Pet food is plant-based, as are investors like Mark Cuban

Vegetable-based meat products have entered grocery stores, restaurants and kitchen tables thanks in large part to Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

Now, your pet’s food bowl is the next place you can find plant-based products.

Pet ownership and spending have grown in the United States amid the pandemic. Seventy percent of Americans, or about 90.5 million households, now have a pet, according to the American Pet Products Association. This represents an all-time high and will exceed 67% of households by 2020.

In 2020, $ 103.6 billion was spent in the U.S. on pet-related products and services, up 6.5% year-over-year, according to the APPA.

Most of that spending is on pet food and candy, which totaled $ 42 billion, up 9.7% year-over-year. This increase was not only driven by the new pet owners, but also by people who only spent more on their pets; 30% of pet owners said they spent more on their pet in 2020 than the previous year, while only 10% said they spent less, according to the APPA.

With more consumers opting to eat plant products for environmental and health reasons (sales of these products are expected to reach 30% compounded annual growth by 2025, according to a UBS report), it is expected that they can make similar decisions for their pet’s food.

“A lot of people say,‘ Your customers are vegetarians and vegetarians, ’and they really aren’t,” said Ryan Bethencourt, executive director of Wild Earth, an alternative protein food company. “Our customers are people who care, first and foremost, about the health of their animals and, secondly, about sustainability.”

“Just like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods has found that most of its customers are people who care about ESG, climate change, sustainability, health; these are our customers too,” Bethencourt said. .

Wild Earth, which sells herbal dog foods and candies made from dried yeast, chickpeas, oats and pea protein, experienced 700% growth from 2020 to 2021 and now has more than 40,000 customers in the States. United, Bethencourt said. The company does not disclose its revenue.

The company gained recognition initially in 2019 when Bethencourt closed a deal with Mark Cuban on “Shark Tank”. It raised an additional $ 11 million in a series A several months later, which included investors such as Mars Petcare, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, VegInvest and Cuban vegan investment funds.

Now, Wild Earth has closed a new $ 23 million round of financing that again included Cuban and VegInvest, as well as Big Idea Ventures, whose investment director is a former board member of Beyond Meat, Tom Mastrobuoni. Actor Paul Wesley and Bitburger Ventures, the arm of the eponymous German brewery, also invested in this latest round.

The company will use the funding to produce new foods for dogs and cats, as well as develop meats based on beef, chicken and seafood cells, which it wants to be more sustainable and cruelty-free.

“Of the meat we consume in the United States, 25% to 30% goes to our pets,” Bethencourt said. “There’s this obsolete perspective that the intestines and anything that happens to our pets; that no longer happens.”

“All factory farms work to feed our pets and it makes no sense to make small brown balls of protein if we can make them with plants,” he said.

Other pet food producers also see the opportunity for more plant-oriented products.

Mars, which invests in Wild Earth and owns pet food brands such as Iams, Pedigree and Whiskas, launched a “first-class formula” called Karma in June. Although the product is marketed with 60% of its ingredients from plants, it also includes chicken or white fish.

Nestlé, which produces pet food products under the Purina brand, launched a dog and cat food in Switzerland in 2020 that includes plant and insect proteins. Mars is also launching a dry cat food made with insect flours from black soldier fly larvae in the UK, one of several bug-based protein foods currently being worked on for pets.

Freshpet, which sells refrigerated dog and cat food, said it will begin producing a line of vegetarian dog food that will be available at Petco locations this year.

Bethencourt said she expects General Mills, owner of pet food company Blue Buffalo, to also have a pet food product in the next two years.

It’s a trend that doesn’t see a slowdown as the same thing happens at U.S. dining and restaurant tables.

“The same consumers who buy Beyond or Impossible burgers are the same ones who switch their pets to vegetable diets,” he said.