The Barker Lounge, LLC

Who owns The Barker Lounge?
The Barker Lounge, LLC is a private company founded by Jason Puleio. Individual facilities are owned by franchisees under license from the LLC.

Is The Barker Lounge publicly traded?
No. It is a private limited liability company with no stock listing and no published financial statements.

When was the company founded?
The Barker Lounge began in 2002 in New Jersey and started franchising in 2007.

How much does a Barker Lounge franchise cost?
Franchise disclosure data places the initial fee around $25,000, with total investment estimates between roughly $276,000 and $443,000 per facility.

Where is the company headquartered?
The company is headquartered in Cranford, New Jersey, with its corporate office listed at 109 Aldene Road in Roselle, New Jersey.

How many locations does the system have?
The brand lists facilities across New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Franchise disclosure data reports a compact system of franchised units, making it a boutique system by industry standards.

The company was founded in New Jersey in 2002. The founding couple's dog, Lilah, needed daycare, and the available options were unsatisfying: traditional kennels kept dogs in runs for most of the day, and the small number of daycare operations then existing were inconsistently run.

Jason Puleio financed the first facility with proceeds from stock options he held in an online trading software firm that had been acquired by Ameritrade, plus funds raised from friends and family. The first Barker Lounge was designed around a premise that was then unusual: dogs should spend their day playing in supervised groups, not waiting in kennels.

The operating model was formalized as the Animal Management Program, developed with a well-known behaviorist and an industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience. The program specifies how dogs are evaluated, grouped by size and temperament, supervised, and managed for stress, turning an informal daycare idea into a documented system.

Franchising began in 2007, with early development in the greater Philadelphia area. Franchise Times coverage from the period describes Puleio's plan to add four to five franchised facilities in the system's first push.

Growth stayed measured. Rather than scaling aggressively, the company added units selectively across the eastern United States. Locations listed by the brand include Cranford, Livingston, and East Brunswick in New Jersey, Charlotte and East Charlotte in North Carolina, Charleston in South Carolina, Alpharetta in Georgia, and Fort Myers in Florida.

Franchise disclosure data in the mid-2020s reports a small system, with the initial franchise fee around $25,000 and total investment estimates of roughly $276,000 to $443,000 per facility.

No litigation, regulatory enforcement, or documented controversies involving The Barker Lounge, LLC were identified in public records reviewed for this page. Pet care facilities operate under state and local animal care, health, and licensing rules, which apply at the facility level.