Wild Earth makes cruelty-free dog food their mission

Alternative proteins are gaining ground in the pet food space as pet owners look for ways to combine sustainability with nutrition. That’s where pet food company Wild Earth steps in on both fronts, with its cruelty-free, vegan dog food formulations made with clean ingredients.

“A huge part of our ethos is creating a world where we do not need to harm animals to feed animals,” says Ryan Bethencourt, CEO and co-founder of Wild Earth. “We use science, biotechnology and innovation to create cruelty-free dog food that meets and exceeds the nutritional requirements of dogs without the need for animal-sourced ingredients.”

A DTC start, now expanding into physical retail

Wild Earth was founded in 2017 and is based in Berkeley, California, USA. The company began as a direct-to-consumer operation and has seen plenty of success over the last several years in that channel.

“We’ve grown our sales purely through digital channels rapidly up to US$12 million [in 2022] and projecting US$16 million [in 2023],” says Bethencourt. “We’re particularly proud of the fact that Wild Earth’s plant-based dog food sales have grown in every major city across the U.S., not just California and New York City but in the heartland and across the South. In fact, some of our fastest-growing customer metros are actually all across the South!”

Now, Wild Earth is beginning to expand into physical retail spaces, focusing on independent and specialty pet stores all over the U.S.

“We are now on shelves in independent retail stores all across Florida through our distribution partner, Choice Pet Products,” says Bethencourt. “We have also just launched into the mid-Atlantic and will be on retail shelves across seven states (Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey) in the coming weeks and months through our newest distribution partner, Zeigler’s Distributor.” 

According to Bethencourt, the opportunity for plant-based dog food is only going to continue to grow, which is good news for both the online and physical channels Wild Earth operates in.

“We’re very proud of the fact that plant-based dog food is becoming a much larger category and we’ve been able to lead the category through DTC and now in retail,” he says. “We believe the potential for plant-based pet food as a category by 2030 will grow conservatively in the U.S. to US$6 billion — 10% of the market today.”

Listening to pet owners, being flexible keys to Wild Earth growth

As with many companies in the DTC pet food space, Wild Earth has done the work to to maintain a direct line of communication with its customers. This is particularly important when the company operates on an alternative way of getting complete nutrition to its consumers as part of a mission-based corporate ethos.

“Our biggest challenge is that the meat industry and meat-based dog food companies have about a 50-year head start at educating the veterinary community and consumer base to think the only appropriate source of protein for dogs comes from meat,” says Bethencourt. “Because dogs evolved from wolves, many people have a common misconception that dogs are wolves and need to be fed like them. The key word here is that they evolved and then have diverged multiple times over the last 16,000 years or so. Marketing plays such a big role in what people believe to be fact in regard to dog nutrition.”

As with most emerging trends in the pet food industry, education will play a key role in the trend’s success.

“Because plant-based diets for dogs are still new in the pet food industry, a lot of education still needs to happen to break down the years of education pushing meat as the only high-quality protein source,” says Bethencourt. “With more and more research being published almost monthly, the overwhelming amount of evidence is on the side of nutritionally complete and balanced plant-based diets not only being an appropriate diet for dogs, but also could potentially be healthier and lead to a longer lifespan than meat-based kibble and raw meat-based diets.”

Education isn’t the only focus of consumer communication for Wild Earth. Sometimes asking for feedback means hearing something you’d rather not— and taking it to heart for the betterment of your brand.

“We loved our original formula, Complete Protein,” says Bethencourt. “But we heard from customers that many dogs did not like the taste. You can have the best food in the world, but if dogs do not eat it then it is all for nothing. We reformulated to make more palatable food options and to give people multiple options. The response and feedback have been great.” 

In the last 12 months Wild Earth has come out with two new complete and balanced dog food formulas. The Performance Formula, which was reformulated to make it more palatable, is now a Veggie Chick’n Kabob Flavor (no meat). The second is a Maintenance Formula created to be a more limited-ingredient option that is a little bit lower in protein and features two plant-based flavors, Classic Roast (giving a beef-like flavor profile) and Golden Rotisserie (giving a chicken-like flavor profile). 

The company has also switched all of its packaging — food, treats and supplements — to be fully recyclable, which lines up more with Wild Earth’s ethos and mission to support the environment.

The future of plant-based pet foods and Wild Earth

“This is just the beginning for plant-based diets for dogs,” says Bethencourt. “We are trying to educate the pet food industry, the veterinary community and consumers to understand the value of plant-based diets for dogs for food allergy symptom relief as well as for the health and longevity of our beloved dogs.

“The pet food industry appears to be recession-proof and still shows growth year-over-year,” he says. “The alternative protein space is exploding with more plant-based options (vegan and not), insect protein and even cell-based meat (coming soon). With the number of pets growing year-over-year, we do need to find more sustainable options like plant-based proteins to provide benefits to the environment when compared to the factory farming of animals.”

Cell-based meat is certainly on Wild Earth’s radar, and is in fact something company is currently developing.

“We think there’s so much space in front of us for true innovation,” says Bethencourt “In foods that improve our pets’ microbiome, functional foods that can prevent and even treat diseases, and ultimately cell-based (lab-grown) meat that will transform pet food over the next decade as lab-grown meat is now approved for human consumption in the U.S. as of June 2023. The pet food industry won’t be too far behind.”

Bethencourt says Wild Earth is looking forward to the evolution that’s coming.

“The future of pet health and nutrition will look nothing like the last few decades and the companies that don’t evolve will get left behind,” he says. “Just like the transition we’re seeing with Tesla and the rest of the car industry, change, when it happens in the pet industry, will be dramatic and rapid!”