business, Triumph Pet Foods, so Sam introduced Kanfer to his brother, and the partnership was born.
They opened a small store in Flushing in 1989 and eventually moved to the current 6,500-square-foot location on Northern Boulevard because they needed more space.
The only thing the 4,000-square-foot New Hyde Park lacks in comparison is grooming services because it lacks the space.
The aisles of the store are packed with a wide variety of pet foods, accessories and plenty of toys – the plush variety, including some that speak, and durable balls of all sorts, sizes and styles.
“My thing is the toys,” Kanfer said, adding that his staff knows they can expect new toy shipments each time he attends a pet goods show.
But the store’s primary focus, he said, is to offer pet owners dietary alternatives to correct physical ailments that are often the result of bad diets.
“From the beginning, we’ve always tried to be ahead of the curve,” he said.
In the early days, only one or two pet food makers used healthful supplements in their prepared pet foods. Today, he said the industry has come full circle with many veterinarians urging a return to feeding dogs bones and real food, in a formula known by the acronym BARF.
“It’s the grain-free and raw diets that have become prevalent,” Kanfer said. “The way to treat an allergy is to find something they haven’t been exposed to.”
These days that can include venison and rabbit, and Kanfer said Pet Menu has long carried raw frozen meats and natural, holistic brands. Putting dogs on relatively simple, natural diets and gradually changing them by adding elements can isolate problematic foods and determine a pet’s allergies.
“It’s the greatest feeling,” he said when pet owners come back and tell him about the transformations in their animals.
Pet Menu also carries modestly priced leashes, collars and other accessories, mindful that most pet owners in the New Hyde Park area are concerned about their pet’s nutrition.
“I stick with one brand. We know what’s a quality product and we stick to it,” Kanfer said.
He said the kind of service he provides keeps customers coming back and creates word-of-mouth business.
Pet Menu offers customer loyalty cards, maintains a Facebook page and also provides product information on its Web site, at www.petmenu.com.
