After launching Portland Pet Food Co. nearly a decade ago, founder Katie McCarron is hitting her stride.
The company has tripled its office and manufacturing space since early 2022 and doubled its sales each of the last three years, thanks partly to the boom in pet adoptions during Covid and her company’s hyperlocal sourcing mindset, McCarron said.
“Because we source in the U.S., we have had no sourcing issues with the pet food,” McCarron explained in reference to supply chain sourcing issues felt by makers around the world. “Twelve months ago, it was a big problem because of the can shortage, particularly for cat food."
McCarron started Portland Pet Food Company in 2014 after her 14-year-old poodle, Rosie, stopped eating. McCarron began cooking for Rosie, who started eating again and lived to the age of 17.
The company began making fresh frozen products for dogs and eventually expanded into treats for both cats and dogs made with leftover spent grain created by beer makers.
Spent grains are a mixture of the malt's leftover grains that are rich in fiber and proteins. The company partners with several local breweries, including its neighbor Ruse Brewing in their Southeast Portland manufacturing space, to repurpose those spent grains.
In 2022, Portland Pet Food Company said it repurposed 23,600 pounds of spent grain — equivalent to 13,000 gallons of beer — that would have otherwise gone to farmers to feed their livestock or a landfill.
“There's no hops, no alcohol, so there's no fear of poisoning the dog,” McCarron said. “We always say, you get to enjoy your beer and they get to enjoy the treat.”
Many local companies perished during the pandemic, and those that didn’t felt the brute force of supply chain issues that affected shipping and material costs and timelines. Because Portland Pet Food Company sources nearly all of its products within the U.S., it did not feel the pressure other makers did, and boomed during a time when others fell back.
The success forced the company out of its 5,000-square-foot manufacturing office space beneath the Hawthorne Bridge and into its 15,000-square-foot space in Southeast Portland's Iron Fireman building.
It also invested in larger ovens that sextupled the amount of treats it could bake at once and bought a new packaging machine two months ago. While McCarron was hesitant to make such a large purchase, it is already returning on its investment and took the labor needed for the job from six people to one.
“It was a calculated risk, but has already freed up staffing to move them to higher-value aspects to support rapid growth,” McCarron said.
With all of this growth, McCarron hopes to get more products on shelves quicker and invest in its subscription service by making it more efficient for both the company and its customers.
“Some of the other (subscriptions), you're locked into a month subscription, and you have to order quite a lot. We're really flexible, you can change your subscription. And ours is shelf stable, so when it arrives, it doesn't take up all your freezer space,” McCarron said.
“We also just did change our two-week cadence of shipping to four weeks because of sustainability, and shipping costs have gone way up. We thought ‘If you're ordering every two weeks, why not order once a month?’”
