What’s going on at That Fish Place – That Pet Place – May 2020

Welcome to That Pet Blog! As we work to help relaunch this blog – we wanted to start injecting more posts directly related to some of the things going on in our Lancaster, Pa retail store – both behind the scenes and in our day to day. We hope these posts help people who are interested in our business glean more insight into why we operate the way we do. Please feel free to ask any questions and we’ll try to be as transparent as possible. We may also answer your questions in a future installment of this column.

This Blog Hasn’t Been Updated in Years – Why Now?

We have found, particularly in the current health crisis, that it has become more and more necessary to communicate, in a longer form, to our customers. In addition, we have more team members now capable of providing interesting content. With those two items combined, That Pet Blog came back to life.

Your Store is Out of A lot of Stuff Now – What’s Going On?

Yes, you’re 100% right, we’re experiencing a lot of shortages right now. First of all, let us assure you, we are attempting to order as much as we can to fill the missing items. This being said, lots of things happening right now are impacting our (as well as other stores you frequent) inventory levels:

• COVID-19-related production and delivery delays. Namely, factories are impacted on the production side when individuals get sick. The same is true for delivery companies
• Still COVID-19 related, but shortages on goods from other countries due to their exposure to the pandemic
• Demand is really high. More people are home, and many are turning to their (or new) pets for support.
• A more recent phenomenon we’re seeing are businesses impacted by protests nationwide impacting their production and delivery capabilities

If you have any questions on this or are looking for alternatives to products you normally purchase, please, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team on social or via email at custservice@thatpetplace.com.

We Noticed the Touch Tank is Closed, and there are Restrictions on How Many People can Be in The Small Animal Room, Reptile Room, and Fish Rooms at this time. Do you have a Goal in Mind to Open these Back up Unrestricted?

The short answer is that – no, unfortunately, we do not. As an essential business through this pandemic, we have worked extremely hard from day one to make our store as safe as possible for our employees and our customers. Given the uncertainty about the COVID-19 virus, we will only adjust back when we feel the health of everyone is reasonably and sustainably, safe when visiting our store. As a destination for folks, in addition to being a retail store, we feel a very high responsibility to be cautious and careful to not encourage a large amount of visitors until the coast is clear.

Thanks for reading! Please check back for future Q&A posts as well as other excellent pet articles from our wonderful team here!