A good product isn't enough. You need to have a clear and effective messaging strategy to stand out in a saturated market. And that's exactly what Anne and her team did with Jiminy's. On this 170th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Anne Carlson, CEO and Founder of Jiminy's dog food.
Anne went from being a corporate powerhouse to becoming the "Cricket Queen" of pet food, all while juggling her passion for sustainability and pet health. From finding creative ways to lower prices and putting herself in her customers' shoes, she reveals the key strategies that helped Jiminy's become known as the "superfood of dog food" and why some people even call it "cricket crack". We promise you’ll be chirping about this episode for days...
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Andrew Maff and Anne Carlson
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Anne Carlson
Meet Anne Carlson – the dog-loving entrepreneur who's revolutionizing pet food by thinking outside the (kibble) box! As the founder of Jiminy's, she's on a mission to make dog food and treats that are both tail-waggingly delicious and planet-friendly, using – wait for it – cricket protein!
Her innovative approach is turning heads in the pet industry, with Jiminy's racking up impressive recognition in 2024: snagging the Pet Innovation Award for Best Dry Dog Food with Good Grub, winning Pet Age Magazine's Editor's Select Award for their mouthwatering Sweet Potato & Peas Training Treats, and scoring Pet Product News Magazine's Editor's Choice Award for their game-changing Dental Chews! When she's not leading her award-winning company, you might find Anne geeking out over insect agriculture (yes, she literally wrote the scientific playbook for cricket protein in dog food!). Her groundbreaking work earned her the 2019 Entrepreneur of the Year award, but her real critics are her four-legged taste-testers: Tuco and Timber, her beloved pups. Before becoming the "Cricket Queen" of pet food, Anne was a corporate powerhouse at Big Heart Pet Brands and founded Secant (which she later sold to IRI). She's got the brains to back her vision – with degrees from Wash U and NYU – but these days, she's focused on changing the world one sustainable kibble at a time.
When she's not disrupting the pet food industry, Anne's hanging with her family in Berkeley, CA, where her husband Eric and daughter Boothe have learned to embrace her passion for sustainable pet parenthood!
00:03
We've got people that call our treats cricket crack because their dog loves it that much. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the E comm show as usual. I'm your host, Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by the amazing Anne Carlson, who is the founder and CEO over at Jiminys. And how you doing? You're ready for a good job. I am so ready. Thank you for having me. I am so excited. I love talking about dogs and pets, and I have been basically in the pet industry for, I don't even know how many years at this point. So it's always fun to talk to someone who's in the same industry and learn about your side of things, but I don't want to be the one to spoil it. I always like to let you do that. So let's do the stereotypical. And if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about yourself and obviously, how you got started with Geminis, sure. Well, Anne Carlson, the founder and CEO of jiminys, and I'm obsessed with helping dogs live longer, healthier lives on a greener planet. So at jiminys, we make sustainable dog food. What makes it sustainable is, instead of your traditional beef or chicken, we're using insect protein. And the insect protein is not only incredibly sustainable, but it also provides tremendous health benefits for our dogs, things like help with dog for dogs with allergies, gut health issues, immunity, oral health is one of the newest things that we've been able to actually prove through the studies. So it's super exciting. And actually, and I'm just, I'm loving life because I love working with the dogs. Great. What? What gave you this idea? I know that the concept of using, like, obviously, hence the name Jiminy. So like crickets in and as, like, a protein replacement for things like chicken, etc, has been a thing even for humans. What gave you the idea to implement it for the dog side of things? Well, you know, I come from out of the industry, so I was working for one of the big pet food companies, and actually what made me start thinking differently is sort of a combination of things, but really it was a conversation with my daughter where she told me that she didn't want to have kids and she was worried about what the world was going to be like by the time they grew up. She was talking about climate change, and as we were talking, I realized I had to do something building a better future for her was everything. So I started to take a look at what could I do, and what kind of impact could I have, given my background, and there a UCLA study had just come out that said 30% of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the US is due to our dogs and cats. So I started thinking about it, huge, right? Yeah. So I started thinking about, Well, how could I come up with something that would use a protein source that was less resource intensive, something more sustainable? And as I was looking around, I saw the UN study that said insects could be the answer to world hunger. So I went online. I found some dry roasted crickets. I ordered them and said, Let's see if the dogs like them. And I fed them with my dogs, they started drooling, following me around. I knew we had something. Wow. So when it comes to dog food, it is a painfully crowded market. There is, yes, there is, I don't even know how many different types of dog foods are out there. What? How do you kind of the differentiator is clear, right? But the obvious is also that there's just so many that you still have to have that kind of like thing. So What? What? Oh, are we getting? I think we're getting a visitor. So question is, but let me Okay, so if you are adorable, so if anyone is solely listening now, you got to go to our YouTube and see the new puppy. So that you mentioned before the show. This is a. Great Dane and lab mix. Yes, he came from an oops litter, and it looks like you can see these giant paws. He's gonna be up big boy. He's got crazy looking ears. He's sweet as can be. Yeah, so this was my baby. He's a kisser. What's his name? Yes, sir. His name's hopper. Hopper, yep, yep. Oh, he's adorable. This is hopper and new mascot from his nap. You gotta love that, right? Okay, Hopper, you can't stay though. I'm sorry. It's awesome. I'm gonna, I'm gonna let Hopper go? Yeah, that would be crazy. He's gonna be huge. Where mine's mine's asleep, so maybe if he wakes up, I'll bring him over. This is just what he does all day. Watches me work so that I can feed him. Speaking of Yeah, I had a movement tracker on one of my dogs one time, and it was hysterical. The dog at the time was derby. Derby slept for 10 hours. Derby got up for five minutes, I'm assuming, to go outside. Derby slept for another three hours straight, sleep, sleep, sleep, hard life, yeah, yeah, yeah. What? I'm sorry, the cuteness. Oh, the crowded market. Food, pet food. Painfully crowded market. Obviously, you have a clear differentiator, but it's still a matter of getting through that noise and getting people to even be interested in that and understanding why the differentiator matters. So what's your approach there? Well, it's interesting. It's changed. So when we first started, we led with the sustainability messaging. We thought that was really what was going to be the thing that would get through to people. What we're finding, though, is that while people love the sustainability messaging, the dog's health is what is leading the decisions here. So with all of these new studies that have come out that are proving out the benefits, we're leaning into our benefit areas. For instance, the allergy relief is amazing, and we have many case studies where we're able to take dogs that are on apoquel, which is a very expensive medication for dogs with allergies, put them on our dog food, and they can come off of the apoquel. Oh, wow. Yeah. Really, I have a corgi with allergy problem, so I am all ears right now. Well, skin and coat issues have increased by 30% in the last five years, and one of the natural benefits of the insect protein is that it has medium chain fatty acids, and they improve the moisture in the dog's skin. So it's helping with dogs that have the skin issues, but it also helps with just standard allergies as well, food allergies in particular. Interesting, yeah, what about like? So that also opens up all the other issues that pets can have, right? So like, weight issues, or like for Goldens, I know I got to start looking out for, like, joint issues and things like that. Does, does your line? Have you ventured into that yet? Well, it naturally addresses almost all of these problems. You know, allergy relief, I just talked about gut health, because the the insect protein naturally has chitin. It's a fiber that is prebiotic for the dogs, so it helps with, you know, dogs that have issues with chronic diarrhea, loose stool and even gas. Those are kind of the funnier case studies that we get. Gonna make this episode now, oral health is another area that just got proved out. It the insect protein is improving the dog's oral microbiome. It reducing the bad bacteria in the mouth, increasing the good and reducing breath odor and then weight management. Meant is a new area that we're starting to see and you you mentioned joint health. The insect protein is also a natural source of glucosamine. Wow, so crazy. It's it so it's a protein alternative that is a perfect protein alternative for anything like any of your normal, your traditional beef, chicken, it has all of the amino acids that the dog needs in the right quantities, and it's digestible, but then it goes beyond with all these other benefit areas, wow. So let's, let's talk a little bit about the business in itself, right? So we talked about the positioning here, where, where are you currently selling? It? Obviously. I know you have your own website anywhere else, yes, Omni channel. So we're in independent pet stores. We're working with pet stores like pet food, express, mud Bay, all the best. These are like mid sized chains where the the people that work in the stores actually get trained and are able to help with the awareness generation and education of the consumers. And then we're on, you know, Amazon, Chewy, our own website, which we try to make it easy for the consumer to be able to find the products. Yeah. What's your approach with that? Are you leaning heavier on marketplace? Are you leaning heavier on the website, retail? Or is there just kind of a wherever, so most of our marketing efforts are in the direct to consumer space and leading them back to our website. However, there's spillover into chewy and into Amazon, but at what we're doing online helps in the stores as well, and then we also have this training effort that we've done with the people that work in the stores. And we started out doing that one on one, but we now have this great system that has it uses video to teach the people about the brand and the products. And I love it because it's we're able to get to more and more of the people that work out in the stores this way, interesting. So with dog food, it's obviously a not. It's not a light product. So when you're heavily leaning into d to c, you run into expenses around shipping and things like that. Going through chewy, it's a different story, because I know that they'll order it and all that fun stuff, but, like, what? How's that approach from like, an operational standpoint, how do you handle that? Yeah, it's challenging. We work with three PL to get it where it needs to go, and the, you know, it's, it's, it is a challenge because shipping has gotten more and more expensive over the years. Yeah. However, you know, selling it through our website is the most profitable for us, and we're able to manage the cost pretty well. Amazon is another thing. It's, you know, you kind of have to go with what they do, yeah? But you know, it, it it is what it is. At a certain point, we got to get it to the consumer, and that means we got to ship it there. Yeah, do you position it as more of like a premium replacement or just a replacement of kind of your standard dog food? Yeah, it is. It is premium. It's the but it's on par with anything else that you would find in an independent pet store. Yeah, over time though, we we do believe we're going to be able to bring the price down on the food we we already did it once on our Craven cricket and the what, what gives us hope there is the insect protein it actually has a better feed conversion ratio. So raising crickets uses less resources than raising other types of the proteins. So the feed conversion ratios, how much you have to feed them to get protein out the other side, it has a better feed conversion ratio, but then also the way that they're being raised is pretty exciting. Our newest partner is Innova feed and ad they're working with ADM, and what they've done is they've put the insect farm right in the middle of a whole bunch of other facilities where they're processing grains and and different vegetables, and they put a pipe that goes directly into the insect farm so they don't even have to dry and ship the the feed to the insects. It comes through a pipe in wet form, so it actually reduces the amount of energy to feed them and cost. So very exciting, huh? Yeah, I would imagine as especially as the the concept starts to grow even on the human side, because I know that, like every now and then you can come across like a snack and like a Whole Foods or something, but it's been a slow trend of people starting to kind of try out those types of things that I would imagine, that's where you'll start to see those costs come down to, am I right? I think that. And also with some of the insects, they're feeding them to other types of the animals, so they're using it for aquaculture, for instance, and that'll help bring it down as well. Yeah, the human side is just a slower, you know, it's a slower path the Western diet just it's people are not used to the idea of insect protein. It's a however, I think some of these benefits that I was talking about will translate over to the humans. And as we're able to prove. About more and more around weight management. I think that's the one that's really going to be the kicker for humans, that'll that'll get them what Well, with that, I guess, then, what about from a marketing side, like, what is, what's like the main channels you stay focused on, what's kind of the messaging there? I know you mentioned originally, it was the sustainability side, but you kind of pivoted that as well, right? We have, I mean, we still talk about that, don't get me wrong. But I would say, you know, it's, it's more, but I would say 20, talking more about the health benefits, and then 20% of the time, Oh, yeah. Let me also tell you about the sustainability. We try to go where the consumers attention is, so we're tick tock has become, yeah, and, and it's really interesting because it's, it's a different type of medium, you know, you have to think about the hook, and you have to think about, like, how much is, how you can get somebody to stay and listen, yeah. But I would say, you know, we're, but we're also, we're using other, you know, social media platforms as well as I know you've got, like, you know, 10s of 1000s of followers on both, like Facebook and Instagram and the usual ones. And then obviously, Tiktok is always the one that's like, okay, here we go. Let's try this channel. Have you? Are you advertising on any of them, or is it solely from an organic approach? Right now, we are we, but we start with organic, and we we test it any kind of messaging that we're doing in organic, to see how it is working with the consumers. And then when we have something that seems to be resonating, that's where we'll, we'll, you know, we'll put some dollars behind it. Have you ventured into the influencer side of things, especially like tick tock with tick tock shop and all that? Have you gotten into that area? Yes, absolutely. And actually, we've been doing that for a long time. Our influencers, we call them our chirpers, and they're nice brand ambassadors. Yeah, they're amazing. And most of them are people who started just feeding their dogs either the food or the treats, and told us they loved it, and then we recruited them to be chirpers. Wow, that's very interesting. I like, I like that you gave them a name that that makes it very, very, very intimate. You had mentioned about, you know, kind of the omni channel approach, which is like music to my ears. It's one of my favorite things to talk about, and you sound like you're crushing it in terms of, like, being everywhere that your consumer is. From a marketing perspective, do you kind of venture into that omni channel approach as well? Like with brands I know, sometimes, if you know, maybe through a product launch strategy or something, they will look at driving traffic directly to something like an Amazon or a chewy have you do you venture in that, into that? Or do you keep everything focused on the DTC site? No, we do. We do so we will, when we launch at a new store. For instance, we'll ask our chirpers, do any of you guys live near there? And we'll ask one of them to go in and visit the store, record it, and that becomes content as well. And then we'll geofence what we're doing, as far as you know, promoting that to let people know that the product is in those stores now, yeah, so we like to do that. We also we do annual planning with our our bigger retailers that we work with, and so we're working together on these are the things that we're going to do together to promote the brand. You know, thing, even things like sampling in the stores are your products are so palatable, I just want to get it in the dog's mouth, because the only get excited, right? We've got people that call our treats cricket crack, because their dog loves it, yeah? So get it in their mouths. Yeah, it's that was, that was a good point. It's not just food. Obviously, I know you got treats. You have the dental chews as well. What's, what's the thought in terms of how you expand the product line? Actually, the way I think about it is, I think about the person's day, and you're going through your day, day with your dog, and where are the moments where you you need either a food or a treat to play a role? So you we've got our training treats that play, that training moment, the food. You know that there's feeding moments several times throughout the day. I feed my dogs three times. Most people are two. The dental chew is brushing your teeth at the end of the day. And it's a one a day kind of thing. And it's it's an amazing product, I gotta say, and it's important too. 73% of dogs in the US have dental issues, and if you don't address it, take two years off their life. So really, yeah, oh, it's important. It leads to chronic kidney issues. You. The infection and the heart valves, it's, it's, there's a lot of ramifications if you don't pay attention to your dog's mouth. Wow, you'd mentioned in, you know, things that you do with your bigger retailers, and then obviously you have the more like, medium sized franchises. Where are you finding them? I know, obviously in the pet industry, super zoo tends to be the big, the big conference. But are you also leveraging, like, a distributor or using something like, fair, like, how's that approach in terms of finding them yes and yes and yes all the above? Yeah, we've, we've been, traditionally, going to super zoo and global, which are the two big trade shows. We meet a lot of people there. However, it is interesting to see, I think it's changing a bit. And so now it feels like we're seeing people that we're already working with and just strengthening the relationship. Yeah, fair is a nice place for smaller retails to to be able to find us and access the product and and then, yes, we do use distributors to get to those smaller retailers. It's one of the ways, you know, talking about like that, the weight of the product, the distributor gets it that last mile into those retailers. So that's helpful. Yeah, this was awesome, and I really appreciate having you on the show. I don't wanna take up too much of your time. I know you're super busy and you have a new puppy that you have to take care of. Very thankful for having you on the show. Obviously, I'd love to give the opportunity let everyone know where they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about Geminis. Geminis is the best place to go jiminys.com, perfect. And thank you so much everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate, review, subscribe all that fun stuff and whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you all next time. Have a good one.
22:01
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