Cool For Canines

Want some ice cream? Forget chocolate, strawberry and chocolate-chip cookie dough. Try the chicken-flavored variety. Or the beef and honey. And it's too bad you didn't know about Kimberly Cohen's creations this past October, when the flavor of the month was pumpkin (no, not pumpkin pie).

But Ben & Jerry's need not panic. Even if public tastes change, Cohen isn't aiming to please our taste buds. She's going for man's best friend's stomach. Cohen owns Pink Belly, a Gainesville, Florida, company that manufactures, sells and distributes Pink Belly Ice Pups, an ice cream for dogs, to stores nationwide. She also operates Pink Belly Café, an eatery for dogs.

Pink Belly's story began one day in the summer of 1999, when Cohen was fretting about taking her Yorkshire terrier for a walk. "The majority of Lucy's fur is black, and she attracts heat like nobody's business," says Cohen, 28. "I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could go out for ice cream?' " Because Cohen knew preservative-crammed ice cream isn't good for dogs, she resolved to make something Lucy could eat. Cohen asked her vet for a list of dog-friendly ingredients and came up with a recipe that includes nonfat yogurt and chicken. "I put it all together, and I had my first batch of Cocka-poodle-do," she says. "Lucy loved it."

So, what does chicken-flavored ice cream taste like? "It's kind of bland; there's no salt or sugar," says Cohen. "There's really no way to describe it. I guess you just have to say, 'It tastes like chicken.' "

Contact Source

• Pink Belly, www.pinkbelly.com

This article was originally published in the April 2001 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Cool For Canines.