Fine Dining For Fido

Marie Moody knows her ingredients well. "We use only free-range meats. We use only all natural beef. Our beef actually comes from a natural beef supplier out west. The chicken is cage free chicken. Bison is all grass fed. And the vegetables are all organic. We try to buy locally as much as possible."

Marie may sound as if she'd describing the menu at a posh restaurant, but you'll quickly find out that's not the case. Marie's business is making meals fit for Fido or in this case, her dogs Stella and Chewy.

Marie is the founder and President of Stella and Chewy's Pet Food Company. Headquartered near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Stella and Chewy's has become the popular pick for pampered pets. The company has only been up and running for a couple of years but is already selling its products across the United States. Ask about the flavors and Marie will tell you, "All natural beef, we have chicken, lamb. We have a new flavor, actually: Duck Duck Goose."

Using, meats, fruits and vegetables, It's not just the" natural" label that attracts many pet lovers. Stella and Chewy's pet food is sold raw. Marie's partner Doug Siegal showed us around the production line, "We have chicken, chicken livers. We have chicken gizzards, chicken hearts and some organic fruits and vegetables. It's 95 percent organic meat and five percent organic fruits and vegetables. This is our first step in making it smaller and it's going to go up the conveyer and into the grinder."

From the grinder it starts to look like hamburger. Or...in this case...chicken burger. Doug says, "They are hamburger patties. They are hamburgers for dogs. And with these large patties this is the final stage in their forming. We form them into 8 oz patties, they go into the freezer and get frozen, they get packaged and they get shipped out. And that's just how the dogs eat them." Stella and Chewy's provides the patties either frozen and packaged, or freeze-dried instead of frozen raw.

Doug says, "We seal up these tanks and then turn on a vacuum and it goes down to about minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Then what happens is the ice crystals in the meat sublimate which means they are evaporating and then missing the water stage so you are removing the moisture without cooking the meat.” And why freeze dry instead of cook? Doug says, "Because with freeze drying you are retaining all the nutrients, vitamins and enzymes of the meat all the proteins, you are not cooking anything out of this so we don't have to add anything back into it."

The origin of Stella and Chewy's traces far from Wisconsin to Manhattan. Marie was working in the fashion industry when she rescued Chewy from the animal shelter. "Well I think I was so frustrated that I couldn't find anything that I would feed my dogs in the marketplace that I decided that it was a good idea for a business because there were so many people that I knew of personally like myself that love their dogs and would feed them the best pet food possible, if it existed. So I set out to make the best food possible. And I figured, worse case scenario, my dogs will have food for the rest of their lives. Best case scenario maybe I will have a business out of it."

In 2002, Marie returned to her hometown in Wisconsin to take her pet food to the next level. Today Stella and Chewy's is in more than 1200 pet stores across the country. Now, many veterinarians advise against raw meat diets due to concerns about harmful bacteria. Past scientific testing has found e coli and salmonella in some commercial raw pet food. Stella and Chewy's uses various technologies to combat bacteria. Doug says, "We start off with an organic sterilization, which uses water and pressure and it kills any pathogenic harmful bacteria that might be in it.like salmonella, e coli, those are all eliminated. Then when we process our food it's done under aseptic conditions."

Each package of Stella and Chewy's pet food gets tested for salmonella and e coli. In fact they put the batch number on the back of every package so customers can actually check those test results online by going to the Stella and Chewy website. Enter the batch number and see the results. Marie says, "We do it because it is better for the pets. We do it because it is better for the customer as well. Nobody should bring salmonella and e coli into their kitchen."

Looking at some of their other products, Marie shows us a white meat chicken breast from cage free chickens. It's been diced and freeze dried. But it's not cheap. A container of this runs about ten dollars. Marie says, "People will pay it because it's pure and their dogs love it."

Of course the namesakes for the company are also the official market researchers. Call them over to a bowl of their namesake food and they seem to think it's "doggone" good.