1 week Ago
South Portland’s Mill Creek Shopping Center — seen here in June 2016 — will soon be home to The Barkery Dog Bar, offering an indoor dog park, bar and fast-casual restaurant. Portland Press Herald file photo by John Ewing There are plenty of dog-friendly retailers, restaurants and breweries in southern Maine — but a new business in South Portland is ready to take things a step further, which already has some tails wagging. “In a nutshell, this is going to be a human-friendly dog park,” said Nate Viens, co-owner of The Barkery Dog Bar, which is slated to open later this year.
One part of the building, located at 180 Waterman Drive in the Mill Creek Shopping Center, will be a full-service bar and a fast-casual restaurant where dogs are allowed (on leashes). It will be a glass-free facility “for obvious reasons,” Viens said. The other part will be an indoor dog park where patrons can enjoy time with their dogs unleashed or leave their pets with The Barkery’s attendants.
“We’ll have people staffed inside the park with a whole toolkit just to assist owners,” Viens said. “They’ll help avoid issues of fights or behavior from dogs we don’t want to see.” Those taking their dogs to the park will check with a mobile app, or they can sign up for a membership to provide their dog’s vaccination records and create a profile.
The business model was inspired by places Viens and his wife, Haley Michaud, who are both from Maine, saw in their time outside the state. In Columbia, South Carolina, they frequented Jake’s on Devine, which “marketed themselves as the most dog-friendly bar” in the city, Viens said. However, it was Bar Kay in Oklahoma City that represented “what I would consider the true industry standard for a dog bar.
” “Everyone knows that all the dogs are safe and they have all their vaccinations, and it was really well designed to create the best experience for both dogs and humans,” Viens said. “That’s really how we modeled it.” Viens and Michaud returned to Maine with the idea.
“We knew we wanted to come back to Maine and open it here, and the South Portland location came down to a few different factors,” Viens said. One was the availability of properties that would accommodate a bar, a restaurant and a space large enough for a dog park. Another was that it wouldn’t be adjacent to residential areas but also not too far away, as to make travel difficult for their clientele.
“Then, just working with the city was huge,” Viens said. “Being such a new concept, we knew it had to be something that people were on board with, and the city of South Portland has been amazing and helpful every step of the way — the health inspector, the planning board, the economic development office.” The Barkery will appear before the Planning Board again next month, and if the process continues going smoothly, Viens hopes to open in September.
“This has been a great experience for us working with other businesses in the community, and when it blew up a little bit on social media, we had so many people reaching out offering support, welcoming collaboration,” Viens said. “That’s why we’re here.” For more information and updates on the business, go to barkerydogbar.
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