Dog Food CEO Eats Only Kibble for 30 Days to Prove It’s Good for Dogs

This is Our American Stories, and our next story is about a family-owned business. Mitch Felderhoff is the co-owner of Munster Milling, a fourth-generation family-owned and operated animal food manufacturer. You might have seen Mitch in the news recently because he decided to eat nothing but the specialized dog food his company makes for 30 straight days. It got our attention. Here’s Mitch.

My name is Mitch Felderhoff, and I’m one of the fourth-generation owners of Munster Milling Company. I grew up in the business, and as my parents were getting ready to retire, they had considered selling the business, and my brother and I didn’t want to see that happened. So we went to the bank and found a way to came up with the money and purchase the business from them. They were kind of reluctant to invest in. You know, it’s a big investment, and they had put 30, 40 years into the business, and I think they were kind of ready to take a breath and take a break. And, you know, we were young, hungry, and ready to change the world. So we said, “Hey, we’ll take the gamble, and we’ll go do it.” We had things that we wanted to do a little bit differently than what had been done in the past, and the easiest way for us to do it was to take control of the business. It was just regular standard kibble, for the most part, is what we made, and when we purchased it, we wanted them to kind of change the way we did things. And so we incorporated freeze ride into our product lineup, along with the ability to customize a single bag of food. Actually, so now we can add bacon fat or salmon oil to a single bag if we wanted to. You know, our goal was to reduce carbohydrates and pet food and make dog food different than what a lot of people currently are. And so we made the move and put a freeze dryer in about a year ago, which essentially is the ability to make astronaut food for dogs. So we’re taking raw food and pulling the moisture out while it’s frozen and essentially leaving just raw organ meat that’s shelf-stable. So the way freeze drying works that’s different than kibble is, you’re taking raw frozen meat, and you stick it in this giant chamber that looks kind of like a shipping container, probably weighs about 40 pounds, and it’s stainless steel. And we pull a vacuum on it, so there’s no more air in there than there is an outer space. And then we get it down to our negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and we heat the trays up to you anywhere between 30 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And when you have that big of a temperature difference in a vacuum, it causes a process called sublimation, where water goes from the ice form to a vapor form. And so it’s kind of like watching dry ice sit on the table. You know, it just kind of evaporates, and you see what looks like cold steam coming out of it. That’s the process to free strike, and the benefit to it is, you don’t have to have a bunch of starches and sugars in there to hold the product together. You know, it’s still in its quote-unquote “frozen” state, but all the moisture has been removed. Kibble, you have to heat it up to, you know, 290 degrees, put a lot of pressure on it, and then dry it in an oven afterwards. And the free strike is such a delicate, gentle process that if you’ve got a dog that has stomach issues, allergies of any sort, this is almost a foolproof thing that you can be them. And so the past four years has really been focused on how do we remove carbohydrates and make food less inflammatory and still be a major employer in a little town that we grew up in. It’s one of those, “What can we do that Nestle and Mars can’t?” And they make more kibble than anybody in the world. Dog obesity is at a almost a crisis level. 54% of dogs or obese, and we thought, “How can we combat that?” And so brother and I were just talking and said, “You know, it’s, it’s hard to make a kibble that’s low enough carbohydrates to make a difference. And the only way to really kind of push the envelope on it is to start to incorporate more protein and vat via freeze drying.” So we’re using beef, chicken, fish, elk, and just started using bison. So I came up with the idea a couple of years ago when I walked into a store, and I just saw tons and tons of marketing from these other companies, and I thought, “I can’t compete with that. We don’t have the bankroll to do it, and we don’t have the ability to write the checks.” But what can I do that can help get our company out there and help us be noticed and kind of get the point across that we care more than them? And just kind of had the idea that, “You know what, I’m willing to need our dog food for 30 days only.” I don’t think any of these other companies would be. You know, for about two years, I just kicked it around on, “Maybe I should do it, maybe I shouldn’t.” And then my wife and I were on our 10-year anniversary trip, and, you know, you’re just, you’re thinking, and, “Hey, I have I Have I done life the way I wanted to so far? Have I gone all in? Am I giving it everything I have?” And I just thought, “You know what, I’ve got this idea of eating dog food for 30 days that I haven’t executed yet, and when I get back, I need to do that. I need to take it to the next level.” And I told my wife, and she just kind of looked at me and laughed, and, if you know, “Of course you are.” She was in between. She thought it was great, from a “What are we willing to do for the business and to show customers with care?” But it had definitely gotten the way of mealtime because the family is eating dinner, and I’m the biggest one of the family, and so she typically counts on me to eat my share, so there were a lot more leftovers. The house smelled like cooked dog food for a month. And, you know, the breath—the breath off—also had the dog food on it. And then when I got back to the office, my marketing director just said, he’s kind of, he was kind of in the mode of, “God, please don’t do this, because if it goes wrong and you end up in the hospital, then I don’t know how we recover from that.” And then told my brother, and he’s like, “You know, it’s probably a good idea, but I’m, I’m glad it’s not me, so go for it.” Day two through four, I was pretty somber and wondering, “How, how am I going to make it another 25 to 28 days? And what the heck did I just sign up for?” No seasoning, no sauces, no alcohol, no coffee. It was, it was pretty much dog food and water. Four or five, six days in, everyone was, I was on board and loving it, and customers had a great time with it. It’s just been a real fun process. It tastes like you think it would. It doesn’t smell great, and it doesn’t taste awesome. Dogs have a little bit different palate than what we do, but, you know, I’m glad they like it. I have two Yellow Labs, and one of them is 12, and the other one’s 14 and a half. They go nuts over the free stride. So, dogs, their flavor profile, it comes from fat and protein, not specifically like chicken or beef. They just, they can taste the fat. We’ve seen a huge increase online, I mean, almost triple the visitors to our website this January versus past. We’ve had a lot more customers calling that just they wanted to know more. And then our retailers that have independent brick-and-mortar locations have said that people have come in talking about it. So we’re seeing a positive impact from it. Essentially, we have to be as clean as a human-grade facility, and so the investment level that has taken in the commitment it takes is as much, much higher than what it was years ago. We’re not necessarily charging a lot more for dog food, and so we just have to be leaner and more efficient. And as a smaller manufacturer that’s competing against some global companies that have that huge advertising marketing budget, just trying to be creative so that people know who we are is it’s getting harder and harder. We try to work with independent and family-owned businesses. That’s just where we’ve spent 87 years, and we really like that environment and working with those. And then we also sell online direct-to-consumer. We also do a fair amount of private label, so if somebody wanted their own brand of dog food to retreat, we’ll make it for them as well. Our website is MunsterMilling.com, and it’s Munster, spelt like the cheese, and then Milling.com. A lot of dog food that’s out there, it’s made by candy companies and cereal companies, and it’s not their main focus. It’s just another way to fill up a truck on the way to the grocery store and try and maximize the value to shareholders. And when we make a food, we make it with a dog in mind, and so much so that we won’t feed your dog something that we haven’t eaten ourselves.

And you’ve been listening to Mitch Felderhoff, and he’s the co-owner of Munster Milling, a fourth-generation, family-owned and operated animal food manufacturer located in Munster, Texas. And my goodness, he lost 30 pounds, by the way, going on that little trial, and learned a lot, and my goodness, sold a lot of dog food along the way. I love that he said, “Young, hungry, and ready to change the world.” That’s how he described himself at that age. And how did he want to change the world? He wanted to change his world by keeping a family business in a small town and employing 59 people. And that, folks, that’s changing the world. Mitch Felderhoff’s story here on Our American Stories. If you have a small family business like this, multi-generation, share the story with. My favorite is the Steinway family story. The Germans back in the day had guilds, and they didn’t think they needed another piano maker, so Germany said, “Get out of Dodge!” America’s gain was Germany’s loss, as the great piano manufacturer stays in the family from multi generations. Munster Milling, Mitch Felderhoff’s story here on Our American Story.