(PRESS RELEASE) Wild Earth, a startup reinventing pet food with biotech, announced its Good Protein Dog Snacks with Koji are now available at select brick-and-mortar retail stores, and pet food retailers can now place wholesale orders for Wild Earth treats. Wild Earth is scheduled to appear on ABC’s SHARK TANK Sunday, March 17. CEO Ryan Bethencourt pitched the sharks to invest in his vision for a more sustainable, healthier way to feed a growing worldwide pet population.
More than 20 stores now sell Wild Earth treats, and PupJoy, an award-winning personalized e-commerce brand for dog parents, is the first subscription service to offer Wild Earth treats in its curated boxes of dog goods from independent vendors.
Early testing in San Francisco Bay-area pet boutiques, independent pet food stores and grooming salons showed enthusiasm for Wild Earth’s high-protein treats, a veterinarian-developed formula offering omega fatty acids, digestion-boosting enzymes, and prebiotics to support gastrointestinal microbiomes. Good Protein Dog Snacks are free of animal ingredients, antibiotics, growth hormones, artificial preservatives, artificial flavors, artificial colors, additives, fillers, and mystery ingredients.
“Animal-friendly retailers and PupJoy share our mission to bring more sustainable, more nutritious products to market, and each new retail partner helps us make an impact,” Bethencourt said. “As the first commercially available pet product made via cellular agriculture, our koji treats break entirely new ground for our dogs, our planet, and our industry.”
“Wild Earth snacks are earning a great buzz and our customers can now be among the first to get them delivered straight to their doors,” said Dustin McAdams, CEO of PupJoy. “With our personalized ordering model that allows dog parents to customize the products in their boxes, we know what our customers prefer. There is high-demand for functional treats with transparent, healthy ingredients from companies with a social conscience. Wild Earth checks off all of those boxes, and they are doing it in a very innovative way.”
“We didn’t know quite what to expect when we brought in Wild Earth treats, since Koji is a brand-new ingredient for us, but dogs, almost without exception, love these treats,” said Dianne Krenzer, sales manager/buyer at Berkeley-based Holistic Hound. “I’ve never seen a new treat go so fast with such unanimous approval. Our customers have been very interested to learn about Koji as a sustainable and humane protein source.”
Wild Earth’s Good Protein Dog Snacks are made from eco-friendly and renewably sourced Koji (Aspergillus oryzae). Koji is a complete protein containing all ten essential amino acids dogs need, and requires dramatically fewer resources than farming animals to produce the same nutritional value. With 25-30 percent of meat’s environmental impact in the U.S. attributed to pet food, Wild Earth is developing alternatives to ensure we can sustainably nourish more than a billion pets by 2050.
Those interested in stocking Wild Earth treats may visit http://wholesale.wildearth.com for more information. SRP is $14.99 per bag.