A Note From The Founder | Chan Patel

Drop One:
The Bandanas

Small fluffy Pomeranian dog standing by a window in warm indoor light, with a TENDS Superfood Blend dog food bag displayed on a shelf beside it

"I don't have a dog.
Not yet."

That may be unusual to read here.
It is also the most honest place to start.

Thirty years inside this industry.

Long enough to see how products are made, what owners are told, and what the science supports.

I'd seen it from the inside. Then I studied it from the outside.

The nutritional science is clear. Food for small dogs isn't less — it's more concentrated. It requires precision.

Like an espresso — smallest volume, highest concentration. A degree off in either direction and it collapses.

Most food wasn't made with that in mind.

Once you see it,
you build around it.

So we did.

Small corgi dog looking up while standing on a leaf-covered path outdoors, viewed from above

Same biology. Different constraints.
Less to work with.
More riding on every choice.
Less room to get it wrong.

Other brands noticed small dogs.
None started with them.
They'd arrived there, usually by scaling something down.

Scaling down isn't a solution. It's a shortcut.

Building our own dedicated oven-baked capability gave us the freedom to formulate around the science — not around a shared process or an inherited ingredient pipeline.

Plant-based, cooked once — oven-baked — where more of what goes in is retained.

Designed to deliver more within the real constraints of a small dog's system.

Building our own dedicated oven-baked capability gave us the freedom to formulate around the science — not around a shared process or an inherited ingredient pipeline.

Plant-based, cooked once — oven-baked — where more of what goes in is retained.