History for Newbies

we get newbies all the time, welcome!~

In 1999, I started a pretty loose “co-op” of people who buy their dogfood at the same time, from the same vendor, in return for the butcher in question making it for us. There is and never has been a cost to join this coop, and you can come in and leave as you wish. All we want to do is make sure that at any time, there is a source for ground raw food (and other items) of a certain level of quality at a reasonable price. In order to maintain this source, we try to make our order as big as possible.

We've worked with many butchers over time, each with varying results both in terms of product and customer service, and the system we've finally managed to perfect came from literally thousands of hours of volunteer work over time. We truly believe that in order to have reasonable pricing on raw dog food, these items must be produced locally- this is illustrated in the vast price difference between the coop and companies like Oma's Pride, BARFWORLD, and Aunt Jeni's. While great products assumeably, as soon as you get into frozen food transporation, the cost jumps dramatically.

To help facilitate other cities having the benefit of a coop like ours, in 2001, we created the Coop startup kit, which is in use in cities all across America.

In 2002, due to the number of orders we had, Tucson spun off into its own coop and has successfully run with almost 200 people since.

Since 2006, we’ve been ordering from Suzy’s Doggie Delights, which has produced mixes and case lots for us. It’s been a lot better than it has in the past, due somewhat to the fact that Suzy’s is not a butcher making dog food on the side, but a fully fledged independent company making dog food as their primary product with all the appropriate licensure, etc.

In 2007, there were changes to the SoCal Coop, another coop run out of California, focused mostly on whole bones and variety, who allowed a small group of Arizona folks to join in on their order. They’ve eliminated the Arizona branch of the Coop, and after a number of discussions, the AZ Raw Bones Coop has combined with them to form a supergroup of ordering, and with the help of Susan and Jason of Suzy’s, a much expanded product list. While we started with only 4 mixes (fish, chicken, turkey and veggie), we now offer well over 125 different products of whole bones, ground mixes and supplements.

In order to best serve you, in the past we’ve offered a central Phoenix pickup since Suzy’s is located in uber west golfcart land. With the help of other coop-ers, and due to the demographics of the people that order, we’ve now expanded your options for pickup, and standardized the drop off dates.

In 2008, we welcomed Tucson raw feeders back by expanding to a dropoff location in Tucson once a month. If you're in Prescott, Payson, Flagstaff or Sedona, we now have a resell location up north as well. Contact us for more information.

We are always happy to continue expanding with more drop off locations, and more products. Our goal is to help as many people as possible- please contact us if you've got a suggestion how.