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Scoopers in demand in Loudoun
On a beautiful summer day, Chris DeCastro unlatches the back gate of a home on Riverpoint Drive in Lansdowne. Wearing a tidy polo shirt and khaki shorts, he carries a small rake and red dustbin.
Methodically, he walks the perimeter of the small grassy yard, head down. When he finds a clump of dog waste, he rakes it into the bin.
“If you zigzag around you will definitely miss waste – easily,” he said.
DeCastro, 32, is an operations manager with Doody Calls, a Charlottesville-based pet-waste removal company. The company's slogan is “When nature calls, we answer.”
His franchise, which is owned by the company's founders Susan and Jacob D'Aniello, employs seven “scoopers,” who each clean 20 to 25 yards a day in Northern Virginia. The average pay is $14-$16 hour, Decastro said.
Hortense Jackson, who lives with her daughter Jackie Roller in the Lansdowne home, pokes her head out of the back door to say hello to DeCastro.
There isn't much work for him today because Roller is out of town with her two pugs, Stanley and Roscoe.
Most of the time, said DeCastro, the yards have a manageable amount of waste. But every once in a while, there's a bad one.
“We've had jobs at town houses – which you would think wouldn't be so bad – but there's so much waste, you couldn't take a step without stepping in it,” he said.
But no job is too big, he said. Prices per cleaning start at $12 per service, and the price rises as the size of the property and number of dogs increase.
DeCastro, of Herndon, is confident that the company will continue to grow. “This year we are focused on marketing – we want to blow this thing out of the water.” Loudoun is one of the company's fastest-growing markets.
Doody Calls was one of the first pet-waste removal companies in the country, and now is the largest. Its clients include homeowners, apartment communities and homeowner associations. But co-owners and husband and wife, Susan and Jacob D'Aniello, still have to deal with some skepticism about their business.
Sometimes people ask Susan, “Shouldn't people pick up after their own dog?” But she has a good answer.
“You can change your own oil, but do you want to?” she said.
In 2000, Susan's husband, Jacob, came up with the idea, while sitting in traffic on his way to his job as a technology consultant in Washington, D.C. Soon, he and Susan – his fiancee at the time – were scooping on the weekends and before work. Their first customer was in Ashburn.
“I'd scoop as much poop as I could, then I'd put on my suit and tie, and head to my cubical,” Jacob said. “I just always remember thinking, 'I must be the most well-dressed pooper-scooper ever.'”
Now, seven years later, the company has 10 franchises in six states. The D'Aniellos still own the company that services most of Northern Virginia, but they live in Charlottesville, where they met as students at the University of Virginia.
Jacob has big plans for the company – hoping to open 300 franchises nationwide.
“We're not just picking up poop, we're selling leisure time,” Jacob said. “We're building a world-class organization out of – who'd of thought – dog poop.”
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