Christchurch business co-founders Laura Wilkinson and Steph Mearns only dish up food they would eat themselves when it comes to feeding their pets.
Organic mussels, hoki, calamari, freshwater salmon and grass-fed beef liver are served as treats and their breakfast and dining menu is even more impressive.
Ms Wilkinson said it was good to be the dog of a pet food business owner and their 11-year-old was in the best of health.
"Margot is a Weimaraner, with a very human name, and we do feed her raw human food. So, she gets a broad diet that is balanced across the week. She eats as well as we do. She gets a rotation of meat, including lamb, beef, salmon, white fish — and she gets mussels at every meal as well as a variety of vegetables and eggs and lots of super foods like blueberries, broccoli. And she loves watermelon. It’s one of her favourite foods."
Ms Mearns is on the same page, with Pikelet the cat and Dexter the dog also getting the VIP — very important pet — treatment.
Like-minded pet owners feel the same way, judging by Gourmate Pet Treat Co’s growing export and domestic sales.
For the financial year to April, the company’s revenue has increased fourfold.
Only human-grade ingredients go into the range of freeze-dried pet treats and natural supplements such as Bounce, a green-lipped mussel and hoki oil tablet for dogs to help with mobility, pain, inflammation and joint issues.
The business is grounded in the values of high quality food, natural nutrition and sustainable sourcing.
Ms Wilkinson feeds her dogs human food for many reasons, including because she wanted to feed a biologically appropriate diet and the "lack of regulation and transparency" of ingredients and processes in many international brands.
Gourmate was launched by the duo during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Ms Mearns has since stepped aside from daily operations, going on extended parental leave when she had her baby at the end of 2022, but remains as a minor shareholder and continues on the governance board.
Ms Wilkinson and her husband are the main shareholders.
The close friends met when they started high school. They also travelled together in their gap year.
A business idea evolved when Ms Wilkinson started talking about the green-lipped mussels she was preparing for the two Weimaraners they had at that stage.
"Like all good ideas it started at a pub. Steph was living in Sydney then and I was there visiting her just before having our second child. I was telling her about how we were hobby freeze-drying green-lipped mussels and treats for our dogs and community of dogs when we were living in Waikato. We had just moved to Christchurch and had put it on pause, but had a bit of stock left over ... [I] told her about the attraction early on and she said ‘Would you like to do this as a side hustle’?"
A year was spent on a business plan, shifting it from a cottage industry to expand the range and develop branding and a mission philosophy.
Ms Mearns now lives in Auckland and said her communications background came into play for the company’s marketing and promotions.
When the business began, Ms Wilkinson had just come out of lockdown. Ms Mearns was still in lockdown in Sydney and they were both working remotely.
Right from the start there was a strong demand.
"There was this massive disruption to the supply chain and a shift in the focus to buying New Zealand-made from concerns about China at the time because of Covid-19. Our launch actually aligned with a few cases where dogs had become really unwell from treats and food out of China that was being treated with gamma radiation. So all the stars aligned and we saw immediate success."
Green-lipped mussels and other proteins arrive frozen and are loaded into a freeze dryer, needing minimal processing into treats.
New products coming out in January would be "sliced and diced" so pet owners could see exactly what they looked like, Ms Wilkinson said.
Salmon fins were no different from those served at a table. When they were launched as a treats, cold-smoked salmon fins were delivered to stockists and partners to underline the human grade point.
Nor does Ms Wilkinson miss out.
She takes their marine collagen, Shine, daily.
She said Shine rivalled the best quality hydrolysed marine collagen on the market with its low molecular weight and high absorption rate, and the difference it made to her dog’s coat could be seen within two days.
If New Zealanders think this is going too far, some Asian nations take it to the next level.
"It’s incredible: their pets are in prams and are completely humanised. They are often dressed in matching outfits with their owners, including their hair-dos. Japan is the same and they have everything in pet expos you would expect to see available at a baby expo in Asia, even diapers."
They noticed this trend of animals being increasingly humanised when they began developing their business.
"People were spending more time researching their animals’ nutrition and what they were feeding their pets and building meal plans. For us to come in at the absolute premium end of the market was good timing when there was full transparency of our processes and having top quality ingredients, but actually having ingredients that were being upcycled or adding value to our raw products."
Mussels from an organic farm are supplied to them because one side of their shells are broken.
Liver was an easy choice as it remains far down the list of New Zealanders’ favourite meat cuts and is readily available.
Tonnes of calamari given to them early on would have been wasted until becoming another important ingredient. Much of it is now supplied as a by-catch, otherwise it would be made into bait.
The natural supplements arose from Ms Wilkinson’s background as a midwife and academic teaching midwifery with access to scientific databases.
Initially, they concentrated on the domestic market before moving to exporting into Asia within the first two years.
Hong Kong and Singapore were the first international destinations.
Gourmate has since withdrawn from Singapore as it was too fragmented: customers often switched between brands, making it hard to develop a strong following.
Japan was the next entry, followed by China, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates and, more recently, Korea.
Europe is off the cards at this stage as it is difficult to compete with prices in the European market or obtain raw materials, and high freight costs are a barrier. Australia has been ring-fenced for later entry.
Ms Wilkinson said they had been working on "market validation" for the United States, which was put on pause for the moment because of political uncertainty.
"We had distribution lined up, but we have just seen such huge success in Asia in the last year that we are really focusing on that market. I think largely it’s because they have some of the lowest birthrates in the world and are investing a lot of money into their pets. There is just the population to support it but, also, the New Zealand reputation precedes us. New Zealand is well known for the quality of our products in those markets, whereas, probably, 60% of the people in the US don’t even know where we are on the map."
She has recently returned from exhibiting with their distributor at Megazoo, the largest pet industry fair held each year in Korea.
An almost complete sell-out was made during Gourmate’s launch into the new market after a social media campaign in the weeks leading up to the event.
Since Ms Wilkinson moved into the business full time this year after leaving her career as a midwife, the business had grown at pace.
At the end of last year Gourmate moved into its own manufacturing facility in the Christchurch suburb of Bromley.
With the exception of some ingredient sourcing such as buying mussel oil from Aroma, most of the ingredients are processed themselves.
Ms Wilkinson said running the business had not been easy between raising two children and her work as a midwife.
"It’s been incredible both professionally and personally this year having one job instead of multiple, and it’s always a win to slow down and focus. I wouldn’t change it though and I love midwifery and it’s a really special journey to walk with women, but I find business quite stimulating."
Goals ahead are to consolidate their position in Asia next year and they are deeply into research and development to make a complete diet for the market.
This would take the shape of nutritionally balanced doggy dinners to be fed at meal time. Market input from trade partners so far indicated this could be another big seller.
The product has already got a tail-wagging response in trials from their coterie of taste-testing dogs.
