This article was published in the March/April 2025 issue of Pet Food Processing. Read it and other articles from this issue in our March/April digital edition.
Matt Koss developed Primal Pet Food out of necessity. In 2001, his dog Luna was suffering from renal failure, and he was willing to try anything to improve her wellbeing. During his search for solutions and remedies he was pointed in the direction of raw pet food — Biologically Appropriate Raw Food (BARF), a diet that mirrors how dogs and cats ate in the wild. A little research and some trial and error in the kitchen led to a new diet for Luna — recipes made from raw proteins and fresh vegetables. Almost immediately Koss saw changes in his canine companion — her appetite returned, her energy levels increased and her health improved. This new lease on life for Luna inspired Koss to take his recipes out of his kitchen and into pet food stores. And just like that, a brand was born: Primal Pet Foods.
It was a slow start. First came visits to local retailers to tell the story and share samples. Then visits to area American Kennel Club shows to exhibit and sell product. Koss soon learned that many of the show dog owners were already making their own raw recipes for their dogs, so convincing them to give his raw product a try was an easy sell. Soon after, he began to ship product out of his home to breeders across the country — first the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel breeders and then the West Highland White Terrier breeders.
“It was one breeder after the next,” he said. “And then one retail store and then a couple more retail stores in the area. Then we expanded distribution.”
By mid-2004, Koss’s Primal Pet Foods brand was picked up by Animal Supply Company and soon after he added Global Pet Expo and SUPERZOO trade shows to his travels to help spread the word. Koss quickly learned that the key to making sales was education — education about his product and the benefits of a raw diet.
“It was one retailer at a time, one story at a time, one freezer at a time,” he said.
Growth of a brand
Primal’s offerings were all sold as frozen raw pet food until 2008 when the company added freeze-dried to the mix. Since the freeze-dried category was relatively small at the time, Primal soon gained a following.
Even though Koss managed the production of his product, his company did not have its own processing facility until 2017. Before that time, he rented space from a sausage maker in San Jose, Calif., and later worked with a pet food producer in Pacoima, Calif. As the company grew, so did the need for more production capacity, which led Koss to partner with a co-manufacturer and freeze-dried pet food producer located in Northern California. In 2017, Primal opened its own facility in Fairfield, Calif., and within six months was producing all of its products in-house.
“We did our own raw, frozen and freeze-dried manufacturing and distributing out of the Fairfield facility. Then, in 2020, I was at a crossroads,” Koss said. “I either needed to build another facility in California or I needed to expand somewhere else. So, I looked for a capital partner and found Kinderhook Industries.”
Trays with 5 to 14 lbs of product are loaded onto trolleys before entering the blast freezer.
|In August 2021, Kinderhook Industries, who at the time owned Prairie Dog Pet Products, Himalayan Pet Supply and Holistic Hound, acquired Primal Pet Foods to form Primal Pet Group. Combining forces with Kinderhook brought Primal a new manufacturing facility in Abilene, Texas, which was renovated and operational by the middle of 2023. Now the majority of Primal Pet Foods freeze-dried offerings are manufactured in Abilene and all frozen offerings are manufactured in Fairfield.
Following the Kinderhook acquisition and the formation of the Primal Pet Group parent company, leadership was reconfigured. Jon Balousek took on the role of chief executive officer and board director for Primal Pet Group; Michael Holly became chief operating officer; and Koss was named chief product officer of Primal Pet Foods.
Despite the evolution in management and manufacturing, the brand’s mission remains steadfast.
“The mission continues to be the same — it has always been to feed as many dogs and cats as possible, the highest quality food possible in order to bring healthier, happier lives to pets and their parents,” Koss said. “That mission has continued through the years, and will continue.”
Foundational beliefs
Quality has always been at the forefront of Primal Pet Foods’ brand mission. From the first recipe Koss developed for Luna to the new formulations Primal is offering today, quality has been part of the company’s foundation.
“I had access to the finest ingredients from my food manufacturing and chef connections and I wanted that to be the key differentiator for the brand from the start,” Koss explained. “We were only using responsibly raised proteins, raised without antibiotics, steroids or added hormones -— that was part of our foundation. And later, we made the decision to not use any synthetic vitamins or minerals in our products.”
Alongside these quality ingredient decisions came the necessity for education. Education needed to include information about the benefits of raw pet food, why certain ingredients were chosen and why Primal Pet Foods were different than the rest of the products on the market.
“We built the brand on education. We had no capital, so the only way to really get the message out was to put together a team of people who were enthusiastic and believed and would put their reputation on the line every day going into the store, talking to the associates and the managers, telling them why we were doing what we were doing,” Koss said. “They shared the facts about why we were different — we didn’t use synthetic vitamins and minerals, and we only used the highest quality raw material. And, they shared why raw is better for your pet.
Primal’s Abilene plant features four packaging lines.
|“We built a team, not only a sales team, but a retail training team. These people didn’t sell, these team members went out and educated,” he added. “We built the groundwork for education on raw — none of the other brands were doing it. The other brands had money, and they were able to focus on marketing. We didn’t have money to market. All our profits went back into the company to educate.”
To this day, Primal Pet Foods aren’t sold in any big box pet stores. Koss’s business started with sales in neighborhood pet stores, which remain the brand’s largest distribution channel.
“We believe that the most involved pet parents are going to their neighborhood pet store to get their information, so that’s where we have our products,” Balousek said. “We know consumers are shopping e-commerce, so we want to be in that channel as well, but no big box or mass merchandisers, no grocery.”
Product innovation
Another building block to Primal’s success was its ability to lead through innovation. The brand’s core frozen dog and cat food — available in patties, nuggets and scoopable “Pronto” for dogs and in nuggets and scoopable “Pronto” for cats — as well as its freeze-dried offerings for dogs and cats displayed the brand’s early innovation. Its latest product introduction, Kibble in the Raw, shows innovation is still part of the company’s DNA.
“Building on our expertise in freeze-drying, we spent three years researching and developing a proprietary new process that could bring freeze-dried raw protein to the kibble aisle without baking, extruding, dehydrating or exposing the raw protein to high heat,” Balousek said.
The result was a nutritionally dense, shelf-stable diet that feeds like raw with the convenience of kibble. Kibble in the Raw was introduced to the market in early 2024.
“We’re delivering incredible raw quality at a price that is far closer to premium kibble than it is to the traditional frozen and freeze-dried raw products,” Balousek said. “We can hit a new consumer target. A consumer who doesn’t want to pay the super premiums for raw products that others will pay but wants to trade up from premium kibble. That’s who we believe we’re attracting.”
One of the things that makes Kibble in the Raw different from the brand’s existing freeze-dried recipes is the addition of steamed sorghum. The non-GMO, gluten-free ingredient is a great source of micronutrients and soluble fiber for dogs.
In addition, Kibble in the Raw recipes were formulated to ensure the essential amino acids dogs need were delivered from animal sources — close to 13 lbs of raw beef, pork, fish or chicken are used to produce a 9-lb bag of Kibble in the Raw.
Frozen product travels via a tray loader before being distributed onto freeze drying trays and heading to the blast freezer for storage until it’s time to freeze dry.
|“After freeze-drying, the digestibility and performance of the new Kibble in the Raw diets is in line with other Primal Raw Frozen and Freeze-Dried formats,” Koss said. “And like the rest of our portfolio, we only use food-based ingredients — no synthetic vitamins or minerals.”
Through freeze-drying, Primal is able to offer Kibble in the Raw as a lighter-weight alternative to traditional brown and round kibble — feeding guidelines are even similar to kibble by volume, scoop for scoop.
The line was introduced last year with five complete-and-balanced formulas for dogs: Chicken, Beef, Fish & Pork, Puppy, and Small Breed. All formulas are available in 1.5-lb bags, with the Small Breed recipe also available in 4-lb bags, and the Chicken, Beef, Fish & Pork, and Puppy diets available in larger 9-lb bags.
“We’ve had the product on the market for a little over a year now and it’s beat our expectations,” Balousek said. “Kibble in the Raw is truly not a ‘me too’ product of any kind. It’s a real innovative product. No one else is able to do it — no one else has been doing it. There have been examples of this kind of innovation throughout the history of this company.”
Starting April 2025, Primal will expand its Kibble in the Raw format with three recipes for cats — Chicken, Chicken + Fish, and Beef, which will be available in two bag sizes: 1.5 lbs and 4 lbs.
“The ability to lead on innovation has been a hallmark of this company and a differentiator from the start,” he added.
Operational growth
The Kibble in the Raw product portfolio is manufactured exclusively at Primal’s state-of-the-art, 161,000-square-foot Abilene facility. After the Kinderhook acquisition in 2021, the Abilene plant underwent renovations to add a frozen dock, frozen warehouse, tempering room, two production kitchens, an individual quick freezing (IQF) freezer, a work in progress (WIP) freezer and a packaging room. The plant went back online in 2023.
In addition to Kibble in the Raw, the plant produces Freeze-Dried Pronto and Freeze-Dried Nuggets. About 75% of the brand’s freeze-dried products are made in the Abilene facility — the rest are processed in Fairfield.
The production process in Abilene starts with ingredients being delivered to the receiving dock and then being stored in the frozen warehouse. More than 6 million lbs of ingredients — proteins to produce — are delivered annually. Lamb hearts, beef livers and chicken livers are the leading proteins used, as well as beef hearts, whole rabbit, turkey wing meat and white fish.
All product is placed on trays and sent to the blast freezer before moving on to the freeze dryers.
|Protein that arrives frozen in 40- to 50-lb blocks needs to be prepped in the tempering room before being transferred to the conveyor and moved on to the grinder and mixer. There are two production kitchens in the plant where ingredients are ground, mixed and formed.
Frozen meat is ground with frozen produce (vitamins and minerals in the recipes come from vegetables). The 2,000-lb mixer combines the ingredients with additional dry supplements and liquids according to the recipes before moving through one of the forming units, depending on the finished product size, to be formed into nuggets, scoopable Pronto or Kibble in the Raw pieces.
After forming, the product moves to the Dantech Instant Quick Freeze. Product is transferred to totes and moved to the freezer for storage. Next, product is put onto trays, with 5 to 14 lbs of product filling each tray depending on the style of the product. Trays are then transferred to the blast freezer to await freeze drying.
Similarly, for Kibble in the Raw, the ingredients (raw meat, fish or poultry; steam-cooked sorghum; cold-pressed fish oils; and air-dried organic produce) are combined, then cold processed in small batches and formed into bite-sized pieces. Then, the small “kibble-sized” pieces are freeze dried.
Because the freeze dryers run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the freeze dry team works on 12-hour shifts. The plant features six Parker Freeze Dryers and four GEA Freeze Dryers, which run for 12- to 15-hour cycles depending on the product variety in each load.
After freeze drying, product is depanned into totes and stored until ready for one of the plant’s four packaging lines.
The Swifty bagging and packaging line handles packages 1.5 lbs or smaller. An additional packaging machine handles 4- and 9-lb packages.
With Primal’s latest packaging update, all freeze-dried packaging has been converted to recycle-ready materials. Soon the company will roll out its new packaging design featuring adjustments to front-of-the-pack verbiage to comply with Pet Food Labeling Modernization (PFLM) standards.
After packaging, product is stored in the warehouse to await test-and-hold safety results before distribution.
The company’s rigorous test-and-hold procedures involve partnering with a third-party lab to test every lot of finished product to confirm that it is negative for select pathogenic bacteria (Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7 and Listeria). When the test results are reviewed and confirmed negative, the product is released by the Food Safety Quality Assurance (FSQA) team for shipment.
“There’s no silver bullet when it comes to food safety,” said Jon Balousek of Primal Pet Group.
“There’s no silver bullet when it comes to food safety,” Balousek said. “Every piece of the process matters — they have to all be working together and appropriately or you can have problems at any stage of production.”
Shipments are sent out of the eight shipping bays daily. In 2024, the Abilene facility started shipping directly from the plant instead of transferring product back to its distribution warehouses in California. Moving shipping to Abilene increased efficiency throughout the operation.
“We’re proud of the new distribution Abilene has put in place,” Holly said. “They’re not only manufacturing but they’re also taking on this huge logistics capability. It’s taking a lot of miles off the road which is great for the environment.”
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Entrepreneurial culture
Despite the company’s growth trajectory, which started in Matt Koss’s kitchen and expanded to two production facilities, the entrepreneurial spirit at Primal Pet Foods remains intact and so does its mission and purpose: “to help more dogs and cats live healthy, happy, vibrant lives.”
“Our mission and purpose, we’ve never wavered from that. That is the rock strong foundation of the company, and we continue to pursue that mission today,” said Jon Balousek of Primal Pet Group.
“Our mission and purpose, we’ve never wavered from that,” Balousek said. “That is the rock strong foundation of the company, and we continue to pursue that mission today.
“It starts with culture. We have been focused, since Matt started the company, on having employees that feel a sense of alignment with our mission and purpose,” he added.
Alongside a commitment to the company’s mission and purpose has been a growing commitment to the employees themselves. The corporate side of Primal recently hired Janis Hoyt to the new role of chief human resources officer to further display its focus toward skillset development, leadership training and performance management, as well as a commitment to future growth.
“As a company just a couple of years ago, we weren’t as robust when it came to leadership training and performance management — we had a more entrepreneurial company mindset,” Balousek said. “Our new cultural element of engagement, giving people the skills and investing in their skill building, has really started to make a difference in terms of retention and driving that employee connection to the brand.
“We’re transitioning from a smaller entrepreneurial company to a larger company that has a bit more managerial expertise to help the company as it grows from here,” he added.
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