Founder's Note / 1: Pet Food Shoes

When I was little girl (or the “olden days” as my 5 yo calls them), my Dad had a pet food start-up and he owned a pair of shoes that were forbidden from coming in the house. These were his pet food shoes. He wore these when he visited factories, did product development, ran trials, etc. If you’ve ever been to a traditional pet food factory (not highly recommended) you’d understand why these shoes had to stay outside.

When we started NewRoad in 2015 and began developing our products I got my own pair of pet food shoes. Because we use human-grade ingredients, my pet food shoes are significantly less gross than my Dad’s were in the 1980’s but at the end of the day there is still flour, dough, dishwasher water and any number of messy substances that get on said shoes.

A really rewarding day is when you come home and your pet food shoes look like you made a lot of pet food that day. Messy pet food shoes are a kind of badge of honor. The past few months my pet food shoes have remained in my garage but this week I got to put them back on. And it was awesome.

In our tumultuous world that is now so unpredictable and often scary, putting my pet food shoes back on felt like a little personal win. And it seemed important to celebrate a win.

Thank you so much to our team, customers, supporters and friends who made it so that we get another shot at putting our pet food shoes on again and getting to work.

-Katie