Gourmet Dog Food Has Pet Owners Sending Kibbles Back
Dog ownership surged during the pandemic. So did the options for fresh, human-grade dog food, an expanding market.
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Like so many 2-year-olds, Bear is a picky eater.
When Bear, a 120-pound Great Pyrenees, seemed bored with the dry food his owner, Margaret Pless, fed him day after day, she gave him canned food from Costco. Bear hated it. Next, she tried pricey refrigerated dog food. When that failed to please Bear’s palate, Ms. Pless made his food for a few months. He liked it, but it was an exhausting, time-consuming process, and she was left wondering whether Bear was getting all the nutrients he needed.
So in November 2021, Ms. Pless signed up for a subscription to The Farmer’s Dog, which provides customized dog food marketed as made with human-grade ingredients. The recipe list reads more like a homemade stew: beef or turkey with vegetables, such as carrots and brussels sprouts. The food is cooked at low temperatures before being portioned out and shipped to Ms. Pless’s home in Dover, Mass.
“The company made claims that dogs would love this food and never get tired of it,” said Ms. Pless, a part-time church administrator and dog boarder, who said she was spending up to $13 per day feeding Bear the human-grade food, up from the dry-food cost of around $3 per day.
But Bear was unimpressed. “At first he was excited,” Ms. Pless said. “And then he was like, ‘Oh, it’s this stuff again,’ and he got bored.”
Dog ownership boomed during the pandemic, with Americans buying or adopting millions of pets, including canines. Sales of dog food surged to around $25 billion last year, up nearly 39 percent from $18 billion in 2019, according to the consumer research firm NIQ.
But as inflation has driven up the prices of even conventional kibble, the options in the dog food aisle have become increasingly bespoke and expensive. There are holistic, plant-based varieties, and those with freeze-dried goat and wild boar. Some options are frozen and raw. Last year, “Saturday Night Live” poked fun at the industry with a skit featuring a couple in a grocery store chiding another shopper for not feeding her pet “real food.”
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