A new veterinary clinic, Small Door, opened this week on the corner of N 4th and Berry Sts. with a unique membership model in hopes of providing personal care for local pets and creating long-lasting relationships with their owners.
Small Door’s Williamsburg location serves as the third of its kind, with existing offices located in the West Village and Upper East Side. Co-Founder and CEO Josh Guttman is also a Williamsburg resident excited to open a facility in his own neighborhood where he sees an apparent need as pet ownership continues to rise.
“There are a lot of pet owners in Williamsburg, so we’re confident that it’s a neighborhood that will value and appreciate the product we have to offer,” Guttman remarked.
To combat concerns over appointment availability, the practice has 15 medical professionals dedicated solely to telemedicine, giving pet owners peace of mind and immediate access to caregivers while not overwhelming veterinarian schedules.
“The reason we [have an ample telemedicine system] is because not everything requires a visit and one of the main reasons you can’t get an appointment is because most clinics require a visit for everything,” Guttman explained. “Most clinics aren’t set up to deliver medicine in a modernized framework and you might wake up with a dog with an upset stomach and we want you to be able to talk to us and we’ll help you determine whether or not a visit is recommended. That’s what we believe is just an honest way of practicing medicine.”
Small Door operates with a membership model, offering all-access and premium-plus membership types that cover different ranges of care at monthly rates. Through this format, the clinic believes they’re able to highlight quality of care over quantity of appointments, allowing for transparency and relationship building with clients.
“Instead of focusing on volume, we focus on care,” Guttman said. “What the membership does is it allows us to be very transparent with our members about what good care looks like. We want veterinary medicine to be less mysterious and medicine in general is hard for a lot of people to understand unless you’re a doctor, so we’re trying to demystify it a little bit.”
Guttman also believes that the membership structure attracts those most invested in their pets’ care and results in an engaged clientele. And, knowing how robust the pet and rescue community is in Williamsburg, Small Door remains dedicated to providing services to make care more accessible, including a discount for rescued pets.
Small Door also works to connect with the local community by offering new puppy playgroups for animal training, pet owner meetups, and puppy socialization; partnerships with Parachute and other neighborhood business; and brand ambassador engagement in dog parks.
“We love the location. We’ve found that it really checks all of the boxes for us,” Guttman said. “We’re super excited to bring this service to the neighborhood.”
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