Vet Taxi

rides between 2019 and 2023

5,000+

of bookings came through the website

60%

partner veterinary clinics

~20

views on the best social video

93,000

Vet Taxi was my own business: a pet taxi in Cluj-Napoca, running from February 2019 to July 2023. I ran it alone, truly alone: bookings, the website, the rides, maintaining and cleaning the car, social media, ads, design, calling clinics to set up partnerships and calling customers to ask how it went.

A service people didn't know existed, with no ad budget, that had to work at any hour: a veterinary emergency doesn't wait.

A website with online booking so nobody had to call, and street marketing: flyers in most vet clinics, vet pharmacies and pet shops in town. Word of mouth did the rest, because the service was very good and many customers arrived saying "a friend recommended you". On Google Search there was just one simple campaign of about 95 € a month. In the last years I started investing in social media.

• 01Service concept and full visual identity
• 02Website with a booking system, map and live tracking
• 03Online payments and automated emails
• 04Social content: video, editing and publishing
• 05Campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube
• 06Partnerships with veterinary clinics and businesses
• 07The website is no longer online; the brand remains

More than 5,000 rides, 4 to 6 a day, with many trips outside Cluj (Bucharest, Iași, nearby villages and Sebeș 3 or 4 times a week) and even one to Switzerland. Sadly, we also took deceased animals to the crematorium. About 60% of bookings came through the website, we worked with around 20 vet clinics, and the Google campaign, at about 95 € a month, brought 8 to 10 new customers a month. On social media, the best video reached 93,000 views and 7,741 likes, and the Facebook page 3,000 followers. I closed in July 2023: when Bolt added a pet option to its app, the phone stopped ringing the next day. It was temporary, because people soon saw that option only works for small dogs or cats, usually in a carrier, and after I closed the phone started ringing again. Even today, three years later, people still message us on Facebook and Instagram and call.

A one-person business can deliver an excellent service, but it can't adapt fast when that one person does everything. I didn't see Bolt coming and had no time to react. Today, when I work with a business, I think about that: keeping the numbers in view and owning a customer channel (website, contact list, community) is what gives you room to react. The Vet Taxi idea is still alive, and one day I'll bring it back under another brand, somewhere else.