![]() Less than 2% of their current business is complete and balanced pet diets. Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery has grown organically by an average of 30% each year producing primarily baked dog treats. So many smaller companies are now able to sell their products across the country.” Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery co-manufactures pet treats and pet food and also produces house brands. “The industry has changed so much with the humanized treats. “At the time, brokers were dictating where products were distributed,” Stricker says. One day Stricker was asked to produce a private label treat for a customer, and the rest, they say, is history. Today the focus is still on human quality ingredients and creating the cleanest ingredient panels possible. Stricker began making dog treats using ingredients he was familiar with from his experience at the family bakery. His line quickly grew to 11 different dog treats available in bulk and his first customer was a large grocery store chain that Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery employees would stock weekly. Stricker also produced donuts, hexagon-shaped cookies, mini honey-wheat bagels and cheese sticks - all formulated for dogs. They were more humanized, sheeted biscuits for dogs that looked like graham crackers. Stricker bought a piece of equipment from the auction and started producing humanized pet treats in 5,000 feet of space divided between four rooms in an old dairy building that his dad owned. He looked at small boutique pet shops and large national pet specialty retailers in and around Chicago and found they weren’t offering any product like that, or if they were it was very expensive. He had never seen a pet treat that looked similar to human food. After meeting a woman at an equipment auction in Chicago who had been producing humanized pet treats, Stricker knew that was something he could produce. As one of three brothers working in the family business in Harvard, Stricker decided to strike out on his own. Stricker grew up working in his family’s bakery owned by both sets of his grandparents and eventually his parents. Although Stricker says he helps his customers respond to the humanization trend, he may very well have helped start it. Stricker explains that in the more than 20 years since he opened Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery in 1997, he’s seen human-like pet treats take over the market. The bigger building and additional capabilities and warehousing is all built around our customers’ needs and how the market is changing.” ![]() “We want to help brands get to market quicker and increase their offerings. “We’re trying to be like the ‘craft beer people’ who can react to trends quickly, use better ingredients, and take advantage of new ingredients or packaging that comes along,” Stricker says. Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery isn’t necessarily searching for those large customers who require 200,000-lb. initially to help them figure out how to efficiently package their products.” Some manufacturers wouldn’t take on customers for less than a truckload or two and we were willing to produce 300 lbs. “We built our business taking in smaller customers and grew with them,” Berglund says. And the investment in the new, $32 million facility completed this past December is a big bet on those partners. They view the company as a partner in its customers’ future success. Kurt Stricker, president, and Lexie Berglund, director of sales and marketing of Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery, see their role with customers as much more than a supplier. This is crucial for a company that helps its customers enter a product category with the goal of them thriving in that category. Each processing capability has the systems necessary to offer the full range of batch sizes. As a leading co-manufacturer in the pet treat space, Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery is clearly focused on helping its customers expand into new product areas. Small-batch capabilities are just as important as large-volume production runs and the planning behind this new facility reflects that. The new 212,000-sq.-ft., primarily pet treat, processing plant in Harvard, Illinois, owned by Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery is designed to be flexible in both the type of products the company can produce and in what volumes.
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