Jinx it: Dog food CFO shares insights on fast and furry-us growth

As anyone who’s wandered down the pet aisle lately can attest, dog food is a crowded market. Jinx, one of the relatively newer entrants to the space, seems to be barking up the right tree. According to Graeme Fleckney, the company’s CFO, Jinx is the fastest-growing of those many brands. Founded in 2020 by former executives from Casper, one of the early DTC darlings, the company is now available in more than 10,000 retail locations as well as online. Earlier this year, Modern Retail reported that the company was expected to bring in $100 million. That’s a lot of dog food.

Jinx wants to continue to grow, with a goal of reaching $500 million in retail sales. This summer, the company hired Fleckney, its first-ever CFO, to help. Fleckney, who stepped into the role after working as CFO and VP of finance at Hershey International, spoke with CFO Brew about how focusing on innovation and trends has led to success.

Jinx’s multiple pivots: In some ways Jinx was an ideal fit for the pandemic era, a direct-to-consumer pet food brand at a time when both e-commerce and pet ownership were on the rise.

Post-pandemic, it went omnichannel, entering brick and mortar Walmart stores in 2022. It then expanded to other stores including Target, Publix, and Tractor Supply. This year it expanded into PetSmart stores and can now be shipped from Amazon, Chewy, and Walmart.

Jinx has found success despite a difficult market. “The dog food category is not an easy place,” Fleckney said. “It’s crowded and it’s also declining at the moment.” Sales of traditional dry, wet, and semi-moist dog food all declined in the year ending this August: dry by 2.9% year over year, wet by 3.6%, and semi-moist by 9.2%.

Dog food companies face some challenges finding venture capital at the moment, according to Fleckney, but Jinx hopes to buck that trend. It’s currently exploring a Series C fundraising round and has “had a lot of positive feedback from the investment community,” Fleckney said. The fact that it’s “making waves against legacy, massive brands that have enormous pockets” makes it likely to catch investors’ attention, he said. “We’re really excited to close this next round of funding and build this next chapter for Jinx.”

Building loyalty: While Fleckney was CFO and SVP of finance, IT, and transformation at Hershey subsidiary Amplify Snack Brands—maker of products like SkinnyPop popcorn—dog food, he said, is a different beast altogether.

“Pet food is much more consequential” than snack food for humans, Fleckney said. If you try a new snack and don’t like it, you just don’t buy it again. But pet food requires more of a commitment from the consumer. It’s typically more expensive than snack food, and buying the wrong brand could have consequences such as upsetting a dog’s stomach, he said.

Trust is especially important when it comes to pet food. Consumers have lost trust in pet food brands in recent decades, according to Pet Food Industry columnist Debbie Phillips Donaldson, due to factors like frequent recall announcements and a 2007 incident where some brands of pet food were found to contain melamine, a chemical compound often found in dinnerware. Since that time, “pet owners have demanded more transparency from pet food companies,” she wrote.

But once a brand gains customers’ trust, they tend to stick around. “The thing about dog food, it’s something that comes with a lot of trust and loyalty,” Fleckney said. If your dog is healthy and likes a brand, you’re liable to stick with it.

That’s why Jinx, and by extension Fleckney, spends so much time on creating and maintaining its brand. “As CFO, you’ve got to make sure your innovation process, your R&D process is well invested in, that your branding is also well invested in,” he said. Jinx invests heavily in building customers’ awareness of its brand, he said, because consumers “go through the funnel and ultimately get to loyalty.”

And Jinx also has an ace—or rather, an Avenger—up its sleeve. Chris Evans has partnered with the company since 2022 and also acts as its spokesperson, a “trusted face on screen,” Fleckney said, who reflects the “trust and authenticity” customers look for in the products they feed their pets.

Bone appétit: Consumers’ desire to trust pet food brands may be connected to a societal trend dubbed “humanization,” or the tendency to view pets as family members. You can see this trend on display by walking down any dog food aisle. Ingredients lists read like a cross between a Whole Foods and an upscale restaurant: Your pooch can dine on lamb, Texas beef and sweet potatoes, cage-free turkey, or roasted bison and venison. Refrigerated cases have popped up with fresh, perishable dog foods that resemble stews and sausages.

New tricks: Jinx’s relationships with retailers also help the company to innovate, Fleckney said. “Retailers are an amazing source of not just data but advice on trends, and we’re constantly swapping opinions on that.”

The company’s product developers have their eyes on trends: This summer, Jinx rolled out Fresh, its line of refrigerated dog foods. “The launch of Fresh doesn’t necessarily need to be a cannibalizing factor” that would take away from Jinx’s other lines, Fleckney said, because many consumers now alternate between feeding their dogs dry, traditional wet, and fresh food, or else mix them together. Refrigerated dog food is a hot commodity right now: The subcategory saw 17.8% growth over the past year, while more conventional types of dog food saw declines, according to Pet Food Processing.

But Jinx staff also “get inspiration from categories outside pet food” when developing new products, Fleckney said. Case in point: Kibble Sauce: gravies made with bone broth packaged in squeeze bottles just like the ones ketchup and mustard come in.

“Kibble is kind of dull. Been around for a long time, not particularly a massively growing category,” Fleckney said. But kibble plus a condiment is something new: “When we put mustard on a hot dog, we make it more interesting.”