A Comedian, A Consultant, And A Dog On A Couch

Dave Knox: How is The Farmer’s Dog origin different from a traditional dog food brand?

Jonathan Regev: It all started when we realized the food system is broken. Jada, my co-founder’s dog, was constantly sick and nothing he tried seemed to work.

When Brett switched to home-cooked meals, it changed her life. All of her issues went away. But it raised a bigger question for us: why did real food have such a profound impact on her? At the same time, the vet was clear that home cooking alone wasn’t enough, it wouldn’t deliver the right balance of nutrients over time, which is why vets recommend feeding commercially made food.

That contradiction is what pulled us in, and pretty quickly it shifted from curiosity to frustration. Brett started digging into how pet food is actually made. The more he learned, the more it didn’t match what we thought we were feeding our dogs. Completely different from what the marketing and the pictures on the bag suggest. The more we investigated, the more we were alarmed. Not concerned, alarmed.

I had just moved to New York and was sleeping on Brett’s couch, sharing it with Jada, and night after night we kept coming back to the same question: how is this the best option available? It was a single conversation that went to 3am when it clicked.

The problem wasn’t just the ingredients, it was the processing, the marketing and education – the whole system. Traditional pet food is governed under the feed-grade system, which generally creates food at extremely low costs for livestock with expected short lifespans. We wanted to make food in the human-grade system, with minimal processing and optimize for health and longer lifespans.

So we built The Farmer’s Dog differently: fresh food that is also nutritionally complete and made to human-grade standards, personalized to each dog with 24/7 customer support, and delivered in a way that makes it easy and practical to feed consistently over time. We wanted to do anything we could to support dog people trying to do their best for their dogs.

Knox: What were the two of you doing at the time?

Regev: Brett was a comedian. He had left his job in 2013 to take a shot at comedy. When I moved to New York, it was to do consulting. We were in our mid-20s, nobody to take care of except for our dogs.

It was scary to fully commit — but once we saw what this food did for dogs, it wasn’t a hard decision to make. We started this company because we saw what real food could do for dogs. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

After that first batch of just eight dogs, the feedback started coming in. Immense gratitude. People were seeing real changes in their dogs and they were reaching out to thank us. That response, combined with the impact we were seeing on these dogs’ health, made it clear to us. We had to make this work. We knew that if we didn't really go for it we'd regret it for the rest of our lives.

DTC Was Not A Strategy. It Was The Only Way To Make The Food.

Knox: You have been entirely direct-to-consumer until now. What is the shift happening with retail?

Regev: DTC was never a distribution or marketing strategy, it was a product strategy. At the time, it was the only way to make the food and experience we knew people needed. The entire pet food industry was built around low-grade ingredients and manufacturing standards, with extreme processing measures for long shelf life and mass distribution.

We had to build an entirely new system to enable fresh human-grade food, and we ended up with more of a personalized healthcare platform. We have the technology and a team of hundreds of care specialists needed to guide people through this healthier way of feeding their dogs. We’ve now proved this model works, serving over 1 billion meals and becoming the fastest-growing pet food company over the last decade.

But there are nearly 100 million dogs in the US. To truly change the industry, we need strong partners who can help bring this platform to life beyond our own website, and to the rest of the pet food industry. Walmart has been a wonderful partner in allowing us to do just that. Take what we’ve built and bring it to the many millions of dog people they serve every day. It extends what we built with DTC. It’s the logical next step.

Until now, the default in pet food has been ultra-processed food in appealing packaging. Well-meaning consumers have been left to navigate this very important decision of what to feed their dog based on marketing and imperfect information. This is the first time a different model shows up at scale. This is the beginning of a new standard.

A Personalized Meal Plan Inside Walmart.com

Knox: What will that experience look like for a Walmart shopper who has never been a Farmer’s Dog customer?

Regev: We’re a personalized meal plan service, not a product sitting on a shelf.

Instead of navigating a sea of products and choices, you search for The Farmer’s Dog and answer a few simple questions about your dog, like weight, breed, and activity level. From that, we build a nutrition profile and create a meal plan that’s tailored to your dog, with recommended recipes and pre-portioned packs.

The product arrives at your door in a small refrigerated box with meals labeled for your dog. There are no preservatives, so you keep most of the packs in the freezer with a couple in the fridge. When it’s meal time, all you have to do is open and serve. Often, nobody is happier than the dog, and that first reaction can bring so much joy. Many of our customers notice a difference within a couple months.

Kibble Comes From The Same Era As High Fructose Corn Syrup

Knox: The largest players in pet food all make human food. What has caused the disconnect between the pet food industry and human-grade standards?

Regev: Well, most people are aware of issues with Big Food and starting to avoid ultra-processed foods. The thing most people don’t realize is, Big Pet Food uses ingredients and processes that would be completely illegal in the human food world. It’s a whole different level.

Kibble traces back to the 1950s, the food era that gave us high fructose corn syrup, industrialized food additives like phosphates, and other processed ingredients we've since discovered are deeply problematic for long-term health. We’ve had a reckoning with ultra-processed food in human food, but the pet food industry has yet to truly have that reckoning.

People inherently know what their own food should look and smell like, but they know so little about what their pets actually need. As consumers started demanding more natural and real foods, the pet industry started changing their packaging and focused on marketing loopholes. “Real ingredients.” “No artificial preservatives.” With fresh ingredients pictured all over the bag. But unfortunately, ingredient quality and processing didn’t really change. It’s what I would call lipstick on a pig.

Even though it is sold as a “health food,” a lot of the corporations and executives that own or lead these pet food brands are the same ones selling highly processed and sugary addictive packaged goods. They are very good at marketing.

We wanted to actually make the food that we felt every other company was selling their food to be. To close that gap, we had to start with a different system, one built around human-grade standards, fresher food, nutritional completeness, and a way to deliver it consistently over time.

A Cornell Study Changed The Conversation In 30 Days

Knox: What impact are you seeing on dogs’ health and longevity?

Regev: We’re seeing it in both customer outcomes and now in the data.

We recently released a study with Cornell University that confirmed what we’ve been thinking for years. After just one month, dogs on our food showed a measurable metabolic shift, including lower levels of compounds associated with aging, and they sustained those benefits for the entire year of the study.

That tells us that The Farmer’s Dog benefits go beyond the anecdotes we hear and the benefits that people can see. A truly proper diet that considers both nutrition and processing is changing the underlying markers tied to long-term health.

Knox: How do veterinarians factor into this equation?

Regev: Veterinarians are central to what we’re building, and we have hired many to oversee our own products and services. Every recipe is formulated and overseen by our on-staff Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionists, of which there are fewer than 100 in the country. We also have thousands more veterinarians and technicians who recommend The Farmer’s Dog, and feed it to their own dogs.

Traditionally, Kibble was the only product that most veterinarians felt comfortable recommending for daily feeding, because it was the only option to provide what is called a complete and balanced diet. Kibble is extremely processed and requires vitamin enrichment. That spawned an entire industry of nutrition science that created wonderful breakthroughs in our understanding of what vitamins and minerals dogs need.

The nutrient profile is very specific and hard to achieve on your own. In fact, an analysis of homemade diets online found that more than 95% of them are deficient in some critical nutrients that would create serious health issues over time, even recipes created by veterinarians. So you started having a lot of owners getting wise to the issues of ultra-processing, but in seeking alternatives were missing a lot of the important nutrients their dogs need. Essentially harming their dogs with good intentions.

When veterinarians see that The Farmer’s Dog has these Board-Certified Nutritionists, provides all of that nutrition, while avoiding the excess processing of kibble and providing benefits of fresh, they become some of our biggest advocates.

They’re also seeing some of the outcomes up close. Better digestion, healthier weight, shinier coats, and revitalized energy. That’s where a lot of the confidence comes from.

If We Had Known How Hard It Was, We Might Not Have Started

Knox: What do you wish you had known when you started in 2014?

Regev: If we had known how hard it was, we might not have started. But once we saw what this food does for dogs, it stopped being a question of whether it would work and became a question of how to make it work for millions of dogs. That’s the difference. You don’t need certainty on the outcome. You need conviction that the system should and could change. Once you see that, it’s hard to walk away.

Knox: Where do you want the industry to be in five years?

Regev: The industry simplifies into two clear tiers. The first is cheap, reliable nutrition, everything a dog needs to not be malnourished, made efficiently and accessible everywhere. There’s a real place for that.

The second tier is for owners who want to invest more. And if you’re going to spend more, it should buy better outcomes, not better packaging.

Right now, that second tier is a mess. Dozens of products, similar claims, buzz words, very little differentiation in outcomes. The ingredient quality and manufacturing quality are not really different from their more affordable counterparts, frighteningly it is sometimes worse. That’s what we’re changing. This is the moment the old system starts to give way to a better one. The Farmer’s Dog is building that platform.

Food is the biggest lever, but it’s one part of a larger platform: earlier insight, better guidance, and a clearer picture of a dog’s health over time. The goal is simple for us: more healthy years for dogs, and happier owners.

We have a real opportunity to change how long and how well dogs live. That’s what we are going after.