08 OctEpisode 28 | Let’s talk about the future of dog food with the Farmer’s Dog’s Brett Podolsky
When Brett Podolsky's dog was chronically unwell, he had an idea: What if he bought the same ingredients listed and in the commercial brand he was feeding her, and made her fresh food? The change in her health was drastic, and led to Brett, who was then working as a comedian, convincing his best friend, Jonathan Regev, to start a subscription-based high-end dog food company with him. Now three years old, their Brooklyn-based company, The Farmer's Dog, has secured some ten million dollars in VC funding and their health-supportive recipes are being enjoyed by tens of thousands of grateful dogs throughout the country. Annie and Brett discuss what it takes to start a dog food company from scratch, the problems behind commercial dog food, and the shifts in dog owner awareness that are leading to a tide change in the pet food realm.
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Transcript:
Annie:
Hey everyone. Today I am speaking to Brett Podolsky, who is one of the founders of The Farmer's Dog, which is a high end dog food subscription company. I first discovered The Farmer's Dog three or so years ago, not long after they opened up shop because I was at a cafe that I often go to near my apartment. And there was a guy there with a dog and he and I started talking about his cute dog and it came up in conversation that we're both dog business entrepreneurs. And I started looking into his company and that was Brett’'s business partner, Jonathan Ragiv. A year later, I was reading about them in Forbes.com. And last year, I read that they had secured an $8 million investment. At which point I realized these guys were actually maybe a big deal. So I was psyched to get the opportunity to talk to Brett
**music**
Annie:
So tell me how you guys got started.
Brett:
Yeah, so Jonathan was actually living with me at the time.
Annie:
And how did you two know each other to begin with?
We met abroad and basically just like hit it off and spent every single day with each other. Literally it might be like four and a half years now.
Annie:
Were you traveling together?
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. We met like on a trip. And we bonded over, I think it was funk music and yeah, after that, we just had one of those moments, like, did we just become best friends? And then after that, yeah, we basically spent every single day with each other for years.
Annie:
So were you like trying to figure out what kind of business you could do together, or were you suddenly inspired by the idea of a dog food?
Brett:
No, it's funny. Well, when I met him, I thought besides just being like a great person, I thought he was like the smartest person I've ever met. So I was like, I definitely, if I'm going to start a business, that man will be my business partner. I don't know if that's what he was thinking at the time. He had been working on a couple of different startups. He started a few companies at that point and I was a standup comedian. So this startup world was something that he was very familiar with. And for me it was truly just kind of started. It was really Jada. She really, really inspired this. And I guess having a friend like him who it made it seem so possible that you could essentially think of an idea or be inspired by a problem that you're passionate about solving and having somebody like him as a close friend made me feel like, wow, I could actually go out and solve this problem and maybe even work with him to do it.
Annie:
So what was the problem? The problem was essentially the status quo of dog food is highly, highly processed food. We've been conditioned for decades to believe that dogs should be eating dog food. When in reality, they should just be eating food. And I realized this when I was feeding my dog Jada, she had spent probably about two years with really, really bad stomach problems. And it was at the point where I had heard from enough vets that this was just not a problem that we were going to solve. And eventually I went to a vet that said, “let's just try home cooking for her and see if we could somehow get her back on track. And then we'll find the food that works.”
Annie:
What were you feeding her up until that point?
Brett:
It was a bunch of, I tried every “premium brand” you could imagine.
Annie:
Dry food, wet food, raw food?
Brett:
Dry. I didn't do much wet. I did raw though. I did a lot of raw, raw worked for her for a bit and then we had like an episode, which kind of scared me. What happened was she had had an episode and I realized that when the food arrived, the like, you know, you remember you get like the patties, some of the patties were stuck to each other. And I realized that somewhere in the cold chain it must've been broken. And these patties probably thought out a little bit and then refroze. And that, that kind of scared me ‘cause obviously that shouldn't happen. And she had a reaction to it. And that scared me away from raw food. I don't think there's anything wrong with raw food, but there's, there's just the obvious risks of, you know, having something in your home that isn't cooked, not as much as for your dog as it is for the people in your household.
Annie:
Did you grow up with dogs?
Brett:
I did.
Annie:
Did you ever give dog food a second thought growing up?
Brett:
You know, it's really funny when my dog was young and I kind of I'll put this together after this happened with Jada, my dog, Bandit, he had had thyroid problems and a vet recommended some medicine for him. But he also recommended a,like, a home cooked diet. And then he basically gave my mother a recipe and he ate that for, I think, like 15 years. And he died at maybe 16 or 17 years old.
Annie:
Wow, and he did well on it?
Brett:
Unbelievable.
Annie:
I ask because I think as a kid or, I mean, even as, you know, an adult for most of my adulthood before I got interested in, so interested in dogs, I think I thought of dog food as kind of one thing and that the people who were out there who were cooking for their dogs were eccentrics and, you know, a dog is a dog is a dog kind of thing.
Brett:
Right.
Annie:
But I've come to see it as I'm, as I think you see it as part of their overall health is what they're eating, right. Food is medicine in a lot of ways. And it's a big part of their lives, right?
Brett:
Yeah. I think the first ever doctor got it, right? Hippocrates said, let food be thy medicine. So they've, you know, I guess we've kind of known this for so long, but, you know, throughout history, I'm sure you've, you know, like the origin of, of kibble..
Annie:
Well tell us the origins of kibble.
Bret:
It really happened out of necessity. think it was during World War Twowe needed the steel that they were using for canning, so they couldn't, we couldn't produce food that wasn't shelf stable. We needed to produce a food that we could just put in a paper bag and throw on a shelf for dogs.
Annie:
Oh, I didn't know that. So I didn't know that dry food came about because canned food was difficult to make. Is that what you're saying during that time?
Brett:
Yeah. So canned food was like the status quo of the industry, not to say it was high quality ingredients, which was just a whole other problem. And not to say it wasn't processed
Annie:
And canning can take, can leach nutrients out of food from what I understand.
Brett:
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a number of negative things surrounding the canning process. But when the army needed all of the metal for, like, ammunition and so on we couldn't can anymore. So they needed to figure out a way that they can make these like, you know, meat and vegetables- how could we make meat and vegetables shelf staple, where we don't need to, can it for, you know, for preserving reasons.
So they figured out this process to essentially extrude these, the foods that they would make it into these little, you know, balls and they pull all of the moisture out and heat it to a super high temperature. And then they found that you could honestly put anything in this food because it's little brown balls with mystery ingredients at this point and the quality of food since then has gotten worse and worse and worse over time, as opposed to, you know, you'd expect, throughout time for the quality to get better. It really hasn't. I mean, we've seen the average life expectancy for dogs dropped significantly over the last 50 years.
Annie:
I always think of dry food, almost like as a bag of vitamins because it's like they take stuff out and then they put in exactly what needs to be included to have a precisely balanced meal. And each little piece of kibble is like a perfectly balanced mini meal. I mean, the other interesting thing that I learned about dog food, which I think I haven't, you know, had never occurred to me in the past is that most people feed their dog the same thing, every single meal for their entire lives. And so therefore it's not the FDA. What is the group …
Brett:
AAFCO.
Annie:
AFFCO is like the FDA for animal food. They mandate that, every dog meal has to be precisely balanced, right? So that means like every piece of food is like a precisely balanced little, like, thing..
Brett:
…essentially is how it ends up.
Annie:
But you know, the other thing about the relative recent nature of dog food is that, you know, that was maybe during World War Two, you said, but I think even canned dog food or dog biscuits or any of that really was only developed maybe 50 or a hundred years before that when someone had the genius idea of, oh, we can market something, especially for pet owners. Whereas before that dogs ate what we ate, right?
Brett:
Yep, exactly and they were living longer.
Annie:
You know, dogs were eating what we were eating for literally tens of thousands of years and did just fine. And now we have this notion of like, this is our food and this is their food. I would say it's like, dogs are just like, no, all of it's, all of it's dog food, I only have access to some of it.
So you were having these issues with Jada and you were experimenting then with cooking.
Brett:
Yeah. So when, when I was literally, I went to a doctor who took a holistic approach, which I had basically exhausted all my options. I wanted…I had heard that medicine was going to be the only way, and she was two years old and there was just no way I was going to accept keeping her on chemicals for the rest of her life. So I went to a holistic vet and he recommended that I just tried home cooking just to get her back on track. So I went home and I ended up buying the exact same ingredients that were on the back of the dog food bag that I've just been feeding her. But I decided that I was going to control the cooking process. And when I cooked those ingredients and fed them to Jada, it was like magic. All of her symptoms disappeared in a matter of days, which really made me wonder, you know, one of the things I was thinking about was why do vets always recommend home cooking as the silver bullet to solve all problems, but then it's never recommended to do it as a long term solution. Which I very quickly found the answer and I think you were just talking about it, um, where they're not going to get all of the nutrients that they need. So you need to have that balance, which is probably the one and only quality that dog food really has is that it's balanced nutritionally. We believe that dogs should be getting their nutrients from a natural source. So anyway,…
Annie:
I mean it’s balanced nutritionally, but that doesn't mean it's like, they're getting the vitamins and minerals from the food that the vitamins and minerals started out in, right. It's like added vitamins.
Brett:
Yeah, exactly. So like, what's the point of having food in there at all for there it's not really coming from it.
Annie:
Right, right.
Brett:
Yeah. So anyway, when I saw these unbelievable changes in her, I decided that I was… I needed to find the brand that I would feel comfortable with. And after doing a lot of research, I came to the harsh realization that there was just no brands out there that I was going to feel comfortable feeding my dog. And that was when Jonathan and I decided that we were going to build that brand.
Annie:
Huh.So was he like dog food, what? What was he like, “Awesome idea. Let's do it.”
Brett:
At first he thought I was crazy when I was cooking for her. But then when he saw the changes in her, he was like this, he was blown away because he had grown up with a dog who hadn't had it, he had eaten dog food his whole life. But when he saw the changes in Jada, it was, that was, that was all he needed to see. And then we also spoke to a couple of veterinarians about it and just kind told them like what we were thinking about doing. And every single vet that we spoke to was like, “Oh my God, please do this. We need this so badly. And when are you doing cat food?”
Annie:
So from what I understand about Farmer's Dog, one of the things that sets you apart from other companies is the personalization of the food. Is that right?
Brett:
Yeah. That's one of the things for sure.
Annie:
So do you have, are there specific recipes that you recommend or do you change the recipe based on the dog that you're supplying the food for? How does it work?
Brett:
Yeah, so, you know, it's a great question. So the thing that we identified when we went into pet stores, when we were in our earliest stages was how confusing it was, especially if you have a new dog, you have no idea what to feed them and you walk into a dog store and there's about a thousand options. And, you know, one says, all natural, one says organic, the other one has a picture of your dog's breed on. You're like, Oh, that must be the one for my dog. But at the end of the day, it's all very confusing. You have no idea what to feed. So what we realized was we needed to create a surface that made it really, really easy for people where you didn't have to pick, if you were, if you had options, it was because all of the options were perfect for your dog.
So anyways, what you do is when you go into our website and you fill out the information about your dog, essentially through a process of elimination, you are assigned to a feeding plan and then the recipes…so we have a number of recipes, the recipes don't change. It's the portions that change. And then which recipes you will actually see as an option for your dog would change. So for instance, it's like a simple example, if you mentioned that your dog was allergic to turkey, for instance, you won't see turkey as an option when you're going on our website.
Annie:
So how does it work then? Are you guys just in New York? You deliver fresh cooked meals, they are not frozen, is that correct?
Brett:
They are frozen. We use the term “fresh,” we meet it more so like made very recently as opposed to like the, you know, as opposed to just never being frozen. The reason why we freeze it is for it, i's actually the only thing that we do to make sure that the food is preserved in any way. So we vacuum seal and we freeze, we don't use any preservatives ever. So.
Annie:
And is it available throughout the US or is it just to New York? How does it work?
Brett:
Yeah, so we're based in New York, but we could ship food to any state in the continental us.
Annie:
Okay. And it's not sold in stores then?
Brett:
No, it's not. It's not, you know, we really, we really value our relationship with all of our customers and we get to learn from them in real time. So we found that to be very important.
Annie:
Walk me through the process of signing up to be a Farmer's Dog dog. I remember recommending it to a client a while ago, and there was sort of an application process. Is that still the way it works?
Brett:
Kind of. We accept, we accept all dogs, but when you go into our website, there is essentially a questionnaire and you go in and you fill out all the information about your dog. They're all questions that would lead us to making a proper recommendation for their diet. And yeah, once you're done filling out the questions, you'll have a few recipes that you could pick from. You might only have one, for instance, if you have dogs that have allergies or sensitivities and then from there, you tell us your address and we manage your dog's nutrition for you for the rest of their lives.
Annie:
And so that means like a weekly delivery or semi-monthly, how does that work?
Brett:
It's actually, so the first shipment is a two week trial. And then after that…
Annie:
Are there multiple recipes in that trial? Or just one?
Brett:
if you want, you could pick one or you could pick all of our recipes. Something that was really important to us was having the level of flexibility where people didn't, where our customers didn't feel limited in any way. So the first order is a two week box, but then after that depending on your personal situation, we could ship food weekly. We could ship food every few months. I mean, sometimes people have huge freezers in like their, you know, in their garage so it makes more sense for them to take a few months worth of food at a time. We also have people who have, you know, one really big dog in Manhattan and a little tiny freezer, so we send food to them every week. It really has to do with what you want. That was something that was important to us to make sure that we wouldprovide the ideal experience for each one of our customers.
Annie:
And what's the production process like?
Brett:
So yeah, we get in the ingredients, we cook them, we package them and we freeze them and we send them out.
Annie:
I assume you're not doing this yourself in your kitchen anymore.
Brett:
No, no. Those days, thank God are over. Those were really, really tough to cook for that many dogs. But yeah, it's been about two years since me and Jonathan, haven't actually been in the kitchen cooking with our hands.
Annie:
How has, you know, the technology that you guys use helped make the food better or make dogs healthier?
Brett:
So like you said, before, they eat the same thing basically, right? The same amount every single day. So being that they're the most predictive eaters on the planet, we saw a really amazing opportunity to actually make fresh food, which is so interesting because for being the most predictable eaters on the planet and then the status quo of dog food….
Annie:
Predictable eaters because we were feeding them, I guess.
Brett:
Well, for sure. But then also just like the amount and the frequency that that's always the same, there should be variability in their diets, luckily, you know, that's why we have a few recipes. But yeah, no, it's interesting because the pet industry has been conditioning people for decades to feed your dog one food, their entire lives, which is, you know, obviously less than ideal.
I lost my train of thought.
Annie:
We were talking about technology.
Brett:
Oh yeah. Yeah. So anyway, because they are so predictable we thought it was so ironic that the status quo is to make food that is shelf stable for, well over a decade when our, because we know exactly how much our dogs need to eat every single day, we could actually… the technology that we built allows us to produce fresh food. So we hold very, very little inventory because we know we are able to predict exactly how much food we need. So that's just one fun thing that our technology allows for.
But in terms of like the experience what I was alluding to earlier about having flexibility, but then also the personalization the fact that our packs are pre-portioned for each dog and having their names on each bag, which makes it easier to find whose dogs, you know, which bag goes to which dog, if you have more than one dog. The level of flexibility that we have essentially makes it so that each one of our subscriptions is completely unique. And the only way we were able to do that at the scale that we're at and bigger is through the technology. ‘Cause when we were doing it a few years ago, it was literally me and Jonathan, like in spreadsheets with, you know, each unique subscription was, you know, obviously really, really difficult to maintain, but also to, you know, make sure that you're not, you know, sending the wrong amount t to the wrong dog. But now we've streamlined all of that. So none of that is a concern anymore where all of our, all of our subscriptions are completely managed by the technology.
Annie:
Hmm. So you have like a whole database behind everything that you're doing.
Brett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So like one of the fun things is that we, we call it our, our smart subscription, because like, for instance, when you're, when you're getting a magazine, right, a magazine shows up once a month. I mean, they don't take into consideration, well, how long does Annie take to read the magazine? Because if it takes her six weeks, we should probably just send her the magazine every six weeks. So we take that into consideration. We know exactly how much food your dogs are eating every day and how much food you'll have left in your freezer. And as soon as we, as soon as our system sees that you're getting down to like a little bit less than that week point, you know, we'd like to make sure you have a little bit of overlap, a new order, just magically arrives on your doorstep.
Annie:
Do people say to you, you know, “my dog is, you know, this breed and that breed what's right. for him?” You know, do people tend, do you find to think in terms of, of breed or size as far as trying to figure out what their dog needs?
Brett:
Yeah. A size more so than breed for sure. Well, breed could sometimes lead to size or very, very often the lead to size. I personally have two really enormous dogs.
Annie:
Right. You just got a new dog.
Brett:
Yeah, yeah. Louie, he's my new Rottie and he's, he's actually massive. He's much bigger than my other Rottweiler.
Annie:
And you rescued him from… the police found him, is that right? Tell me.
Brett:
Yeah. Well, what we had heard was that…this is what the police told us…
Annie:
And you live in New York city.
Brett:
I live in Brooklyn. Yeah. Um, so we were all the way out east on Long Island. Me and my wife were at her parents' house for the weekends. And we had seen like, through an Instagram post that there was this Rottweiler who had been abused and beaten and starved. And apparently the police were called to the house. They saw this dog in like a tiny little bathroom, looked like he had been locked in there for weeks and they just took the dog away. And they put him in a jail cell cause they figured the jail cell would be a safer environment for him. And then they were trying to figure out what to do with him. So when we heard this story, we were just like, I need, well for one, he's a Rottweiler. And we like… it resonated with us so much just because he looks like our dog now. And I mean, he's just a dog in general and we're just, you know, crazy for dogs. And just hearing the story about a dog being abused and…
Annie:
Where the jail cell is a step up?
Brett:
The jail cell being a step up and then hearing the word “starved” because that's a word that obviously really gets me because that's like my whole life is feeding dogs. And when we heard this, I don't know what it was, but we just like our bodies just got up and got in the car. And next thing you know, we're driving to this precinct in Queens and we're messaging the people that were like that were like talking about it on Instagram.
Annie:
What a lucky dog.
Brett:
We got there. I mean, it was like literally love at first sight. He was, he's just the sweetest dog. I don't know how anybody could have treated him or any dog for that matter like this. Yeah, it's always, it's always very surprising to see, but, you know, we saw this dog and we're like a dog, a Rottweiler with this sort of background it would be very, very hard to get adopted and we didn't want to see him, you know, end up. I don't even want to say, but, you know, I just did, we didn't want to risk it with him.
Annie:
Do you think, do you think dog food's having a moment? ‘Cause that seems to me like, you know, it used to be something that nobody talked about or thought about very much. I mean, and maybe it's just, it seems like people are giving it more attention just because it's an area that I'm obviously focused in as a trainer because I see lots of links between nutrition and health and behavior. So maybe it's always been a thing, but it seems like people are catching on to the fact that dog food matters.
Brett:
I really think you're right. I think about, I think little less than 10 years ago, there was like this, I think, people started to become really aware of the fact that food has a very close connection to our health. It is like they’re are so closely correlated, I mean, you go and you eat fast food one day, you are not going to feel nearly as good as after you, you ate a salad or a home cooked meal. And I think there's been this paradigm shift. People fully understand it doesn't matter who you are or where you live, you know, now if you eat a healthy diet, you will be healthy for the most part. And I think people now have finally made that connection for their dogs.
And then on top of that, there's also just with social media, the word spreads so quickly. So when, you know, there were just as many recalls happening 5 and 10 years ago. But now that we have Instagram and the Internet, people are like… if a story about a dog food company that's having a recall that makes it around to everybody. People are messaging and sharing it with each other, trying to …cause everyone, cause you know, the interesting… when you're a dog person, you're a dog person. You're not just worried about your own dog. You're worried about everybody's dog. So when I see a recall, I'm like texting everybody that I know, did you see this, is your dog eat this? Like you got to stop.
Annie:
Well also the thing about recalls,you know, what I learned is that, it can affect lots of different brands ‘cause a lot of the brands are made with the same ingredients, in the same plants. No that, that's, that's interesting.
You know, also it's kind of like a relatively low investment, right? Like it's really, I mean, no, I mean, feeding your dog. Well, like, you know, my husband jokes about how, you know, our dog eats fancy dog food and I'm like, well maybe we spend 4, maybe $5 a day to feed him. Like in the scheme of things, it's like, that's like a latte.
Brett:
That’s so funny, I always say the exact same thing. And I'm so happy that you use the word “investment” because that's really what it is. It's not, you know, it's not something that's superfluous. It's not actually fancy. We're not actually spoiling our dogs. We're just giving them what they should be eating. You know, when I go and I spend…
Annie:
It's almost selfish because like, you want your dog to be healthy because you want your dog around ‘cause you love your dog.
Brett:
Yeah. I mean, like when I go, if I went and I bought a salad for lunch and spent the extra 5, 10 bucks on lunch, but I feel better, I don't look at it like I'm spoiling like myself, I look at it like I'm taking care of myself. I'm investing in my health. So you're not really happy you put it like that. I always say the same thing too about it, I just relate it to a cup of coffee in the morning,
Annie:
Yeah like the superfluous things we spend money on all the time. Right. Right. Well, I mean, my dog would probably be just as happy eating, you know, garbage food, but I want him to be healthy cause I want him to be around for a long time.
It's also kind of funny cause I think at the same time that we're having this dog food… seems like at the same time dog food is having this moment. I get the sense that human food is almost going in the other direction with like Soylent and like things that people can eat where they know exactly what they're getting and they don't have to, they can kind of like outsource having to think about their nutrition.
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting. The world of food is changing extremely rapidly right now.
Annie:
So where does your comedy career fall in with all of this? Are you still doing comedy and do you get some material from your clients and just your job in general?
Brett:
My audience is all the people that sit within 10 feet of my desk. That's literally my audience and here's Sarah nodding, her head or whatever.
Annie:
She's like, I get it all.
Brett:
She was smart. She chose the seat right next to m so she doesn't miss out on anything.
Annie:
Well it's because dog food is like, it's like a never ending punchline, right? They eat their own dog food and all of that.
Brett:
It's so funny. Cause that's such like a Silicon Valley thing, tech phrase. Yeah. And we literally can eat our own dog. Finally. It's safe to eat dog food.
Annie:
What are, do you ever have correspondences your clients that make you laugh or cry or bring up some sort of response?
Brett:
Oh my God.I mean, where do I start? We get the most unbelievable messages from our customer base. It is like, is really the most beautiful thing we have. We really actually have these amazing relationships with all of our customers to the point where they really express themselves to us. And we always like encourage it. It's the best thing. I mean, we actually have like a channel where we like share things share like wins about, you know, how we've helped dogs change people's lives. And I mean, we get messages constantly about, you know, people that weren't really expecting certain benefits from our food.
For instance, I mean, we got an email last week actually from a woman whose dog had a lot of problems with their liver, I think, it was their liver and their pancreas. And one of the issues, the doctor recently said there's just no way around it. This is just going to be a problem that you're going to have to deal with for the rest of your dog's life. And the only thing that she's changed in the last few months about her dog's lifestyle is our food. She just decided that, you know, I don't know what it was, she might've seen an advertisement and decided I want to give them a healthier diet. And now his liver levels have come back to a healthy place, which is not something that we ever talk about being able to change.
Annie:
Right, because you can’t make any promises..
Brett:
We don't make any promises. We just, you know, we just say that fresh food is what they should be eating. And we end up getting these unbelievable results in changes in dogs.
Annie:
So I'm curious about how you scale this kind of business and, or, even just sustain it? Do you have to invest your own money? Do you have angel investors? How does this work? This dog food entrepreneur world.
Brett:
Yeah. Well, when we started me and Jonathan just put in a couple of thousand bucks each and we realized, you know, we had to get to profitability, like, immediately to be able to sustain. But since then after about a year and a half, we realized that not only were our customers just in love with the product and the experience, we were really, really like changing dog's lives and therefore their parents' lives and we felt as though we had completely de-rest the idea and we could really dive in. And we decided that we were going to raise some venture capital, so that we can make it scalable, which essentially means creating the technology, which allowed us to, you know, support this many, you know, millions of dogs. But then also set up the supply chain, which allowed us to also, manufacture the food safely for millions of dogs.
So yeah, so we took on an investment and then we also took on another investment about a year ago to take us to the next level and allow us to actually build out the team
Annie:
What was the process like for shopping for investors?
Brett:
Well it actually was, it was actually pretty amazing. We found unbelievable people extremely, extremely quickly. Our investors got it immediately. And yeah, I mean, they were in basically from day one almost, you know, it was just magic. Forerunner Ventures and Shasta Ventures. we have a Yuri and Nickeel from both of those firms who have been just unbelievable to have as partners with us. And yeah, they've just been unbelievable to work with.
Annie:
So how many people are in your offices now?
Brett:
I think are, are we at 40 yet? Yeah, we're just about at 40,
Annie:
40 people, wow
Brett:
in the office.
Annie:
So do you have like a marketing group and a customer relation? Like how does that break down?
Brett:
Yeah, so the biggest team is our customer experience team. And then after that is our technology team, our engineers, and then we have a marketing team, an operations team and a community team as well, which work hand in hand with marketing.
Annie:
And how many dogs out there are eating The Farmer's Dog?
Brett:
We're in the tens of thousands. I think we're doing, I think we're doing over a million meals a month.
Annie:
Hmm. Wow. That's huge. So what's next then? Where do you go from here?
Brett:
More dogs. We just need we're…our goal here, you know, for us, it's, it's really not about how many dogs we could sell food to for us, it's really about the mission first. And our mission is to educate people and change the way people think about feeding their dogs. You know, we believe that every dog on the planet should be eating real food. They should not be eating processed food ever, but let alone every single day of their lives. So yeah, number one thing for us is the mission and educating people. And I mean, even if you can't afford our food or you're not in America, so you can't, we can't ship it to you yet. We have a DIY option on our website. So you can go onto our website, we've made a simplified version of our recipe that you could cook on your own for us. It's really not about whether you're buying it from us or not. We just want to, if you're feeding your dog, a home cooked diet, they're a farmer's dog to us.
Annie:
Are there other brands that you recommend or that you think are, are not bad?
Brett:
…in terms of dog food? I mean, in terms of recommending them right now, I mean…
Annie:
Would you say that you feel good about there being more quality brands out there, or do you feel like things are still kind of at a standstill?
Brett:
Every time I hear about another brand that is selling a food product, that's unprocessed, I'm thrilled about it. Because it's, again, it's not for us about, who's the one selling you, the dog food, for me, if your dog is eating us or some other company who's selling fresh food, that's a win in our book because your dog is going to be healthy.
Annie:
It's also kind of like, though, like, it seems like there's like the big brands that can sometimes co-opt certain buzzwords that make it seem less nefarious than they are.
Brett:
Yeah. You know, the interesting thing is every brand that uses those buzzwords…
Annie:
Like, I don't know, farm to table, natural. I mean, what are the other ones?
Brett:
I've seen some brands using the term “holistic,” which is an interesting thing to refer to food as holistic, all natural, you know, there's just so many words that could entice somebody to buy…
Annie:
no added antibiotics,
Brett:
No more antibiotics that already exist. Every time I see, you know, all the brands that use these buzzwords, you know, the interesting thing for me that I always notice is none of their packaging is clear. It always has a lot of, you know, pictures of fresh ingredients on the packaging, but then when you open up the bag, they're just brown balls, but our packaging is clear.
Annie:
Like it should make sense. Yeah. That's interesting. Cause that's how I feel about dog training too, like, you know, you can say a lot of mumbo jumbo, but, and talk about, you know, energy and, you know, whatever, but at the end of the day it should be, you know, observable, understandable, communicable.
Brett:
Exactly, exactly.
Annie:
And like, it's not a neuroscience, right? It's food, it's behavior. It's it's. And another thing that I think is cool about what you're doing and other brands too, that are like I think on the right track, is it, which is, I guess, similar to something I think about good dog training is I think it can help people think about themselves in a better way. Like when I feed my dog well, I think, wow, you know, like I should be doing this for myself.
Brett:
Yeah.
Annie:
Like kind of like a canary in the coal mine sort of thing, where it's like, oh gosh, if food can do harm to him in this way, like, what does it mean for myself if I'm not feeding myself well?
Brett:
If I was only feeding myself as well as I was feeding my dogs, I mean, I could only imagine, I think I'd feel much better and have even better energy because, I mean, it's interesting because dogs, because they eat only what we put in their bowl we have this amazing opportunity to completely optimize their nutrition.
Annie:
Right to totally control that they could eat the perfect diet.
Brett:
But for me, unfortunately, I think I have a good sense for what the perfect diet is for a person. But unfortunate side is that I get a phone call from a friend that says, Hey, you want to get a pizza? And it's really, really hard.
Annie:
It's the added? Like, it's like the social, the social element of eating and the fact that we probably have more sophisticated taste buds. But I think, I think that's something that interests me that I hope to see people doing is like cookbooks for dogs and people. Or like meals you can make for yourself and your dog.
Brett:
Yeah, like, that was the old way how we fed our dogs.
Annie:
Right, right. Yeah. Or, you know maybe like delivery service for dog food and human food And I guess there are more and more delivery services for human food maybe it's just a matter of..
Brett:
We do have the technology. We could make human food. Customize it.
Annie:
It's just hard to have human food that also can coexist with… that's healthy and can coexist with friends and bars and yeah.
Brett:
Bring your food to the bar with you.
Annie:
How'd you get the name of The Farmer's Dog? Were there other runner up names?
Brett:
Well, you know, when I think of The Farmer's Dog, well better yet. what did you think of when you think of the phrase, “the farmer's dog?”
Annie:
Um, I mean, it could have been the comedian's dog.
Brett:
It is.
Annie:
The entrepreneur's dog. Yeah. I guess it brings to mind sort of that older school idea of providing for your dog based on what you're providing for yourself in your field.
Brett:
When you think about a farmer's dog, they're living in the perfect environment for a dog surrounded by the best food. So they eat fresh food directly from the source they're living in a, you know, wide open property.
Annie:
It's an idea.
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. And we're trying to make our dogs as much of a farmer's dog as possible.
Annie:
Thank you so much, Brett. This has been great. And I think our listeners will be excited to try out, try out your product.
Brett:
Thank you so much for having me.
**music**
Annie:
You can learn more about The Farmer's Dog at thefarmersdog.com. And if you sign up at schoolforthedogs.com/farmer, you can get 50% off of a two week trial subscription.
Special thanks this week to Anchor, which hosts this podcast. We recorded this interview in their podcasting studio, which is a cool thing they've recently started to offer to their pod-casters. And to Alex Kriss, as always for producing this episode.
Our Woof Shout Out this week goes our student Webster, a very cute golden doodle who moved to San Francisco earlier this year. We've been missing him a ton, but he did our Instagram takeover this weekend. And it was so wonderful to see him running around on the beach there and really gave me an itch to visit the West Coast. Uh, it was also extra special because he got to hang out with our trainer, Anamarie Johnson, who also moved to San Francisco earlier this year. And so it was fun to see her romping around with him in our Instagram stories this weekend.
We have a different dog do our Instagram stories every weekend and it's been a lot of fun. Definitely make sure to check it out on our Instagram, which is simply, at School for the Dogs.
And our Fun Dog Fact of the Day. So AFFCO, which is what polices, what can and cannot go into pet food-the government organization that oversees all that. They do have very specific, very strict standards, but I was interested to read that experiments have been done that show that you can meet their requirements for a dog's dry food as far as having it contain the proper amount of moisture, protein, fat, etc, by making a food out of a shoe leather, used motor oil and coal. So make what you will of that.
I'm putting together a Q and A episode. If you have any questions for me regarding anything about dogs or training, you can go to Anniegrossman.com/ask and fill out the form there. Or you can go ahead and call and leave a message. (917) 414-2625. If you're on the Anchor app, there also is a little message button there where you can record part of the method. So please do get in touch. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another show.
Links:
The Farmer’s Dog
