A Booming Company Is Convincing People To Spend $10 A Day On Pet Food

A hot company called Freshpet is going public in hopes that more people will be willing to spend nearly $10 a day to feed their cats and dogs.

Freshpet has grown to selling $63.2 million a year in 12,500 locations, writes Kyle Stock at Bloomberg Businessweek.

The company specializes in selling unprocessed pet food made from whole meat and vegetables. The chow is sold in tubes and must be refrigerated.

In a prospectus for the IPO filing, the company says that business will grow thanks to "growing pet humanization and consumer focus on health and wellness."

The company provides refrigerators for its food to retailers like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, PetSmart, Target, and Kroger.

But Stock is skeptical that the company can expand at the rate it claims.

"FreshPet says Woodrow, my 70-pound Labrador retriever, should get 1.25 to 1.66 pounds a day of its turkey meat tube," Stock writes. "That would run $6.88 to $9.17 per day if I bought the stuff online, which seems like a lot for a dog that eagerly eats sticks and cardboard."

Stock admits he could be underestimating pet owners.

Blue Buffalo, another all-natural pet food retailer, has managed to surpass $1 billion a year in sales.