Can not get orijen or acana due to fire!!!

AdrianneIsabel

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#61
More important to me than if a company has had any recalls is how do they respond to them and what steps do they take to prevent it happening again in the future.
this. Everyone will have a mistake a recall if they are in the game long enough IMO, it's how they handle it that says if its a trustworthy company.

I prefer a smaller company but they really aren't any more guaranteed against recalls.
 

PWCorgi

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#62
It's hard because some of these smaller companies that haven't been around very long in the grand scheme of things... they have good ideas but is there a track record there? More important to me than if a company has had any recalls is how do they respond to them and what steps do they take to prevent it happening again in the future.
Absolutely this. Recalls are going to happen, period. It's how the company responds.

Last year (or earlier this year, can't really remember) Primal had a recall and they sent out an email immediately to pull the stock, then they personally CALLED every single store that carried their product and gave specific instructions about what to do with the food, what happened, how to help customers understand what happened, etc. It was awesome.

Diamond...nothing like that. Hell they didn't even send messages out to like our corporate office. There were some that our corporate office didn't know about until I told them! That is unacceptable IMO. Not to mention the HISTORY of recalls. Yes, a recall happens every once in a while. When it happens REPEATEDLY, there's a problem!
Although I must say, since their last recall Diamond has apparently put in more testing and stops to prevent another recall, which is partially why we are seeing backorder issues on Diamond right now. Also a customer came in with a return bag of Chicken Soup because there was something in there that didn't look like dog food and the customer was concerned. I contacted the rep, and he drove down THE NEXT DAY, picked up the food, took it to corp for testing, and called us back with the results. I was pretty impressed with that. I hope it continues.

ETA: Totally not a fan of BB here either. Have seen very few dogs do well on it and holy jacked price! Fromm is 3# more and over $20 less expensive, for a BETTER product!
 

AdrianneIsabel

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#63
That's nuts, I had no idea they became that expensive. I fed BB probably 3 or 4 years ago and really like them but when they bumped their price they went off my radar.

I love my dogs and I want them to eat the best possible food they can but when you feed 12-14(at one point it was hitting 20) cups a day you start feeding economically.

Some of these companies are nutterfutz, I could only afford them if I fed a tiny singular dog and even then I may have trouble rationalizing it.
 

PWCorgi

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#64
Some of these companies are nutterfutz, I could only afford them if I fed a tiny singular dog and even then I may have trouble rationalizing it.
Werd.

And part of the problem is that most of these companies increase prices at least once a year, usually it is twice. In turn we increase prices (we ONLY increase prices when the food company does) to continue making a profit, but it's like, WHERE DOES IT END?! It's not like they're just going to eventually say "Oh hey, that's it, we'll keep it at that price forever now." It's just going to keep going!

Orijen Regional Red 29.7# retails at $90 a bag now. :yikes: And it just keeps bumping up. At some point, it just becomes unaffordable.

I know Merrick is making a pretty large push to take over some of that Orijen market as it becomes less and less affordable, and I'm all for it! Love their new products and the company really seems to have gotten their crap together. Plus, $55 for a large bag of grain free food is absolutely competitive.

And just sayin, Fromm breeder bags here you can still get for just under a dollar per pound :cool:
 

AdrianneIsabel

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#65
No one sells Fromm here. :( once we move I may try a delivery company though.

My boss said Acanas doesn't allow sales nor at-cost sales of their food and she got in trouble selling at cost to a customer. Have you run into that with other companies?
 

Lyzelle

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#66
Zander is on Fromn now and I really like it. I'm paying around $70 for the Beef Fritatta, though. Ouch. I was getting Acana for closer to $50.

BUT, I really don't like how they changed the ingredients and Zane was a friggin walrus on that food. On Fromm, it has been a lot easier to slim him down and put more muscle on him. I'd like to see a similar food, honestly, but slightly less expensive. Things get so complicated when you are looking for grain free, low carb, and no poultry. I think that *may* have been why I skipped over Merrick before. Or was it Go!/Now?

One of them. Or both of them.
 

Fran101

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#67
Planning on doing Fromm here two. The ingredients aren't that competitive (I mean, they are very high quality but nothing to put it over TOTW or Acana or anything)

but my experience with customer service and the company has been HANDS DOWN amazing.
 

JessLough

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#68
Zander is on Fromn now and I really like it. I'm paying around $70 for the Beef Fritatta, though. Ouch. I was getting Acana for closer to $50.

BUT, I really don't like how they changed the ingredients and Zane was a friggin walrus on that food. On Fromm, it has been a lot easier to slim him down and put more muscle on him. I'd like to see a similar food, honestly, but slightly less expensive. Things get so complicated when you are looking for grain free, low carb, and no poultry. I think that *may* have been why I skipped over Merrick before. Or was it Go!/Now?

One of them. Or both of them.
I know Go! Has chicken. Its why I had to stop feeding it. At least, I think that was :p (Well, I think one only has chicken fat, which, while rarely animals react to, Ren will :rolleyes: )

If it makes you feel any better, I need food with about 6 or 7 proteins not included, high fat, high protein, low carb, low moisture. It makes food shopping fun. LOL
 

Airn

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#69
I thought about checking out Fromm. I really like Victor, though. It's really cheap and I feel lucky to have a vendor nearby. Gwen has a habit of loving a food for about two weeks and then being very lack luster about eating it. I thought switching it up by getting different flavors would help but the Victor vendor near me doesn't have a wide variety. I think I'll doing a bit of digging on Fromm.

(We were on Blue Buffalo for a couple of months but it really is way too expensive. If I can feed Gwen "5 star" food for half of the price of BB then I'm sure they can re-think their pricing.)
 

Lyzelle

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#70
I know Go! Has chicken. Its why I had to stop feeding it. At least, I think that was :p (Well, I think one only has chicken fat, which, while rarely animals react to, Ren will :roll eyes:)

If it makes you feel any better, I need food with about 6 or 7 proteins not included, high fat, high protein, low carb, low moisture. It makes food shopping fun. LOL
LOL Don't doubt it. When I lived with my mom there were 6 dogs + any fosters and it was nuts. No grain, no oats, no pork, no poultry, low carb, not high protein, has to fit within ca/phos ratios for pups, no oats, fish was best for half the pack, lamb was best for the other half of the pack but gave the first half itchy faces.

Nightmare. So glad I only have one to worry about now.
 

crazedACD

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#71
My boss said Acanas doesn't allow sales nor at-cost sales of their food and she got in trouble selling at cost to a customer. Have you run into that with other companies?
Yes. Well...we get the lowest pricing on our foods because of the volume we do with the distributors. And then our markup is extremely low, to stay competitive. We don't offer sales or quantity/case discounts. For the longest time we were a good $10-15 UNDER other store's pricing for a certain very popular food, and those other stores called the distributor and complained a lot. The company called and threatened to cut us off from it if we didn't raise our prices. :rolleyes: Manager said fine, pull it if you want, we'll find something else. Nothing happened. We have remained at the same markup but have had to raise the price due to cost increases. Recently though that company was offering some pretty good deals (due to it's recall, if you want to figure out what company I'm talking about ;) ), and we got a bunch, put it on sale, and got complained about again.

I don't like the politics of pricing and stuff through these companies. Some companies enforce 'minimum advertised price', meaning you cannot sell their product below xx. A certain popular electronic dog collar company enforces this in their mom and pop shops but lets big box stores do what they want, AND offers them lower pricing.

There are also brands that snub us because we are a 'feed store' and they don't want their products in...'feed stores'. And then they find out how big we are and they beg us to take the product...nope.
 

Upendi&Mina

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#73
I know Merrick is making a pretty large push to take over some of that Orijen market as it becomes less and less affordable, and I'm all for it! Love their new products and the company really seems to have gotten their crap together. Plus, $55 for a large bag of grain free food is absolutely competitive.
I actually just switched to Merrick Grain Free and I could NOT be happier with it. It's decently priced and the dogs are doing wonderfully on it.

After the last TOTW recall (Cara got really sick right around that time, and while I know it was probably a coincidence I refuse to feed it.), I switched to Acana and it was okay. Cara wasn't maintaining weight on it though, and I was having to get it shipped so I decided to see what I could find locally. Came across Merrick in TSC and the rest is history. :eek:
 

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