Choice Pet Supplies Hemel Hempstead

17/04/2025

We would really appreciate some feedback on this: One of our customers has someone in the family with a serious peanut allergy, so they have asked if we could make a celebration cake using sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter. I wonder how many of you reading this have family members who are strongly allergic to peanuts, and whether this has prevented you from ordering one of our celebration cakes? Let us know if this is the case! Thank you.

17/04/2025

On Sunday, Hillier Garden Centre will be closed, so we will be closed as well. On Good Friday and Monday we will be open the usual hours. Our store in Radlett will be open on Sunday, so if you get caught short, you could drive there. Call first though, because we don't stock everything in Radlett that we stock in Hemel.

15/04/2025

With a nudge from Mark at Herts Canine, who is providing gundog training, we have improved our range of retriever toys. The Kong Wild Shieldz Perch and Trout are tripled-coated for toughness, have a nice heft for distance throwing, and they float on water. The Coachi Training Dummies are also nicely weighted for throwing, float on water, and are very bite resistant.

06/04/2025

Today some of the dog coats got packed away till next year, and all the hot weather stuff came out: Cooling mats, cooling beds, cooling bandanas, cooling coats, and cooling toys.
In the corner of the downstairs room, we have all sorts of good stuff for the warmer months: travel bowls and bottles, tie-out stakes, car window guards, cotton dog robes for drying-off after a dip in the water, and pop-up pet baths.
It's not quite summer yet, but it's good to be prepared when the heatwave hits!

31/03/2025

The last few days have been REALLY busy. I think the drama about Hillier Garden Centre has done us a favour, and given us some much needed publicity. We are seeing lots of new faces, and lots of new dogs! Thank you to everyone who has shared and spread the word.
Today I had a really good meeting with our probable future landlord. Right now his property is just empty fields, but soon the wheels should be in motion to build a new, better-designed home for the business.

28/03/2025

Choice Pet Supplies 2.0 is in the pipeline. Sometimes changes happen that you don't want, and good things come out of it. Sometimes the universe shakes things up and it all falls back in to place in a better way, and I am confident that is happening now.
An exit plan from Hillier has been presented to me, which looks very exciting. I have been given the option to inform in the design of a new building for the business, only 3 miles away, and the plan is to have parking right outside. I can't say any more right now, but please keep on supporting us, because soon everything might get a bit better for you and me.

27/03/2025

Our range of Purrform products continues to grow. There are frozen raw treats, convenient little 70g sachets, and two sizes of tubs in the freezers. More and more cat owners are switching to raw feeding, because it is the most natural and appropriate diet you can feed a cat. Purrform is a great local brand, producing in St Albans and with an office in Abbotts Langley. Prices aren't bad, with the sachets starting at £1.29.

25/03/2025

The daffodils are back! They always take my mind back to when we opened in March 2018, when the first stock was being delivered to our empty shop, wondering if I had been brave or just foolish? The daffodils outside the window have always lifted my spirits. This is our eighth spring. It's a lot harder to see them through the window now, because we have SO much stock.

22/03/2025

Hello everyone, it seems that just about everyone has noticed that a planning application has finally been submitted for the change of use of the Hillier Garden Centre site. We now have a couple of months to wait for the planning process, before we find out if it will be approved or not. If it is approved, then we will have another six months of trading, so we will definitely be here in Hillier Garden Centre till around November.
The plan is 100% for this business to continue, whatever happens. We will relocate locally if we can't stay in Hillier's site. Looking on the bright side, there are many positives that could come out of moving. We could sell whatever we wanted to, including wild bird food, fish food, maybe even compost and fuel. We would aim to find a site where you can park right outside the store, and we can say goodbye to all the locked-gate palava.
Moving will cause some interuption to business, and have it's costs, so it is vital that we have a good spring/summer to make sure there is money in the pot later in the year. As you may know, I have taken a financial battering from opening the second store in Radlett last year. Also this year I found out that I would be paying the full cost of my Dad's care home after the end of March, so my back is very much against the wall.
On the bright side, the Hemel store is still turning a decent profit, and the Radlett store continues to get busier and busier, so the future is looking bright, provided the business survives the turmoil of the next few months. If you love our store, and would like us to continue, it is vital that you continue to support us through the next few months. We do what we do because we love it, but money makes everything possible. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to seeing you all in store. 🙏

22/03/2025

Good morning from the toy shop!

19/03/2025

We now have Dougies in Hemel Hempstead! All the single meat 80.10.10 options, plus the Pure Veg blocks. All the 80.10.10 packs are £2.40, apart from the rabbit and the venison which are £4.30. The Pure Veg is £2.10.

16/03/2025

Hello everybody. Lately, we have heard many of our customers talking about the possible sale of the Hemel Hempstead Hillier Garden Centre site, and what will we do if that happens? Well, let me give you 'the skinny' on this.....back in January, we received an email from Hillier Garden Centres command centre, informing us that they had been offered a large sum of money for the sale of the Hemel Hempstead site. The email made it pretty clear that they were going to sell if the planning application gets approved. The planning application was expected to be submitted at the end of January. As of now, the 16th March, there is still no sign of this planning application. Right now, it is very much a case of nothing-is-happening. If a planning application does get submitted, it will take about two months to go through the process, and give people the opportunity to object. If the planning application does get submitted and approved, we will be granted six months of trading, during which time we will find another premises and inform you what is going on. This business will relocate and continue. The pot has been stirred by a party leafletting local houses about the planning application which does not yet exist, and so locals are talking about something that has not yet happened.
However, right now, and I cannot emphasise this enough, nothing is happening. Life goes on, and if we have to move to another site, you can be sure that you will know all about it long before it happens. In the meantime, please carry on being lovely customers and ignore the noise. Stay or go, we will continue. I live right next to the Maylands, and will be very happy to relocate there if necessary.

13/03/2025

Hello everyone. I have recently been working on the website, so that all the great brands we stock get a mention on there. It's not super-slick, but it shows what we have to offer. If you give it a click, it should help it do well in the Google rankings.

https://www.choicepetsupplies.co.uk/

Thank you!

About Choice Pet Supplies is an independent pet store which has been trading from inside Hillier Garden Centre in Hemel Hempstead since 2018. We sell products for dogs, cats, horses, small animals, chickens, indoor birds and more. Our main strengths are a huge range of frozen raw foods for cats and....

08/03/2025

Good evening everyone. Tomorrow, on the 9th March, Choice Pet Supplies will be exactly seven years old. Also tomorrow, the Radlett store will be exactly one year old! There was no design to this, it is just the way things panned out. Both stores started trading on the 9th of March, six years apart. Yesterday I was talking to a customer in Radlett about how it was our birthday this weekend, and as she left the store, Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday came on the radio! Sometimes the universe just hums along with you.
I bought all the staff a bottle of fizz to mark the occasion, because they are all totally worth it, according to what I hear again and again from our customers. Right now I am making sure it was a good bottle. It's alright! Today both stores have been nice and busy, and the sun has been shining, and I am feeling grateful.

05/03/2025

Normally it is a bit of a wrestling match to get a dog on the scales. This little guy however, decided that this is where he would like to hang out while his owners looked at some dog coats.

01/03/2025

We now have Purrform frozen raw cat food in our Hemel store! We have 70g pouches, which are £1.29 each, and also some of the larger 250g and 450g tubs, plus some raw frozen treats. This premium raw food is produced and packed in St Albans, and they have an office in Abbots Langley, so we are keeping it nice and local!
https://www.purrform.co.uk/

19/02/2025

I am thinking of introducing a couple of new frozen raw brands to the mix. One is Purrform, who supply nice little 70g pouches which start at just £1.10 each, and the other is Dougies, who provide frozen raw dog food in packs of 4x140g blocks, which start at just £2, depending on the meat option. Feedback and thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

https://www.purrform.co.uk/
https://www.dougiespets.co.uk/