Kiesha and Troy Allison pose in the lobby of Fetching Foods, an ultra-premium pet food company, at 3111 S. Valley View Blvd., Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022.
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022 | 2 a.m.
After opening one of the refrigerators at his pet food manufacturing facility in Las Vegas, Troy Allison pointed to a package of alligator meat.
“Cats, because they evolved in arid climates, eat reptiles,” Allison said. “You can’t really get lizard, so alligator is as close as you can get. It’s a biologically appropriate food for a cat.”
At Fetching Foods, the company Allison runs with his wife, Kiesha Allison, the goal is to create “ultra-premium” nutritional meals for cats and dogs.
Fetching Foods employees spend most of their time cutting, packing and shipping customized protein-based meals to customers.
The company intends to create a healthier lifestyle for a customer’s dog or cat or, as Troy calls them, their “fur babies.”
The company sources everything from rabbit meat to duck, chicken, turkey, venison, beef, lamb, salmon, kangaroo, pheasant, goose, pigeon, wild boar and even camel. From those meats, the company produces “the highest quality natural USDA human grade food for dogs and cats,” according to its website.
More than 20 different types of meat arrive at the facility on Valley View Boulevard and Desert Inn Road, some from as far away as New Zealand and Australia, for their “minimally processed, delicious and healthy whole food.”
“This month, we special ordered camel bites,” Troy said. “Because there’s a robust exotic meat supply chain in Las Vegas because of all the high-end restaurants, we were able to tap into that. We get our meats from some of the same people who supply restaurants at the Bellagio and the Wynn.”
As part of a monthly special, customers can get a four-ounce serving of camel bites for their cat from Fetching Foods’ website for $8.49.
The “just cat sampler pack” features eight-ounce servings of seven different types of proteins and goes for just under $40. Pet owners can order one meal at a time online or subscribe to get orders regularly shipped.
The couple started the business several years ago, partially out of their garage.
After some early trials and tribulations — they eventually found their clientele sweet spot was with middle-class and upper middle-class pet owners and not necessarily wealthy individuals — the business started to take off about four years ago. Fetching Foods now has a client base of close to 3,000.
“No product on the market approaches our level of quality,” Troy said. “We use exceptionally high-end ingredients that are all natural and minimally processed.”
The idea for the business came about after the Allisons started to look around for healthier versions of the pet food offerings they had used for years. When they started to feed their dog, a Rhodesian ridgeback named Rosie, raw foods, rather than the processed pet foods they had been feeding her, they said they noticed some stark differences in the dog’s overall health.
“Over time, if you’re feeding your pet with foods that will eventually lead to them being sick, you’re going to end up spending a lot of money all at once at the vet,” Kiesha said. “I think people are going to start waking up about raw feeding.”
As is often the story when what turns out to be a successful business is started, the Allisons simply figured they could provide a service that wasn’t really being offered.
About half of the company’s customer base, the Allisons said, have cats or dogs who are suffering from various ailments.
At Fetching Foods, a pet owner can get a specially designed meal plan for their pet; for instance for a cat that could be experiencing kidney issues.
“If you think about it, humans are the only animals that cook their food,” Troy said. “Every other animal on the planet eats raw, whole foods. With the product that we supply, our foods are truly healing. Customers across the country have seen the difference.”
