Making therapeutic pet foods easier to buy for consumers and easier to sell for veterinarians may be a key to growth for Nestle Purina PetCare. Pro Plan Therapeutics has “been an amazing run” for the company, Steve Presley, chief executive officer in the Americas for Nestlé, said during the 2025 Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
“We've doubled the sales and it's really driven by just deep consumer insights of helping pet parents better serve the needs of their family members, their pet family members,” Presley said.
Presley believes that sales opportunity will continue as Purina invests more into research and development for the category. He forecast double-digit growth. However, there were a few barriers to therapeutic pet food sales that he believed Purina would surmount.
Purina PetCare Vet Direct therapeutic pet foods
“There's still a key consumer tension there, where the veterinary channel doesn't love to have all this inventory in the vet clinic,” he said. “At the same time for the consumer, they don't really necessarily want to drag the bag home when they're trying to get the pet in and out of the vet. We've actually solved that by building new capabilities around this unmissable visibility where we have Vet Direct.
With Purina’s Vet Direct, pet owners get a prescription and order the product while in the veterinary clinic. Purina then ships the pet food direct to the pet owner’s house through a D2C model.
“It's building those capabilities, that accelerates these winners, that gives us this irresistible product superiority. It starts with this idea of having a great product. In this space specifically, you've got to win with the key opinion leaders. I think we're well positioned. We've actually doubled down on investment to actually reach that community and continue to expand that. And the last one is this unmissable visibility. Solve the consumer tension to then drive the expansion of the category in our Vet Direct - direct-to-consumer model that will solve that actually. All that actually helps both the vet clinic and at the same time the consumer.”
By addressing consumer and veterinary challenges through its Vet Direct model, Purina aims to drive continued growth in therapeutic pet foods with innovation, accessibility and strategic investment.
