Ollie, a two-year-old, New York-based subscription service that sells what it calls human-grade pet food, has raised $12.6 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by Canaan Partners, with participation from WME Ventures, Rosecliff Ventures, RiverPark Funds, Correlation Ventures and earlier backers Primary Venture Partners and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. It brings the company’s total funding to roughly $17 million, including a $4.4 million seed round led by Primary and Lerer Hippeau last fall.
The company certainly takes dog food seriously, promising to customize recipes based on each dog’s “unique needs” as well as recommending the perfect portion and delivering that precise amount of food to its customers’ doors.
It uses a third-party USDA kitchen in Pennsylvania to produce its meals, which include chicken, beef, and lamb heart dishes with butternut squash, rutabaga, chickpeas, potato, cranberries, kale, strawberries, and cod liver oil, among other ingredients that you probably do not associate with dog food (yet!).
Pricing is based on a dog’s calorie needs, with small dogs starting at $3 per day, and averaging around $6 per day per dog.
The company isn’t alone in chasing after the pet food market, which is expected to reach $75 billion in revenue this year globally, but it’s still early days for gourmet on-demand pet food, particularly when compared with the glut of human-grade human food subscription-based companies to emerge in recent years (and, in a growing number of cases, flame out).
Among the outfits Ollie is competing with: The Farmer’s Dog, a pet-food subscription service that scooped up $8.1 million earlier this year; The Honest Kitchen, a 15-year-old, San Diego-based company that said last year it was on track to make $40 million in revenue; and NomNomNow, a two-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup that appears to be bootstrapped for now.
