The lower the birth rate, the higher the number of dogs. The higher the number of dogs, the more humanization of the animal. And the more humanized an animal, the more business opportunities. Or, at least, that is how three entrepreneurs saw it who, a few weeks before the pandemic officially arrived in Spain, launched a dog food start-up that has just inaugurated a 3,000-square-meter plant in Terrassa (Barcelona) to produce for the 15,000 pets that they already feed on a regular basis.
Dogfy Diet, as this natural, personalized and home food company for dogs is called, ended last year with a turnover of 3 million euros (more than seven times greater than in 2020) and begins 2022 with the aim of selling four times more, up to 12 million.
Neither is the goal unreasonable -according to the system that the company has to prepare these forecasts-, nor does it catch them off guard: when Gonzalo Noy, Sergio Font Y Joseph Font formed the company were clear that there was a gap in the market. And, in fact, all three left their careers to throw themselves into the project. The first sold its two ‘start-ups’ (a brand of watches and another of glasses), Sergio left his position at a law firm and Josephhis father, left his meat company to assist them with all the industrial and food aspects of the project.
“It was a very processed product market,” he recalls. No and. To the equation we must also add a trend towards healthy eating in general that was beginning to reach pets; a registry of birth and adoption of dogs that rose like foam, and a successful precedent in the United States. “What was there was cooked dog food but in a standardized format,” he explains. Bags of between 500 grams and 1 kilo of different menus that the customer buys and manages himself. “We kept the part of home cooking, but we decided to give more personalization and better service,” he says.
Thus, Dogfy Diet is an animal feed producer that cooks as it would for a human (although the product is ground up), that offers its service by subscription and that works with an algorithm that allows the size of the food packages to be customized. Not the content of the menus, which, as justified No andare designed precisely so that they contain all the nutrients that the dog needs, practically the only way to compete with the feed.
Be that as it may, the proposal has worked so well that the company has closed three rounds of financing in these first two years: the first two of 100,000 euros raised from a family office and an industrial investor, and the last of 5 million euros only from the last batch. There are also 100 workers (a workforce that they hope to double this year) and they are already selling in France, where they plan to open a logistics center to better cover the market.
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In fact, the commissioning of this plant in Terrassa largely responds to its intention to grow in Europe: for the time being to Germany and Italy between this year and the next. In this sense, the factory is now distributed in such a way that machinery and the logistics area share space, but the intention is to open distribution centers wherever they go, so that production can gain space in Terrassa, from where they have no intention of moving. .
“With this factory we want to give the company capillarity of production to go to Europe: we have invested between 2 and 3 million euros, approximately,” he says. No and, who also confesses that the space gives enough to multiply by five what they produce now: that is, reach 35 tons. And with that goal they work, without losing sight of other ways to grow. At the moment, getting into the retail universe before addressing any other animal, a scenario to which, however, they are not completely closed.