Pet lover opens Best Bites pet food store in Palos Park

By Bob Bong
Southland Savvy

For Joy Metzger, of Orland Park, her new business was a natural progression, not to mention a mouthful.

Metzger opened Joy’s Best Friends Ltd. Best Bites the day after Thanksgiving at 13034 S. LaGrange Road in the Shoppes of Mill Creek plaza in Palos Park. She sells all-natural pet food for dogs and cats along with some other pet supplies and toys.

She said she decided to open the store as a result of her search for natural pet food for her boxer Layla after the pet food scare of 2007. Pet owners may recall that pet food contaminated with melamine was recalled by the FDA in 2007 but only after killing dogs and cats across the United States.

“I started trying to find all natural food for my boxer puppy Layla,” says Metzger. The quest eventually led her to open her own store.

“I sell all natural pet food made in the U.S.A,” she says. “There is no corn, no gluten, no soy and no animal byproducts in the food I sell.”

“I figured I should open the store while I can,” says Metzger, who has operated a pet-sitting service out of her Orland Park home for nine years.

“Business has been so far, so good for me. People always treat their pets nice, even in a down economy,” she says.

Pet sitting and selling pet food is a far cry from her previous job as a CPA. “I’m far happier now,” she says.

And the strangest pet she’s ever cared for?

“A bearded dragon lizard,” she says with a laugh.

For more information, call Metzger at 708-448-1515. Her Web site is being updated to reflect the pet food business. You can find it at www.joysbestfriends.com

Burrito Loco opens in Tinley Park
El Burrito Loco opened last week at 8005 W. 183rd St. in Tinley Park. It is the chain’s 21st location.

Burrito Loco is a place to go if you have a hankering for Mexican food either early or late. The kitchen opens at 8 a.m. daily and closes at 1 a.m. Monday through Thursday but not until 3 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For a complete list of El Burrito Loco locations, visit www.elburritoloco.net

Meijer update
Readers keep asking about the Meijer store under construction in a former Value City Department Store near 159th Street and Harlem Avenue in Orland Park.

Here’s what I know. The store will be 102,000 square feet. That’s about half the size of traditional Meijer stores. It’s one of the company’s two experimental “grocery-focused stores.” The first opened in January in Niles. The idea is less general merchandise in favor of grocery items.
The store will have a deli and a drive-through pharmacy. Meijer expects about 150 jobs when the store opens.

The store is expected to open in June.

I’ll pass along more as I hear it.