How far are pet owners willing to go to pamper their furry friends? Apparently quite some distance.
Luxury products and services run the gamut now, from hand-crafted dog beds that cost more than $1,000, to playhouses ranging from $9,000 to $75,000, depending on style, size and detail.
The American Pet Products Association estimates Americans spent about $70 billion on their pets last year, up 4% from a year earlier—including more than $28 billion on food alone.
The pet industry is booming, and two local companies are redefining what’s good enough for pets to eat.
Home-Cooked Meals
Just Food for Dogs’ motto is cooked fresh, packaged frozen. The Los Alamitos-based company makes dog food using USDA-certified meats, vegetables and whole grains—ingredients approved for human consumption—that are vacuum-sealed and frozen immediately to lock in nutrients. The process allows the product to sit for three to six days in the refrigerator and last for up to 12 months in the freezer.
Product offerings include meals, treats and supplements.
With a message that a dog’s daily diet affects its health, energy level and even vet bills, meals are prepared sans preservatives, growth hormones and artificial colorings.
Shopper Dan Lunt told the Business Journal he’s noticed improvements in his puggle, Occy—named after Australian surfer Mark Occhilupo—who was on a metabolic diet to lose weight. He learned about the brand through his vet.
Products aren’t cheap. Premium pet food companies include Mars Petcare Inc. and Nestle Purina Petcare, which generated over $17 billion and $12 billion in 2015 sales, according to data from Petfood Industry. A bag of Mars’ 26-pound California Natural Lamb Meal & Rice sells for $54 from online pet food retailer Chewy Inc., about $2 per pound. Just Food for Dogs’ lamb and brown rice meal costs $30.95 for 72 ounces, nearly $7 per pound.
But pet owners are buying, as illustrated by the company’s footprint now encompassing 11 locations across Southern California.
Just Food for Dogs got funding from Greenwich, Conn.-based consumer-focused private equity firm L Catterton in April on undisclosed terms. Founder Shawn Buckley said proceeds will support growth.
The company will expand its presence in the Bay Area, in addition to entering Seattle this year.
The company also offers a small selection for the cat diet.
It announced a voluntary recall last week of three frozen dog food flavors due to lab tests showing Listeria monocytogenes in a sampling of a product, according to news reports. The company suspects green beans to be the source of the contamination.
“Nobody wants to have a recall, but we want to have the perfect recall—by that I mean transparency and immediacy, you tell [consumers] the truth and you tell them everything and you contact the FDA and invite them in,” said Buckley. It’s the company’s only recall to date.
—Sherry Hsieh
Dog Foodies
Snap Wag LLC in Sunset Beach is younger than the dogs its employees own.
At 16 months, it’s still a pup compared to Zoey, Cooper and Murphy—a Jack Russell Terrier, Golden Retriever and Lhasa Apso that gambol, loll, and do other canine stuff at the office with founder and owner Brett Maiolfi, Operations Director A.J. Crook, and Brand Manager Preslie Hardwick.
Snap Wag makes craft dog food. Its a subscription model, and two meals go to dog shelters for every delivery a customer takes—a branding strategy popularized by Toms Shoes Inc. in Playa del Rey—a modern millennial approach.
The company sold 20,000 pounds last year for $60,000 in revenue, giving away 7,000 pounds in the process.
Startup costs of $100,000 were self-funded.
The seasonings—pizza, bacon and eggs, turkey—are the new bit.
“It sounds like wearing two kinds of cologne,” Maiolfi said. “But the dogs go crazy for it.”
Dog owners are generally advised not to swap their beast’s base protein flavor because of food sensitivities, so the new seasonings are a way to add variety without having to clean up any bad results of changing your dog’s grub.
“There’s a limited ingredient profile for the seasoning,” he said.
Delivery is the big dog’s share of the business, though product is also in retailers, including Animalia and Top Dog in Huntington Beach—apropos, given the local Dog Beach.
Maiolfi is also talking to Santa Monica-based Kriser’s Natural Pet about carrying its product. Kriser has 45 stores in five states, including three in well-heeled areas of Orange County: Irvine, Newport Beach and Laguna Niguel.
—Paul Hughes
