PET Food Processing - March 2021 - 12

MISSION
POSSIBLE
Wet Noses Natural Dog Treats is on a mission to
deliver breakthrough pet innovation, exclusively
in human-grade formats.

By Jennifer Semple | jsemple@sosland.com

Although the bulk of
the company's production is devoted
to baked treats, Wet
Noses also manufactures, wet, frozen and
dehydrated products.
Photography by Lydia Brewer

Occasionally when ingredients are delivered
to Wet Noses in Monroe, Wash., the delivery
person seems skeptical that the ingredients
are indeed for pet food or treat products. This
mission-driven processor has found success in
only selecting ingredients and processing food
that humans could eat as well. But the focus
isn't human-worthy dog food, it's dog-worthy
dog food. The company's golden rule is, " If
you wouldn't eat it, don't feed it to your dog. "
In the spirit of inclusivity, the company follows the same mission-driven approach when
creating products for felines.
Wet Noses currently manufactures private
label dog food and treats for national and international retailers, as well as its own brands:
Wet Noses, Doggy Delirious and Best Homies.
Products are produced in a Safe Quality Food
(SQF) Level III-certified, human-grade facility
and all Wet Noses diets are formulated without GMOs, corn, wheat, soy, preservatives or
artificial ingredients.
Staying true to the company's golden rule
has led it along a sometimes-winding but
nevertheless successful path since Wet Noses
was founded by Jasmine " Jazz " Galligan in
1998. Galligan first started by baking peanut butter and molasses training treats for
her own dogs. Then, she ventured into making treats for other people in the Seattle area.
One of Galligan's customers happened to
be a buyer for a large, 600-store retail com-

PET FOOD PROCESSING | March 2021 | www.petfoodprocessing.net

pany and put in a large order for Wet Noses
treats. Galligan pieced together a processing
line and produced baked dog treats in her
700-square-foot garage.
" I bought a very old Kook-e-King wire cut
cookie depositing machine, " Galligan said. " At
that point, I turned my garage into a bakery.
I would fill sheet pans and carry them across
my yard and bake them in the double-sized
rack oven in my garage.
" The challenge was always not being able to
make enough, " Galligan explained. " It was a
battle between baking enough and being able
to package enough. The recipe and what ingredients to use was never a challenge. Those
standards were set in stone and they weren't
going to change. I always used human-grade,
always used organic and always bought the
very best ingredients I could find. "
In 2005, Wet Noses moved out of the garage
and into its first commercial facility, which
was 4,000 square feet of warehouse space.
Within two years, the company took over
the space next door, and by 2009 Wet Noses
moved into a 15,000-square-foot facility and
purchased its first tunnel oven which came
from an old pita chip company.
" The tunnel oven changed everything, "
Galligan said. " Until you don't have to do it
anymore, you don't realize how much time
you're spending filling sheet pans, loading
them into the oven, leaving them on racks to

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PET Food Processing - March 2021

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