We are lucky to live in an age of bountiful, useful data on all sorts of things, including market information like consumer prices and spending, plus producer prices, in every category of consumer goods. Remarkably, this existed well before the advent of AI; in the U.S., for example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has long tracked such data, including for dog and cat food.
We are also lucky that we don’t need to spend time delving into this deep BLS trove (even if now omnipresent AI tools may make that task easier and quicker) to stay up to date. Instead, we can turn to sources offering compilation and in-depth analysis of the data, like John Gibbons, a longtime pet industry professional who publishes his analyses monthly on PetBusinessProfessor.com.
Another source, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (under its somewhat cheeky acronym, FRED), provides readily digestible charts of historical BLS data, including on pet food and pet care. For example, one chart represents 100 years of inflation-adjusted personal consumption expenditures in pet care; others cover 40 years of dog and cat food producer prices and pet food consumer prices (CPI).
Pet food spending and prices: Steady upward trajectory
My colleague, Tim Wall, shared excellent analyses of the 100-year pet care spending data and 40-year pet food producer price index (PPI). Not surprisingly, though they span different lengths of time, the charts portray similar, steadily upward trajectories. As Wall wrote, both illustrate the resilience of the pet food and pet care markets even during recessionary periods, owing in no small part to the humanization of pets that has garnered a larger share of consumers’ rising disposable incomes.
Comparing his analysis of the 40-year dog and cat food PPI with FRED’s pet food CPI chart over the same period, 1985-2025, the charts’ ascendant lines resemble each other even more. Wall expertly laid out the key events by decade causing increases in the PPI — recessions, the melamine-related recalls, pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, to name a few — and of course, those have all contributed to rises in the pet food CPI, too.
Even more telling is another of Wall’s comparisons, this time of the pet food PPI and CPI since 2018. “From late 2018 to late 2025, retail-level pet food prices, as measured by the CPI, rose about 27%. During the same period, manufacturing-level prices climbed roughly 34%,” he wrote. “That steeper increase at the producer level reflects higher costs for labor, energy, packaging and key ingredients such as animal proteins and grains. Much of the sharp escalation occurred between 2020 and 2022, when supply chain disruptions pushed ingredient costs to historic highs. The CPI followed, though with a slight lag, as brands and retailers gradually passed through cost increases to the market.
“By 2023 and 2024, the pattern shifted,” he continued. “Manufacturing prices continued rising, but retail prices began to soften slightly, even dipping in 2024 before edging back up in 2025. That temporary decoupling suggests manufacturers stabilized production costs, while retailers adjusted promotional activity or pricing strategies to maintain volume in a more price-sensitive environment. For brands, the compression between PPI and CPI growth rates signaled a period of tighter margins.”
Prices go up, usually don’t come down
As Gibbons has said, once prices go up (whether for producers or consumers), they rarely, if ever, come down; the higher prices essentially become the new baseline. And that baseline has become challenging for many pet food producers and pet owners today. “For the broader marketplace, the modest rise in retail prices since 2023 may contribute to more cautious purchasing patterns and closer scrutiny of value propositions,” Wall wrote. “Companies operating in premium, grain-free or protein-rich segments may feel this most acutely, given their higher exposure to volatile input costs.”
Put another way: Despite the now ubiquity of humanization — meaning owners want to feed their pets the best they possibly can — premiumization does seem to have a ceiling for some pet owners, and they’re hitting it. So, when it comes to pet food retail and producer pricing, the way history builds on itself over time (rather than repeating itself) means rising prices will continue to present difficulties.
