Amongst many, one of the biggest challenges with a special needs family member is finding employment for them and involvement after high school.

Wigglewow Epic Chefs (adults with special needs employees) help create every Wigglewow product and are in each step of the process.

 

Flip the blue bag over, and you will find a picture of them and information they wanted to share with their customers!

Hello there! I’m Mark. In 2014, I was talking via Skype to my brother Sheldon (living in the Philippians at the time with his 2 children) and during that conversation I believe God spoke to me through him. Sheldon told me he couldn’t count the number of times he failed to sleep at night. This totally caught me off guard and I asked him if he had cancer or another disease. Sheldon explained he wasn’t physically sick, just haunted by the fear of who was going to take care of his son, Soron, when he died. Soron is Sheldon’s son with Autism.  During that same conversation, Sheldon challenged me to develop a business model to employ adults with special needs. We kicked around a couple ideas, however my Bride of 32 years, Kathy, recommended doing something dog related.     

Later, Sheldon and his children returned to the US and lived with us for 6 months. During this time, I truly began to understand the reality of life with a special needs family member. Sheldon continued to share with me several concerns related to raising Soron; concerns I never thought of before.

As a result, I created the company EPIC in 2015 to start making this dream of creating a company focused on creating careers for adults with special needs a reality. I continued to work for corporate America and prayed to God for wisdom and guidance in all aspects related to EPIC. During this journey, God provided many answers and directions on the overall business concept and details others had never considered.

One of the first challenges was to create a treat dogs loved. It took 2 years to find a treat dogs would choose over their favorite treat at home. It was worth the wait. Today, when given the opportunity, over 90% of dogs given the Wigglewow dog treat test, choose Wigglewow treats over their favorite treats at home. Once I had the secret recipe, I attempted to lock in the name EPIC as a trademark for dog treats. Unfortunately, another company received approval just a few months earlier. That is why I created Wigglewow, a doing business as (DBA) for EPIC, LLC in 2018. Another key challenge was mass producing treats efficiently with staff of various abilities. Unlike some other businesses where the owner looks at all their existing processes and forces an adult with special needs to succeed in one of them, Wigglewow looks at each process, and the abilities of the epic staff and brainstorms how existing processes can be tweaked allowing more Epic Chefs the ability to be successful at that workstation.

Wigglewow production began August 10^th, 2019, when Epic Chef Dante successfully created over 250 treats. Before that, Dante had unsuccessfully attempted to get a job for 5 years since graduating from high school. In a step of faith, I quit corporate America on September 30^th, 2019, to work Wigglewow full time. Wigglewow continues to grow and issued 31 W2s to employees with special needs for working at Wigglewow in 2022. 

In October 2021, Wigglewow moved into our new location at 10529 Watterson Trail, Jeffersontown, KY, providing more space for gourmet dog treat production and our decorated treats.  Customers can now experience the magic that happens in "The Dog House” (Wigglewow's production area). 

Would you like to be a part of the Wigglewow family and make a difference in other people's lives? Consider volunteering a couple hours a week in The Dog House. You can contact me on my cell at 502-558-5100 to learn more about current opportunities with the Wigglewow Team.

I pray you will join us on this EPIC journey. In addition, I ask for prayers as Wigglewow pursues its goal to become the largest employer of adults with special needs in America by August 10, 2029.