Meet the founder: Bond Pet Foods’ Rich Kelleman on pet parents, pivots, and ‘de-risking’ alt protein

RK : Before Bond I spent years working with some of the biggest brands in the world from Facebook and Chevrolet to Kellogg’s and Procter & Gamble. But the account that brought me to Boulder 13 years ago was Burger King, which was trying to better understand how it could compete with the likes of Chipotle and Panera, who were redefining what quality meant in fast food.

So I began to get involved with the GFI [alt protein nonprofit The Good Food Institute ] that was just coming on to the scene and I quickly realized that if a firm could crack the code for pet food by employing some of those same technologies, the path to commercialization could be relatively easier [than it might be for human food]. It’s still challenging, but for dogs and cats, it’s more about nutritional efficacy and performance than it is about the structure and the experience of eating meat. AFN : Tell us about pivot #1, from cultivated meat to meat proteins from fermentation… RK : Even though this wasn’t my trade, I thought that if I could assemble the right team, we could do something special [in the cultivated meat space] in pet food.

I’m a big fan of some of the firms working on cell cultured meat, but it was hard to see how that could scale from a unit economics standpoint in an trade [pet food] that has a different kind of quotation pressure. We’re just spray drying it and we’re left with this concentrated protein that has the foundational essential amino acids and nutrition that dogs and cats need to thrive.

RK : Over the years we’ve learned a lot about the kinds of proteins that have the highest value in the different species that can contribute to animal health, that will express well, that are scalable, and that can work alongside the native yeast to create something valuable. I can’t share the specific proteins within the species that we’re expressing, but the first out of the gate will be a chicken meat skeletal muscle protein, as chicken is in the majority of pet food recipes.

The second is a specific protein that our partner [petfood giant] Hills Pet Nutrition has identified that I can’t disclose as of yet, but it is something that’s widely used in its international portfolio. Labeling is yet to be determined but it’s something we will work closely on with the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine and AAFCO [a nonprofit that sets standards for animal feed and pet food in the US].

RK : The reality is, when it comes to receptivity to plant based proteins and vegan diets for pets, by and large, meat is still king and will continue to be king. So before we get to market, we will be doing quite a bit of work with those kind of gatekeepers to give them confidence that this can be a high value foundational component of nutrition for pets.

The idea was that later we’d be able to say we’ve now enhanced that yeast fermentation process to make animal proteins that can even more foundationally provide your pets with what they need to thrive. But after we signed the joint development agreement with Hills in late 2021, we began having discussions with a number of global players interested in creating a bespoke meat protein for their portfolios. And with all those conversations, we realized we could have a bigger impact if we focused on being meat makers for the pet food trade instead of straddling the line between that and creating our own consumer products, which really weigh on cashflow.

So in April last year, we shed the B2C side of things and decided to focus on our technology platform and nurturing strategic partnerships. RK : The FDA has specific requirements but one of the main things that they’re looking for is how our protein behaves vs conventional protein in a longitudinal study of dogs and cats over the course of six months, looking at palatability, bioavailability and so on. It was more about how we can employ something that is challenging, but achievable based on the history of this technology, so there’s some de-risking because of that.

We as well have people in our team with experience of industrial scale fermentation but in addition people that really understand the nuances of the pet food market. We secured a $17.5 million series A round last year so we are in a healthy position with our capitalization right now, but we are super aware of the [challenging] climate [for food tech backing].