PawShop began on Mavromichali Street in Exarchia in March 2014. Eleni had spent six years at a small-animal clinic in Pangrati and was tired of telling owners that the supermarket food they had just bought was the reason their dog was scratching. Andreas had spent eight years buying for a national supermarket chain and was tired of watching cheap fillers labelled “premium”. They put together everything they had — €68,000 of savings, a four-year lease, two second-hand wooden shelves from a closing pharmacy on Solonos — and opened with a hundred SKUs they could each defend.
In year three they ran out of room. Eleni’s clients had started travelling from Pangrati and Kifisia for advice, and the food range had grown to fourteen dry-food brands. They negotiated a second lease in 2018 in Cholargos — picked because it was Andreas’s grandmother’s neighbourhood and they wanted a foothold north of the centre. The grooming room opened in the Exarchia basement in 2020 during the pandemic with one groomer, Marina Sotiriou, who is still with them. Same-day delivery launched in 2021 with one electric scooter; today there is an electric van called Anestis and two scooters that cover everything inside the Athens ring road.
The shop you walk into in 2026 still operates by the two opening rules. Every product on the shelf is one Eleni would give Loukanikos. Every staff member owns or has fostered a pet. The journal — which now has 312 articles — is written by Eleni, Andreas, and the team. The buyback on toys is still no-questions-asked. And the donation programme that started in 2017 with 80 kg of expiring food has grown into a 4.2-tonne annual donation to the Athens Animal Welfare Society, which is the achievement everyone at PawShop is proudest of.
