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I have to admit one thing about the d2c pet food report I dropped last month. I almost left out the search data. It felt too obvious — everyone wanted rounds, exits, multiples, and I had a table of people typing brand names into Google. Boring. I sat on it for a week, hesitating. Then it hit me that it was the only slide that actually proves anything. Because it's not "best dog food." It's not generic traffic. It's people typing an exact name — deliberate, manufactured demand for a brand nobody had heard of three years ago. Here's the top ten (#Semrush, monthly): Butternut Box | B Corp Box ~72k PsiBufet ~46k ULTRA PREMIUM DIRECT ~45k Pooch and Mutt& Mutt ~43k Dogfy Diet ~42k Pure Pet Food ~42k Bella+Duke ~38k Pets Deli ~36k Untamed | B Corp™ ~31k Tails.com | B Corp.com ~26k That's 400k+ people a month searching for specific d2c brands. Mostly in the UK. (one company in total with 150k+ searches). This is not a segment quietly dying under funding pressure. It's demand that compounds. And here's the part I'm wrestling with — which is why I'm writing this instead of just posting the chart. The whole table rests on one assumption: that discovery starts in Google. But lately, before I even open a browser, I ask an AI model. "What's a good fresh dog food brand" — and I get three names back before I ever see a search bar. If more people are doing that, then every one of these ten brands is optimizing something that's slowly stopping being the map of the territory. And not one of them — I checked — talks publicly about AI visibility as a channel. I don't know yet whether branded search will still be proof of strength a year from now, or whether it's already a lagging indicator. I really don't know. And maybe that's exactly why I'm posting this — to ask you, instead of pretending I have the answer. Who here is already measuring how their brand shows up in AI answers? Because I'm only just starting, and I suspect I'm late. Full d2c report in the comments.

I spent 3 months mapping a market that barely shows up at the trade shows my industry actually attends. 113 D2C pet food brands. 28 countries. €811M raised. And almost none of it visible at InterZoo — where the conversation is still about shelves and private label. My take: D2C is the most underrated corner of European pet food right now, and the incumbents are sleeping on it. The numbers tell a strange story. 55% of all that funding went to a single brand — Butternut Box took €442M of the €811M. 66% of these brands run on subscription. 65% were founded after 2015. The UK leads with 21 brands. And the part that surprised me most: the East is no longer empty. Poland already has 8. Czechia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ukraine — all on the map. Some best ones UK Butternut Box | B Corp France Japhy Spain Dogfy Diet Germany Pets Deli Poland PsiBufet Italy Dog Heroes Sweden @Buddy Belgium Edgard & Cooper | B Corp Portugal Barkyn Switzerland @ANiFiT Why now? Three forces pointing the same way. Owners want a relationship, not a shelf. They're hunting for quality the supermarket aisle doesn't carry. And retailers are stomping into private label, taking the shelf space brands needed just to exist. So brands stopped fighting for the shelf. They went straight to the owner. You own the customer, you own the relationship, you own the cash. That's exactly the bet we're making with Veli. Not "another pet food" — a pet care longevity company. Our job is to add years to your animal's life and keep them beside you longer. D2C is the only model that lets us actually do that. So here's the question I keep coming back to: if 66% of the category already runs on subscription and the relationship sits with the brand, what's left for the retailer in pet food five years from now — distribution, or nothing? If I missed a brand on the map, drop it in the comments and we'll add it. Link to a full report is here: https://lnkd.in/diw7wHhv

We mapped every direct-to-consumer pet food brand in Europe, 113 brands across 28 markets, into one independent 2026 benchmark: who is growing, where the money went, and how the models really work.

Premium pet food isn't sold the same way in Warsaw as in Paris. Our 2026 benchmark maps the East–West divide across 28 European markets, essential reading if you source, price, or expand on the continent.

€811M has flowed into Europe's D2C pet food brands, and 55% of it went to a single company. Most of the rest are bootstrapped. We mapped where every euro landed, and what it signals for the next raise.

2,400 exhibitors at Interzoo. 15 halls. 150,000 square meters. and 99% of the products on those shelves are indistinguishable. same claims. same packaging codes. same "premium natural sustainable" wallpaper. you walk past most booths and forget them before you reach the next aisle. we built veli on a different bet. that in petfood, quality is the price of admission — story is the moat. functional pet food has long term tail winds 70% of immunity sits in the gut. so we built a wet diet around that single sentence. venison + entopro hybrid protein + 5 other “tastes”. 95% protein base. grain and potato free. pre and postbiotic synergy. one story, executed in the can, on the label, on the booth. people stopped. asked questions. came back with colleagues. came back the next day. the interest at interzoo was the kind you don't fake. plans for the rest of 2026: - more skus, all wrapped around the same story - d2c launch in poland - more partners more sales quality is table stakes. story is the moat. and operations are how you keep it. what's your moat in 2026?