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THIS WEEK'S TOPICS:

• 🍲 $100 to own part of a new pet food company

• ☕ The Keurig of pet food

• ✂️ Popular LA groomer looks to go national

🍲 $100 TO OWN PART OF A NEW PET FOOD COMPANY

For as little as a $100 investment, The Conscious Pet, leveraged the power of crowdfunding to launch their venture.

They offered their community a chance to own a piece of the company, combining revenue-sharing (5% of net revenue) with equity for the potential of profit-sharing after recouping initial investment.

They successfully raised $176K from a total of 92 investors within 6 months.

What exactly is The Conscious Pet?

As we’ve mentioned here before there is a massive uprising against kibble, and The Conscious Pet has joined the fight by bringing a gently cooked (dehydrated) food alternative exclusively available to the Austin, TX market.

How are they different?

While there are several dehydrated dog food options on the market, this is the first time we’ve seen a company that incorporates upcycling into their production.

What this means is that they partner with local restaurants in order to rescue clean, high-quality leftover food, before they’re seasoned or plated, and upcycle them into nutritious dog food.

With restaurants wasting ~ 27 billion pounds of food annually, The Conscious Pet is stepping in to transform these scraps into nutritious meals and toppers for pets.

As a Public Benefit Corporation, they're committed to sustainability, sourcing and producing food locally, using 100% compostable packaging, and operating as a zero-waste facility powered by renewable energy.

What do we think?

We’re instantly fans!

A big part of us always feels apprehensive when we see another dog food company crop up.

The main reason for us feeling that way is the thought of another brand just inserting themselves into an existing co-packer’s facility and just slapping a new splashy label on the same food already in circulation.

However, they’re tackling two HUGE problems, food waste as well as sustainably sourcing from their backyard!

This usually results in not having to cheap out on ingredients and such in order to save on margin to try and expand to serve nationwide. Instead they’re serving a premium product right back to their community!

This is such an incredible model that can be replicated locally across the nation.

While we missed the mark on being able to invest on this one, it has our ears perked up looking for the next opportunity!

You can check out their crowdfunding campaign here.

☕ THE KEURIG OF PET FOOD

We are a little late to the party on this one, but earlier in the year Purina announced the 5 winners for their seventh annual Pet Care Innovation Prizes (or PCIP, if you need a useless acronym).

The winners receive notoriety, but also a cool $25k.

For the next few issues we'll cover each new product.

Meet Artie

Home cooked food just tastes better, doesn't it? Well, maybe it doesn't always, but it is certainly more satisfying, and often healthier.

Artie plans on turning dog owners into short order cooks with it's pre-portioned, artisan-inspired meals for dogs that can be made at home with the company’s countertop appliance.

As we covered in last week's issue Artie works similar to coffee pods, where you simply pop one in, hit a button, and out comes a cooked meal ready in just 3 minutes.

The meals come pre-portioned and are a mix of freeze dried or dehydrated meat, fruits, veggies, and grains. The appliance, applies a different amount of steam and hot water based on the type of pod to produce the final product.

Some clear benefits are the freshness you are able to achieve, the convenience of having the food delivered in a shelf stable condition, and the satisfaction of making the food your fur pal eats.

For founder Scott Eller, this is clearly in his wheelhouse, as he previously worked at Blue Buffalo and a number of other pet brands.

We are still unclear on the biggest factor, which is price.

As of now, Artie's site doesn't have the option to purchase, and none of the press releases point to any cost.

✂️ POPULAR LA GROOMER LOOKS TO GO NATIONAL

We've covered some of the business opportunities and businesses popping up in the grooming space (e.g. Scenthound), and now we've got another one for you.

Popular Los Angeles groomer Bowie Barker recently announced plans to go from one location to nationwide via franchises.

They hope to go from 1 to 200 locations by 2028 🤯.

That seems.....BOLD!

However, this is a common business playbook.

For context, the franchise strategy is a when a company with a successful business decides that they can teach others to be successful following their methods and using their brand and processes.

In exchange, they of course want some sweet cash money!

This usually comes in the form of an upfront fee (called a Franchise Fee) and ongoing cut of revenue (Royalties).

Let's not forget there are also the startup costs for the business such as, rent, materials, products, etc.

When you boil it down, you are purchasing their brand and way of doing business, but you still need to run the business and front the costs.

McDonalds is probably the most famous example of franchising, as 93% of their locations are operated by independent owners.

Now back to Bowie Barker. The "Groomerie" as they call it, opened in May of 2022 with a mix of full service grooming and self serve wash stations.

Their main differentiators are that they target Gen-Z and Millennial owners with an updated design, and created a convenient booking app to streamline use.

The founders have previous experience in the franchising world, so it's no surprise they made the move to franchise quickly.

This info is unconfirmed, but on Vetted Biz we found the following details on their franchise fees:

For comparison, here are some fees for popular pet franchises:

While the franchise fee and royalty % seem to line up, the upfront investment seems higher than the other popular groomers.

One big thing they do have going for them is recurring revenue, or memberships.

That means that you can typically count on a certain amount of revenue each month, and it can often be more profitable since not all members may use the facilities.

While we aren't in the market for a franchised grooming business, it will be interesting to see how their growth plans play out!

DOGGYDEX™

Winner 🏆: DOGGYDEX

Proudly introducing the DoggyDex™, an index comprised of 10 publicly traded companies whose primary focus is the dog/pet industry.

List of tickers used can be found at the very bottom of the newsletter.

The yellow line-plot in the chart represents these companies above (DoggyDex™) and their combined performance against both the S&P 500 and Bitcoin on a weekly basis.

Pawformance is measured by % gains & losses.

• 🍿 A British movie theater is now allowing dogs to attend screenings: Curzon Cinemas began the program by welcoming dogs to sit with their owners in the theater during a screening of Strays.

• 🐕💨 See this heeler run through her years: An owner put together an adorable and impressive reel of their heeler, Winnie, sprinting through the country side as a mere pup all the way through adulthood.

• 👖 A Frenchie gets some new jorts: Check out this Frenchie’s new jort/overalls combo

DOGGY B-DAY

• $CHWY - Chewy: E-commerce platform for pet supplies

• $IDXX - Idexx Labs: Vet point of care instruments and vet software

• $FRPT - Fresh Pet: Pet food company

• $PETQ - PetIQ: Pet health products and medicines

• $PETS - PetMeds: Online pet pharmacy

• $ZTS - Zoetis: World's largest producer of meds and vaccines for pets and livestock

• $TRUP - Trupanion: Pet insurance company

• $WOOF - Petco Health & Wellness co.: Pet health & wellness company

• $BARK - BarkBox: Subscription service providing dog products, services, and experiences

• $PET - Wag! Group Co.: Tech platform that allows pet owners to connect with industry professionals for services such as, walking, training, etc.