Paradise Pets has a new owner, but there are no plans for major changes at the long-standing St. Albert store.
The business changed hands at the beginning of May but for the critters inside, including Spike the parrot, very little has changed.
“The core team of 25 staff members and 11 supervisory staff remains much the same,” said longtime store employee and manager Adrian Theroux, who explained that he started working at the store himself when he was still in high school.
“We still employ a number of students and they make up about half of our staff,” he said.
Paradise Pet Centre was started in 1977 by Ollie and Don Terrault. Their sons Lorne, Daryl and Murray took over the business, with Lorne and his wife Jayne purchasing the company outright in 2006.
But May 3 Lorne and Jayne sold the business to Greg Penno, who owns five Mr. Pet stores in British Columbia.
“I’ve had my own pet stores for 17 years and before that I worked for five years in a pet store,” Penno said.
Paradise Pets had been for sale for more than a year, and Penno noticed it listed online at Merger Network.
He doesn’t plan to make many changes and said the name that is familiar to St. Albert pet owners will remain.
“We’re very similar. The difference is Paradise Pets has 20 per cent larger floor space than we are used to, but our business motto is very similar. And we’ll keep the name because Paradise Pets has a good reputation,” he said.
To take advantage of the space, new shelving is being added as well as freezers so the store can carry frozen brands of food for fish, cats and dogs.
“We’ll have a bigger selection for cat owners. That’s the area of the store that will grow the most,” Penno said.
Lorne Terrault said it was time to make a business change.
“I was nine years old when my parents started Paradise Pets but you know I’ve been involved for so long, it was time to make a change. So when the opportunity came up, I decided it was time to move in a different direction,” he said.
Terrault is pleased that some of the long-standing family-oriented and pet-friendly practices developed at Paradise Pets will not change. Cats and dogs will continue to be sold, but only those that have come from rescue organizations and not from breeders.
The koi fish that children have long loved to watch and feed and the big, old sassy-talking Spike will remain.
“Spike is absolutely staying,” Terrault said. “He is a mascot for the store and people come to visit Spike and to talk to him, even when they don’t have pets.”
