Hello THE PACK community!
Judy and Damien Founders of THE PACK here. We are excited to say that it was our one year birthday last week. On 20th September 2021 we officially launched THE PACK with our first range of wet food and boy what a wild ride it has been.
Firstly we want to thank you - both pawrent and pooch - for all your support this past year. We could never have achieved what we have without you. Your belief in creating the future of pet food is what enables us to spread the plant powered dog food message far and wide.
The reason why we called ourselves THE PACK was we knew it would take more than just us two banging the plant-based dog food drum to make any disruption in the traditional meat heavy pet industry. We needed to create an inclusive and innovative community and movement. Ethics are the core of our company, one reason why we have become a pending B Corp, what we needed to find was like minded pet parents who weren’t interested in just buying a product but wanted to join forces with us to create the future of pet food. And thank goodness we found you!
It started with an idea…
We had the idea of THE PACK back in 2018 but we created the company just a couple of years later in March 2020 just before COVID hit the UK and closed the country and the world down - good timing hey! While most people would say we were crazy to create a company during such an uncertain and unstable time COVID actually fuelled our mission.
You may not know much about our background but we have spent the last 8 years in the vegan and plant-based movement. We created Vevolution which built a community of people who were passionate about sharing solutions to the problems our world was facing. We looked at food innovation, ethical fashion and beauty, low impact living, sustainability, ethical business, health & wellbeing and so much more. What we realised was that the same attention and innovation had not been fuelled into the pet food industry.
We were in the process of trying to adopt a dog ourselves and questioned what we would feed the pooch. After doing tons of research like all you pet parents we were shocked to discover all the nasties in the pet food industry. A health and obesity crisis, a broken food system that was acting as a big contributor to the climate crisis and of course the poor animals that were suffering just so our dogs could be fed food that was making them sick. We knew there was big work to be done.
Our mission…
Our mission from the beginning was to create a company and products that helped pet parents through the dog food minefield. Although we are passionate vegans we wanted to create something that all dogs could enjoy and where each pup could be part of the positive change that the health of dogs, the animals and the planet so badly needed. The majority of vegan people who have dogs don’t feed a plant-based diet and in order to take plant powered dog food mainstream we wanted to create an inclusive space where pooches could start their plant-based food journey at their own pace. We knew education was going to be vital in pet parents learning more about the benefits of plant-based dog food and for each pawrent to feel reassured their dog would thrive.
And although ethics is at the core of our startup we always wanted to be backed by science and data as our absolute priority is dog health. Working alongside our team of experts including our animal nutritionist Emma, our head of product Russell, our pet food technologist Ole, our animal welfare & ethics writer Alice, our sustainability expert Innovate to Zero and our manufacturers has been the most incredible learning experience for us both. Then bringing our crazy talented marketing & comms manager Adam on board earlier this year has been game-changing in getting the word out about what we are doing.
Product innovation has always been the key component of what we do here. This is why having our team of experts is so important as we don’t want to just make a plant-based dog food option, we want to create something delicious, nutritious and that can rival meat products in terms of nutrition and palatability. We are proud that after more than 2 years of hard work we have achieved this with our wet food and the our future products we will be launching in 2023.
The fact that we have pawrents of raw meat eating dogs buying our food is a huge testament to our nutritious ingredients and drool-inducing flavours. Plant powered pooches and flexi-dogians can equally enjoy a tasty and healthy meal.
Community changing the world…
Creating a startup during COVID then navigating through price increases for every single part of the company, ridiculously long lead times for the product and packaging and making mistakes because running startups is a huge learning curve could be enough to make most people want to call it a day but the thing that has made us power through it all is our furry companion Blossom, all the other doggos in the world and our planet. Our pups and world deserve better!
There has never been a better time for the plant powered dog food movement. With the all the incredible research and academic studies confirming all the health benefits a plant-based diet for dogs can have, the mainstream press attention and other new plant-based dog food startups popping up all over the world, now is the best time for you and your dog to join the change makers and puptivists who changing the world.
We are so excited to be joining you and your pooch, hand in paw, to be pawsitively disrupting the pet food industry together as a community.
