General Mills Capitalizes on ‘Pet Parent’ Market
General Mills announced Monday it will do more in the pet food aisle starting this summer. And the Golden Valley-based company is targeting what it describes as the fastest growing demographic in the category: young pet parents. Think: millennial-coded dog moms and dads.
“Pet parents are redefining how they feed and treat their pets,” Liz Mascolo, president of the North American pet segment at General Mills, said in a press release. “At General Mills, we’re listening and continuing to bring trusted, high-quality natural solutions to a rapidly evolving marketplace.”
That means the Fortune 500 company is entering the “fresh” category.
The new Love Made Fresh product line falls under the Blue Buffalo brand, which General Mills acquired in 2018 for $8 billion. Set to appear in stores nationwide later this year, it will make Blue Buffalo “the largest U.S. pet food brand to offer fresh, wet, and dry food options,” according to the release, which values the fresh pet food category at $3 billion.
The goal is to meet a “growing trend” of pet owners choosing fresh and mixing it with other options, like kibble.
That’s not the only source of growth. Last spring, General Mills acquired European brand Edgard & Cooper. The brand—specializing in pet meals that sound human, made with chicken, venison, and duck combined with fruits and vegetables—is now slated for a stateside debut in July, in a retail partnership with PetSmart.
The two companies are counting on the partnership to “further PetSmart’s position in the super-premium segment,” with General Mills leveraging Edgard & Cooper’s “digital-first, social-led marketing approach—a proven driver of its rapid growth in Europe.”
For context, pet food production is one of the fastest growing feed sectors, per this year’s Agri-Food Outlook. At play here is a global rise in pet ownership (attributed to the stay-at-home life of Covid-19), plus “the ongoing ‘humanization’ of pets” and other factors.
General Mills’ pet moves are part of its overall Accelerate strategy, outlined in 2021. The release describes this plan as combining “brand leadership with relentless innovation and consumer-centric insights to drive long-term growth.”
The company expanded its pet food portfolio in 2021, too, when it bought the Arkansas-based Tyson Foods pet treat business for $1.2 billion.