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The Pet Food Power Move No One’s Talking About
One private label pet food maker is on track for $31M in sales. Here's how retailers are rewriting the rules.
Collin Armstrong
June 04, 2025
Issue #198
June 4th, 2025
Quick Hits:
Private label pet food has evolved from a generic discount option into a strategic, brand-building powerhouse for retailers.
No longer confined to the bottom shelf, store-brand pet foods are now carefully formulated and marketed to boost margins and loyalty (Petco even launched a fresh & frozen product via Wholehearted)
The numbers tell the story: U.S. private label pet food sales surged 25% YoY in 2023, reaching $1.7 billion, yet that still represents only 3.3% of America’s $51B dog and cat food market.
In contrast, private labels command about 34% of the pet food market across Europe’s biggest countries, highlighting massive room for growth in the U.S. market. With 2024 data showing continued momentum, it’s clear that private label is no longer a niche play – it’s a signal of where the industry is headed.
This shift is driven by more than just bargain prices.
Retailers are leveraging private labels to craft exclusive brands that rival national brands in quality while capturing more profit per bag.
At the same time, pet owners squeezed by inflation are increasingly willing to give store brands a try – especially as these products now boast premium ingredients and trustworthy reputations.
U.S. surveys show 82% of pet owners agree that generic/store-brand pet products are just as effective as name brands. In short, private label is shedding its “brandless” stigma and emerging as one of the hottest growth areas in pet food.
Parent company of Vital Essentials (a leading raw pet food label), Carnivore Meat Company, recently built a 235,000 sqft facility brimming with autonomous robots to help service it’s growing private label customers.
Their private label arm is currently doing $19M in revenue and looking to hit $31M by Q2 of next year.
Carnivore is a clear reflection of finding your edge early -- by being one of the first companies in the freeze-dried & frozen pet food category they’ve been able to ride the massive wave with both their own label (Vital Essentials), as well as their private label services, as many other brands are looking to capitalize on the raw movement without the massive infrastructural investment.
The Big Box Playbook
Major retailers have wasted no time in scaling up their private label pet food strategies. By controlling distribution and branding, they enjoy advantages in shelf placement, online search visibility, and customer data.
Here’s how three giants are playing the game:
Walmart: The nation’s largest retailer has expanded its Pure Balance line (launched in 2012) into a Pure Balance PRO+ range of “super premium,” veterinarian-formulated diets.
These dog and cat foods tout quality ingredients and added nutrients like glucosamine and DHA, mimicking the features of premium national brands.
Critically, Walmart prices PRO+ below comparable name-brand diets to win value-conscious shoppers. The company has also partnered with emerging brands like 360 Pet Nutrition to bring niche formats (e.g. freeze-dried raw diets) to its stores.
By marrying massive distribution with on-trend products, Walmart turns private label into a loyalty and margin engine. “Launching at a price point lower than similar premium items, Pure Balance PRO+ is a great value and makes it easy and affordable to make your pet’s nutrition a top priority,” said Walmart’s VP of Pets, underscoring the strategic balance of quality and price.
Chewy: The online pet retailer has developed a stable of private brands that span kibble, wet food, treats, and even fresh meals. American Journey (dog and cat food), Tiny Tiger (cat food), and Tylee’s (fresh-prepared frozen meals) are all Chewy-owned labels designed to meet various needs.
Chewy uses its rich customer data and SEO advantage to merchandise these brands prominently in search results and recommendation widgets.
The payoff is sticky customer behavior: Chewy noted that autoship subscription customers drove over 80% of sales in Q4 of 2024, and once a pet owner is subscribed to Chewy’s own food, they’re unlikely to switch away.
Even with minimal marketing, Chewy reported its private labels helped increase gross margin to 29.3% in Q3 of 2024 – a testament to customer trust in the Chewy ecosystem. The company’s reputation for customer service and its successful online pharmacy has created a halo effect, making shoppers more open to trying Chewy’s own pet food.
Amazon: E-commerce behemoth Amazon introduced Wag, its private label pet food brand, in 2018 as a Prime member exclusive.
Starting with dry dog food, Amazon positioned Wag to be price-competitive with popular brands like Purina Pro Plan.
Over time, Wag has expanded into other pet product categories (treats, supplies) and gives Amazon a foothold in a high-frequency category that drives repeat purchases.
Amazon can analyze sales data from national pet food brands and then develop its own versions to undercut or innovate on them.
Why Consumers Are Embracing Private Label
Pet inflation has been a big driver: pet food prices jumped about 10% in both 2022 and 2023 in the U.S., and has now stabilized.
As budget pressures rose, many owners “traded down” from expensive name brands to more affordable private labels and haven’t looked back.
However, it’s not purely about price.
Consumers are also showing greater trust in retail-branded products. The majority of U.S. pet owners now believe store-brand pet food is just as effective and high-quality as big brands — this trust has been earned by improved product quality and transparency.
Another factor is the convenience and loyalty ecosystem offered by retailers. Reviews and word-of-mouth also play a role – many private label pet foods online now have thousands of reviews and high star ratings, which give new buyers confidence that others have had good experiences.
Moreover, retailers often incentivize switching through loyalty programs, subscriptions, or guarantees (for instance, “100% satisfaction or your money back” on their brand), reducing the perceived risk.
It’s telling that in early 2023, private-label cat food and treats captured 7.1% of U.S. sales in that segment, and store-brand dog food (plus treats) hit 15.1% of its segment – well above the overall 3.3% share – indicating that consumers readily embrace store brands in categories where they find strong value and quality.
Beyond Big Box: How Smaller Players Are Winning with Private Label
It’s not just the Walmarts and Amazons of the world – independent pet businesses, vet clinics, and even pet service brands are riding the private label wave.
The barrier to creating a pet food or treat brand has fallen thanks to agile contract manufacturers and turnkey white-label platforms.
Smaller pet retailers and boutiques are launching their own lines of treats, toppers, or supplements tailored to their clientele.
Veterinary clinics have also gotten into the game.
It’s increasingly common to see a vet clinic offering its own branded supplements (like hip & joint chews or probiotics).
Pet parents trust their vet, so if the clinic offers a “vet formulated” diet or supplement with their name on it, clients are likely to trust it as much as (or more than) a major corporate brand.
Providers like Bimini Pet Health explicitly cater to this trend, enabling vets to private-label soft chews, powders, and other supplements with low minimum orders.
Similarly, pet service and lifestyle brands are creating product lines to complement their services.
Groomers sell their own line of shampoos or skin & coat treats; doggy daycares might offer branded training treats or calming supplements for anxious pups; pet influencers on Shopify release limited-edition treat drops.
Enablers like contract manufacturers (e.g. Carnivore Meat Company for freeze-dried meats) have grown rapidly by helping these smaller players formulate and produce quality private label products.
Modern e-commerce tools (Shopify, Amazon Marketplace) then allow even micro-brands to reach a national audience with relatively low overhead. In short, you no longer need a huge factory or R&D lab to launch a pet food product – if you have a loyal community or a niche idea, private label manufacturing partners can make it a reality.
This democratization of pet product creation is resulting in a flood of indie pet treats and supplements hitting the market, each with a unique story or specialization to attract pet parents.
The Strategic Threat: How Private Label Shifts the Competitive Landscape
Retailers have a dual advantage: they control the point of sale and the customer relationship. This means store brands can enjoy favorable shelf placement (or algorithm placement online) and promotion, sometimes at the expense of national brands.
On e-commerce platforms, companies like Amazon and Chewy can tweak search results to feature their brands, leverage home page banners, and use subscription programs to lock in repeat purchases of their label.
In other words, once the retailer’s brand secures that recurring order, big-name competitors lose not just one sale but potentially a customer for life.
Shelf cannibalization is a real concern for the big pet food companies. Retailers have only so much physical and digital shelf space; when they launch a new private label line, it often displaces some third-party products or at least takes their growth slot.
National brands also lose pricing power in the face of private labels.
If Walmart sells a premium grain-free store brand at 20% less than a similar Blue Buffalo product, it pressures all players to justify their premiums or offer discounts.
We’ve seen this dynamic in human groceries for years: store brands set a value benchmark that caps how much branded goods can charge before consumers switch.
Platforms like Amazon and Chewy present a particularly thorny challenge because they are simultaneously the marketplace and a competitor. Brands that rely on these channels have to compete against the channel’s own products.
Moreover, retailers’ access to first-party data (purchases, search queries, reviews) gives them a rich feedback loop to improve their products rapidly, undercutting one of the traditional advantages of big brands (extensive consumer research).
As store brands innovate faster and incorporate trends (from ancestral diets to sustainable packaging), they diminish national brands’ differentiation.
Big box retailers will try anything to stay trendy and cool in order to gain an edge
We are essentially witnessing the blurring of lines: retailers are becoming brand owners, and in doing so they’re changing the competitive rules of the game.
Incumbent pet food makers must now contend not just with each other, but with their once-trusted retail partners turning into formidable house-brand rivals.
How Established Brands Can Still Win
All is not lost for the big pet food brands and startup challengers – but the playbook for competing in a private label world is changing. To thrive, branded pet food companies will need to double down on what makes them truly unique and valuable. Here are key strategies established brands can employ:
🔬Invest in R&D and Differentiation: National brands should focus on innovations (IP!) that are hard for retailer copycats to replicate.
This could mean proprietary nutritional research, patented ingredients, or clinically proven formulas that set a product apart.
For example, therapeutic veterinary diets with decades of science behind them (and vet school endorsements) or breakthrough functional ingredients (like a novel probiotic strain or allergen-free protein) create a moat that store brands struggle to match.
In other words, build a science moat that isn’t easily duplicated by a private label working off of public trends.
📚 Build Community and Education: Established brands can leverage something many retailers don’t have – a passionate community and deep educational content.
By creating direct-to-consumer engagement (through social media groups, breed clubs, loyalty programs, etc.) and providing rich educational resources (webinars with veterinarians, nutrition calculators, training tips), brands can form a relationship that goes beyond the product.
If a pet owner feels part of a brand’s “family” – getting expert advice or participating in brand-sponsored events – they may be far less inclined to switch to a faceless store brand.
🤝 Explore Collaboration or Co-Branding: In some cases, the adage “if you can’t beat them, join them” may apply.
Brands can consider partnering with retailers rather than always ceding ground.
This might take the form of co-branded products or exclusive formulations for a particular chain. For example, a specialty brand might develop a line “in collaboration with [Retailer]” to be sold as that retailer’s premium house brand, effectively turning a potential competitor into a client.
In the U.S. pet market, a company with unique expertise (say, a raw dog food startup i.e. Vital Essentials/Carnivore Meat or a supplement innovator) could license its sourcing, facilities, and/or formula to a big retailer’s brand for a fee, gaining revenue and reach without the cost of marketing to end-consumers.
Additionally, established brands can lean into premiumization and brand heritage – offering ultra-premium extensions or limited editions that justify their higher prices and keep status-conscious pet owners from switching.
The goal is to occupy the spaces that private labels either can’t (due to technical complexity) or won’t (due to smaller volume appeal) fill, and even to use retailers’ desire for differentiation to your advantage through strategic partnerships.
In essence, established pet food brands must play to their strengths: innovation, expertise, and emotional connection.
The competitive landscape is undoubtedly shifting, but agile and beloved brands can absolutely still win in a world where retailers are betting on “brandless” products.
WINNER 🏆️ : DOGGYDEX
Weekly DoggyDex Performance - May 26, 2025
Proudly introducing the DoggyDex™, an index comprised of 10 publicly traded companies whose primary focus is the dog/pet industry.
List of tickers used can be found below.
The yellow line-plot in the chart represents these companies above (DoggyDex™) and their combined performance against both the S&P 500 and Bitcoin on a weekly basis.
Pawformance is measured by % gains & losses.
$CHWY - Chewy: E-commerce platform for pet supplies
$IDXX - Idexx Labs: Vet point of care instruments and vet software
$FRPT - Fresh Pet: Pet food company
$ELAN - Elanco: Manufactures pet disease prevention products
$PETS - PetMeds: Online pet pharmacy
$ZTS - Zoetis: World's largest producer of meds and vaccines for pets and livestock
$TRUP - Trupanion: Pet insurance company
$WOOF - Petco Health & Wellness co.: Pet health & wellness company
$BARK - BarkBox: Subscription service providing dog products, services, and experiences
$PET - Wag! Group Co.: Tech platform that allows pet owners to connect with industry professionals for services such as walking, training, etc.
Over the past five years, interest in "dog wipes" has shown a steady and significant upward trend, approaching peak search interest especially since late 2023. This rise likely correlates with the growing popularity of snub-nosed breeds like French Bulldogs, which continues to be the most popular dog breed in the U.S.
These breeds are prone to skin folds and sensitive areas that require regular maintenance and wipes offer a convenient, daily hygiene solution for their unique needs. The surge in product innovation and marketing around breed-specific grooming routines may also be driving increased consumer search behavior.
In comparison, "cat wipes" have seen a slower but noticeable climb in search interest. While cats are generally self-cleaning, the uptick aligns with a broader increase in cat ownership, particularly among urban and apartment dwellers who are investing more in feline wellness and grooming.
Unlike dog wipes, which are often necessity-driven, cat wipes appear to be trending as part of a rising interest in preventative care and convenience grooming for indoor cats.
The gap between the two terms remains wide, but both trajectories indicate growing consumer attention toward at-home hygiene tools for pets.
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