Overview:
The Denver doggy daycare believes its culture of trust and transparency can fuel brand growth across the $158 billion pet care industry.
At the Skiptown doggy day care located at York Street Yards near downtown Denver, dogs roam the facility off-leash, playing with other dogs or Skiptown employees called “skippers” while their parents indulge in cocktails and conversation at the social bar.
The facility has 195 open spaces for dogs to stay in and has become a popular spot for pet owners to take their dogs in the Denver metropolitan area, offering pet care services, a grooming center, and both indoor and outdoor play areas. The space has 80 employees on staff with 35 skippers working in the daycare department.
Nationally, the pet care industry has reached expenditures of $158 billion plus. Skiptown is tapping into the growing market through a five-unit franchise agreement that is expanding its pet care facilities across the state of Colorado, employing 50 to 60 employees at each location.
Mike Rotondo, the chief executive officer of Skiptown, said that when the company was looking to franchise, Colorado had more inquiries than any other state in the country.
“The response from Colorado folks has been overwhelming, and I think it has a lot to do with it being a very dog-friendly state and a lot of very passionate people wanting to increase and improve the care for pups,” Rotondo said.
Currently, the franchisee is visiting potential site locations around Denver and is hoping to open the first new location in the first half of 2027. The new locations will not include social bars for pet owners and will only provide pet care services.
Jennifer Worswick is the owner of Top Paw K9 Academy, a local dog-training company. She also runs the Denver Dog Community Facebook group, where over 5,500 pet owners in the Denver area post about local dog events and offer advice. Since her company is expanding to a 120-acre ranch in Keenesburg in September, she is well aware of the increasing demand for pet care in the Denver area, as well as what people are looking for in the industry locally.
“Pet care is not simply a real-estate or capacity business. These are living animals with individual thresholds, preferences and behavioral needs,” Worswick said. “Denver does not just need more places capable of holding dogs. It needs providers capable of understanding them.”
Skiptown agrees, as the leadership claims that its franchise expansion strategy is based on a customer experience that current York Street Yards employees believe is critical to why Denver pet owners return. The Skiptown app allows the company to distinguish itself as a tech-savvy business by providing pet owners with real-time updates on their dog’s stay at the facility.
For Kristen Risby, Skiptown’s head of marketing and communications, the company’s emphasis on technology is meeting customers’ expectations where they need to be met today — their phones.
“Pet parents get push notifications with photos of your pup, who their best friends were that morning, and what they were doing in the play group,” Risby said. “It’s constant visibility into their day, just like a child would at daycare, and that’s what consumers expect in today’s technology-driven world.”
Risby also said that the app is designed to counter a problem she has experienced elsewhere in the industry related to visibility: webcams in pet care facilities are often glitching or pausing, leaving pet owners with “absolutely zero updates” about their dogs.
Worswick, an independent business owner, competes in the market differently, focusing on making “decisions based on the individual dog rather than a company-wide system.”
“Franchises often compete through convenience, branding, technology, amenities and the ability to open multiple locations quickly,” Worswick said. “Those things can absolutely appeal to customers.”
Skiptown’s commitment to transparency, employers say, extends beyond the app and into how Skiptown thinks about the impact of their pet care.
The decision to expand within Colorado, a state filled with residents whose dogs are deeply woven into their daily lives, reflects a philosophy that dogs should be treated like someone’s family members, not just pets in temporary care, according to Aleq Quintanilla, general manager of Skiptown’s Denver location.
“I think there needs to be an industry shift where it’s like ‘dogs are dogs.’ No. Dogs are people’s babies. Dogs are people’s children,” Quintanilla said. “And if we treat all of them more like that’s someone’s child, it just increases the level of care.”
Culturally, the company has also contributed to discussions around the community between pet owners who are members at Skiptown. Each dog is sorted by size and personality into animal-themed groups, from puppy groups being called “Hedgehogs” to large-breed groups like the “Elephants” and “Rhinos.”
According to Rotondo, Skiptown’s structure is more than just the playful branding that attracts pet owners to meet each other while socializing at the bar; it’s also how seriously the company’s staff takes logistics behind the scenes in daily operations.
“When all the pups are being brought into the facility and you’re dropping off your pup for daycare, that pup has already been assigned to a specific enclosure,” Rotondo said. “It’s already been assigned to a specific play group. If you have food, if you have medication, any of this, it’s all in technology, so the parent isn’t worried.”
As demand for pet care services continues to grow nationwide and Denver locations expand with it, Quintanilla said Skiptown’s focus in Denver remains on earning the trust of their customers with their dogs one visit at a time.
“We’re really excited to keep continuing to show that we’re a bit of a maverick in the pet care space, and we’re really ready to show more guests what we can do,” Quintanilla said. “We’re ready for more people to start trusting their pups with us.”
