The first customer may have had four legs and no money. Wellness Pet Company's chosen origin story reaches back to 1873, when A. Hubbard & Son baked hard-tack sea biscuits in Gloucester, Massachusetts. A sailor tossed one to his dog; the dog approved. By 1926, Old Mother Hubbard was making dog biscuits. That is an unusually tidy creation myth for a business that now sells scientifically framed nutrition in a crowded global aisle. It also gives Wellness something newer pet brands cannot order from a packaging supplier: time.
The modern business is a privately held premium pet-nutrition company based in Burlington, outside Boston. Its shelves hold Wellness food, protein-forward CORE and CORE+ formulas, Old Mother Hubbard biscuits, Eagle Pack, Holistic Select, raw and freeze-dried Sojos products, Good Dog treats and WHIMZEES dental chews. Clearlake Capital agreed to acquire the platform, then known as WellPet, in 2020. The company adopted the Wellness Pet Company name in 2021, placing its best-known brand over the whole house.
A portfolio disguised as a routine
Wellness Pet does not operate like a single-recipe startup. It behaves like a consumer-packaged-goods portfolio built around moments. A pet needs a complete meal; the company has dry food, cans and pouches. A dog has a touchy stomach; there are Sensitive Skin & Stomach recipes with salmon, fiber, and pre-, pro- and postbiotics. A cat ignores the water bowl; wet formats make hydration part of dinner. A senior dog struggles with a hard chew; Freshzees offers a softer dental treat. Training time produces another occasion, and toppers create one more.
That expansion is not random. Pet parents rarely walk into a store asking for “innovation.” They arrive with a complaint: the cat rejects this texture, the dog scratches, the breath is rough, the stool is unpredictable. A broad promise such as wellbeing becomes more useful when translated into a bag or pouch with a particular job. Wellness makes those jobs legible without crossing into veterinary medicine. Food remains food, but it is formulated and marketed around visible concerns.
The customer is the person buying on behalf of an animal who cannot read the ingredient panel. That peculiar arrangement makes trust the category's working currency. Wellness leans on nutrition experts, veterinarians, manufacturing experience and a long chronology. It sells through pet-specialty retailers, independent shops, large chains and online marketplaces. Authorized-reseller rules help it police how products appear and are priced online. The consumer sees a bag; behind it sits a wholesale network, retailer margin, manufacturing schedule and a serious freight bill.
How the family came together
The line from biscuit to biotech-sounding digestive blend was assembled in chapters. Animal-nutrition professional Jim Scott Sr. bought Old Mother Hubbard in 1961. Eagle Pack emerged in 1985 with trainers and veterinarians focused on the demands of canine athletes. During the 1990s, Jim Scott Jr. worked with nutrition experts, veterinarians and scientists on the Wellness brand, launched in 1997. Holistic Select followed with a digestive-health position. CORE arrived in 2007 with higher-protein recipes.
Sojos joined in 2016, bringing raw and shelf-stable convenience along with a Minnesota production operation. WHIMZEES and its facility in Veendam, the Netherlands, arrived in 2017. This last acquisition widened the company's logic. Dental chews are not dinner, but they fit the same larger promise: a healthier daily life shared by pets and people. They also invite frequent use. A toothbrush-shaped chew can be easier to remember than an abstract oral-care recommendation.
The market between dinner and healthcare
Wellness sits in the premium tier of an industry dominated by much larger operators. Nestlé Purina, Mars Petcare and Hill's bring vast research budgets, distribution and veterinary recognition. Blue Buffalo, Merrick, Instinct, Open Farm, Freshpet and retailer-owned labels crowd the premium shelf. In dental chews, WHIMZEES faces Greenies, Pedigree Dentastix and Virbac. The competitive problem is not finding another bag of good-looking food. It is giving the shopper a clear reason to stop at this one.
The company's answer is breadth with specificity. Wellness can place a familiar master brand on everyday nutrition while CORE+ speaks to higher protein or a functional benefit. WHIMZEES has a distinct visual language and a narrow job. Old Mother Hubbard supplies warmth and history. Together they let the company cover more price points, textures and needs than one monolithic range could manage. The risk is complexity: too many claims and sub-lines can turn a pet aisle into homework.
Conceptual portfolio map. Bar heights indicate frequency of the use occasion, not revenue or market share.
The business model benefits from that routine. Food drives replenishment. Treats add margin and emotional pleasure. Dental chews create a care habit. Supplements and targeted formulas invite shoppers to trade up when a concern appears. A household can move across the portfolio without leaving the company, while retailers gain a supplier able to fill several adjacent shelves.
A grown company with new-company work
Maturity does not remove pressure. In May 2025, Wellness Pet completed a lender-supported refinancing, secured $100 million in capital and extended existing loan and asset-based-lending maturities to 2029. CEO Reed Howlett framed the transaction as room to fund customer-focused innovation. The financial maneuver matters because premium food requires spending before a shopper picks up the bag: ingredients, plants, packaging, safety systems, retailer support and advertising all compete for cash.
The same year supplied a clear product agenda. Wellness introduced sensitive-skin-and-stomach dry dog food, soft WHIMZEES Freshzees, wet cat-food pouches and texture-led variety packs. In September, it launched a refreshed identity and the national “Feed Well. Be Well.” campaign with Boston agency Colossus. The creative brief was a balancing act familiar to any health-adjacent brand: sound credible without becoming clinical, and joyful without becoming silly.
Environmental commitments add another layer. The company has worked with TerraCycle on bag recycling, discussed recyclable packaging goals and pledged to reduce the contribution of animal protein content by 20 percent by 2030. It reports more than 1,500 employee volunteer hours each year and promotes hybrid work, mental-health resources and dog-friendly office days. In 2023, its foundation worked with Greater Good Charities to distribute 663,000 meals through organizations serving families, shelters, rescues and food pantries.
What others can steal
The company's most portable lesson is not “have a century of history.” It is to organize a portfolio around jobs that customers already perform. Wellness does not need to teach a person that a dog eats, a cat can be finicky or breath can smell. It needs to fit a trusted product into those existing moments. Each useful extension answers three questions: Which animal? Which concern? Which daily ritual?
A second lesson is to let brands carry different kinds of credibility. The flagship can stand for the broad promise. A sub-brand can sharpen a nutritional position. An acquired brand can own a specialist task. Heritage can make a biscuit feel familiar; a veterinarian-backed formula can make a sensitive-stomach recipe feel considered. Trying to make one label do all of that would produce a paragraph where a product name should be.
For pet parents, the practical value is choice without starting from zero. They can assemble meals, rewards and dental routines from a recognizable family, then select by age, texture, protein preference or health concern. The company does not replace veterinary advice, and no bag can remove the trial and error of feeding an individual animal. Its useful contribution is more modest: turn a bewildering wall of pet products into a set of understandable decisions.
That sailor's dog could not have known what followed the biscuit. The modern pet parent knows almost too much: ingredient lists, life stages, sensitivities, hydration, tartar, texture and sustainability all arrive at once. Wellness Pet Company's place in the market is to make that abundance feel manageable, one bowl, pouch and peculiar little toothbrush at a time.