2016 was a scary year for Hawaii Doggie Bakery. Scary, you might ask?? Yes. Terrifying! Our Small Family Business had just completed our third year as business owners…the year of business that people love to say is the pivotal year — if you make it through the third year then you’re gonna “survive.” 😂😆 Thankfully, our third year of business was a furtastic one, a great year of growth. It was awesome, but we knew going into our fourth year that we needed to get more help.
From 2012 – 2015, we (Tasha and Niki) baked everything ourselves with some help from our family during the holidays. Beginning 2016, it became clear to us that we needed to hire an employee to keep up with the demand (or find some way to not need any sleep at all!) But hiring an employee is SCARY!! Besides all the paperwork and rules/regulations we needed to learn, bringing in a non-family member made us really nervous. We needed to find a person who would be willing to grow with us, and most importantly could fit into our family dynamic.
It wasn’t easy, but we finally found the PERFECT person to help us out in the kitchen! We were also so lucky to find some “helpers” who come by our shop as well. We worked them to the bone last year, and when it came around for all of them to experience their first crazy holiday season, we knew we wanted to have a paw-ty to say thank you…but we couldn’t have it during the busy season (work HARDER, workers! 😂😆). We finally found time to have our “Holiday” party in February, and we wanted share some of the fun times so you can see the Team behind our fresh baked treats!
HDB Team Photo!
Left side, front to back: Tina (our helper!), Mom & Dad
Right side, front to back:
Niki, Tasha & Joy (our baker!)
Not pictured: Chris & Ezri (another helper!)
We had a delicious dinner, played some games and then we had our first ever Hawaii Doggie Bakery Photo Scavenger Hunt!
Team Niki, Mom & Tina:
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- Doing Exactly What a Sign Says – 10 pts
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- “Reflection” – 5 points
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- Someone Singing – 10 pts
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- Winning A Stuffed Animal – 15 pts
Team Tasha, Joy and Chris:
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- 5 of something – 5 points
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- 5 points for every team member balancing a spoon on their nose – 10 points
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- High Five – 5 points
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- Someone singing – 10 points
In the end, with only a 5 point difference, Team Niki, Mom and Tina were the winners!!
The Winning Team!
We are so grateful to have such a fun team of people behind us and it was really fun taking a break from dog treats and run around like crazy people. 🙂 Looking forward to what 2017 is going to bring for us! Go Team HDB!