This article was published in the July 2024 issue of Pet Food Processing. Read it and other articles from this issue in our July digital edition.
While many spent the COVID-19 pandemic placing a temporary hold on their businesses, Zach Sheng and Senia Wang were just getting started with their new pet nutrition brand: Charmy Pet. Sheng, who serves as Charmy’s chief executive officer, first conceived of the business after his 9-year-old dog Kimi passed from liver cancer and a brain tumor.
Co-Founders Senia Wang and Zach Sheng turned to traditional Chinese medicine to create an herbal dog food.
|“We didn’t have any preparations for what happened and Kimi passed away,” he said. “Meanwhile, at that time, I also saw a lot of other dog owners experiencing the same things — having their dogs pass away at a very young age. A dog shouldn’t live to only 9 years old.”
Believing nutrition is key, Sheng and Wang, who serves as chief operating officer, sought to understand how to enhance dogs’ nutrition.
“Diet is the key for their vital success, especially for longevity,” he said. “So that’s where we really wanted to make Charmy, to prevent other dog owners like us from experiencing the same tragedy.”
From treats to food
Back in March 2020, Charmy originally began as a pet treat subscription box offering a variety of single-ingredient, air-dried treats directly to consumers throughout Canada.
“We started in my mom’s basement making our treats; I can remember the smell,” Sheng said. “And that was a really small batch. Really, we wanted to provide additional options for pet owners.”
The company’s community quickly grew to 10,000 customers, many of which were beginning to seek Charmy’s products on retail shelves. In 2021, the company began fielding phone calls from retailers asking to carry Charmy’s products in-store, which eventually pushed the company to enter the brick-and-mortar arena.
Charmy’s “When East Meets West” complete-and-balanced dog food line includes two recipes that pair two different proteins with Chinese herbs to provide a variety of nutrients.
|“At that time [in 2020], it was almost impossible to get into a retailer because COVID happened and mostly only store pickup was available, so it was a very hard time for us to get into retailers,” Sheng said. “But our community quickly grew.”
With a rapidly expanding customer base and now a presence in stores, Charmy had a decision to make.
“We asked ourselves ‘Is Charmy just going to be treats?’” Sheng said. “I felt our team could be doing greater than just the treats itself, and obviously the market was very saturated when we entered, it’s not like it was 20 years or 15 years ago… So, we asked ourselves, ‘What’s really unique about how Charmy? How do we charm you?’”
The answer lied in Sheng and Wang’s backgrounds. Born in China, Sheng was often sick as a child. His mother and grandmother relied on traditional Chinese medicine, like acupuncture, to help alleviate Sheng’s illnesses. Dating back more than 5,000 years, traditional Chinese medicine aims to address the root causes of illnesses and is unlike that of Western medicine, which mainly seeks to address the symptoms.
Realizing these medicinal practices may also benefit pets, Charmy took these practices in the form of traditional Chinese herbs to create its pet foods. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the company made its official debut into the complete-and-balanced segment in 2022 through its “When East Meets West” dog food line.
“When East Meets West” marries traditional Chinese herbs with Western nutritional science, aiming to provide functional, scientifically backed ingredients that could help prevent the onset of chronic diseases in pets. For Sheng, the “West” part is particularly important.
“In a lot of people’s minds, they think traditional Chinese medicine might be related to pseudo-science, so I really wanted to make sure we had a very scientific element to support what we believe in,” said Zach Sheng, CEO of Charmy Pet.
“In a lot of people’s minds, they think traditional Chinese medicine might be related to pseudo-science, so I really wanted to make sure we had a very scientific element to support what we believe in,” he explained.
Charmy collaborated with several university researchers to uncover the real scientific benefits Chinese herbs offer dogs, eventually incorporating these specific herbs and ingredients into its formulas, creating the first herbal dog food in North America, according to the company. The resulting line took two years and the expertise of four Ph.D. nutritionists to formulate, Sheng revealed.
Currently, Charmy Pet’s “When East Meets West” line offers two freeze-dried raw, complete-and-balanced dog foods: Beef & Duck with Goji Berry and Salmon & Duck with Ginseng. The diets are specifically formulated with two proteins to provide dogs with as many nutrients as possible.
“If pet parents just feed [their pets] Charmy’s food, like our freeze-dried foods, we want to provide them a variety of proteins,” Sheng detailed. “When we started our formulation, we didn’t just start with a single protein. I think that’s very important for pet parents to acknowledge because single protein doesn’t provide everything pets need when it comes to nutrition.”
Charmy’s current offerings include single-ingredient air-dried treats and freeze-dried herbal dog food.
|Additionally, traditional Chinese medicine also focuses on the types of “energies” foods provide. According to Sheng, salmon and duck are both cooling proteins, which can support pets who are “hot” and experience itchy skin and inflammation. Charmy’s Salmon & Duck with Ginseng formula is specifically a “cooling” recipe, targeting these “hot” pets, and the Beef & Duck with Goji Berry is a “warming” or “neutral” recipe.
The pet foods are formulated with a ratio of 90% real proteins and 10% vegetables, fruits, supplements and “super-herbs,” like goji berry for vision health, ginseng for cognitive function, astragalus root for gut health, and ginger root for relief from nausea and vomiting. In this way, the recipes are suitable for all adult dogs and aim to balance the hot and cold energies in a dog’s body to help mitigate health issues, like inflammation.
While Charmy was developing its pet foods, it didn’t turn away from its tried-and-true treats. The company still offers a variety of treat products, all single-ingredient and air-dried. The line currently includes Blue Mussel, which targets joint health and inflammation; Rabbit Ear, which targets the nervous system; Lake Smelt, which targets joint health and inflammation; Turkey Breast, which targets immune health; Rainbow Trout, which targets skin and coat health; and Beef Spleen, which targets healthy digestion.
Taking responsibility
In line with its focus on animal health, Charmy also uses ethical sourcing practices, as the company believes the living conditions of livestock translate into all food. The company believes that any stressors farmed livestock are exposed to could make their way to pets, translating into increased potential for health issues, like inflammation.
For this reason, Charmy Pet has turned away from the most common protein source in pet food — chicken. According to Sheng, many pets, especially dogs, have a sensitivity to chicken. Additionally, this particular livestock often experiences stressful conditions in factory farming environments and Sheng believes these conditions could trickle down to pets, impacting their overall health.
“Nowadays, our pets are suffering from a lot of inflammation in their bodies,” he said. “Chicken is the main source in causing inflammation, as they have very high inflammation in their bodies. When we slaughter them and process them and feed them to our pets, that inflammation can actually transfer to our pets, and when consumed for a long time and at a high amount, our dogs then suffer from itchy skin because there’s so much inflammation.
“The way we raise our animals is very important as well because those nutritional values will pass down to the dog or cat, or even human, that consumes them,” said Zach Sheng, CEO of Charmy Pet.
“The way we raise our animals is very important as well because those nutritional values will pass down to the dog or cat, or even human, that consumes them,” Sheng added.
Instead of chicken, Charmy uses other high-quality protein sources, including beef, duck and salmon. The company enforces strict ethical standards to source its proteins and is very selective, partnering with suppliers who are also committed to animal welfare. As such, the proteins included in each formula are humanely raised, pasture-raised or grass-fed. Additionally, the company’s Rainbow Trout and Blue Mussel treats are recommended by Ocean Wise, a conservation program that seeks to eliminate overfishing.
In enforcing strict animal welfare and quality requirements onto its suppliers, Charmy is able to track where each of its ingredients come from, which the company leverages to provide transparency to consumers. When Sheng and his partner originally started the company, they noticed a major lack of transparency throughout the industry. Charmy takes a different approach and embraces as much transparency as it can, building trust with pet parents.
In line with its ethical standards in protein sourcing, Charmy’s Blue Mussel treats tout the “Recommended by Ocean Wise” logo, communicating to consumers that it is an ocean-friendly product.
| Source: Charmy Pet“Because we are making our angel, fur babies’ food, we should be very transparent,” Sheng explained. “There’s nothing you should hide when you’re using high-quality proteins and you know exactly where it’s coming from. When it comes to Charmy, we know exactly where each ingredient is coming from down to the state… and we share this with consumers.”
On its website, the company lists where each main ingredient is sourced from, down to specific states and regions. For example, Charmy’s goji berry is sourced from Ningxia, China, and its ginger root comes from Nasarawa, Nigeria. Each product features a QR code located on the back of the packaging, providing consumers with details on the ingredients and from where they were sourced.
Venturing south
Based in Toronto, Charmy has gradually expanded its footprint coast-to-coast to include approximately 500 stores. Soon, word spread to Canada’s southern neighbor: the United States. Charmy began receiving requests from US retailers, asking to carry Charmy’s products in their stores, prompting the company to set its sights on its first international venture.
In April 2024, the company partnered with Animal Supply Company, a distributor based in Grand Prairie, Texas, and officially entered stores in the West Coast United States.
“We wanted to partner with someone who had the capacity for us, would lead us in the journey, and really believed in the product,” Sheng said. “Animal Supply Company is the one that really, truly believes in our products, understands our products and is good at educating consumers.”
Through its partnership with Animal Supply Company, Charmy plans to expand into the rest of the United States. For the future, it will remain committed to its biggest supporter, the independent pet channel.
“We don’t look at this as expansion; we look at this as benefiting more dogs and cats. How do we make ourselves quickly available to them?” Sheng concluded. “It’s most important that we reach more pet owners and their pets.”
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