Purina lost 280 basis points of U.S. dog food share between 2021 and 2025. Freshpet gained 570. Those two numbers, drawn from William Blair’s tally of measured-retail sales, frame the change in the American dog bowl over four years. Purina remains far larger, with $3.2 billion in 2025 retail dog food sales against Freshpet’s $1.21 billion. The difference has shrunk because Freshpet’s sales compounded at 27% a year over the period, compared with 5% for the Nestlé brand.
A William Blair team headed by analyst Jon Andersen laid out those figures on Jan. 28, 2026, in “The Battle for the (Dog Food) Bowl.” Freshpet’s results for the spring quarter kept to the same trend. The company booked $305.6 million in net sales for the three months through June 30, against $264.7 million a year before, a 15.5% gain resting almost entirely on 15.7% volume growth.
Large asset managers and hedge funds disclosed Freshpet stakes for the same quarter. BlackRock reported 5,886,208 shares and Wellington Management Group 2,829,688, according to InsiderSet’s compilation of 13F filings. State Street’s stake came to 1,603,257 shares. Armistice Capital, a New York hedge fund with a book weighted toward health care, held 1,260,702 shares worth about $74.5 million, StockZoa data show, after raising its share count by 15% from March.
How Much Dog Food Americans Buy
Dog ownership in the United States has grown at a slow, steady rate. William Blair counts 68 million dog-owning households, up from 57 million ten years earlier, and puts the share of American households with a dog at roughly half for that entire stretch.
Dollar sales have risen faster than the number of owners. Measured-channel dog food sales, a category that leaves out online, club and specialty retailers, came to about $16 billion in 2025, with 6% compound annual growth since 2021. The all-channel total was closer to $23 billion and grew 8% a year. Each household spent about 7% more annually over that period, and William Blair credited premiumization and price and mix, not an influx of new buyers.
The people buying dog food are changing as well. Gen Z and millennial households make up a growing share of dog owners, William Blair found. More than 80% of pet owners say their dog has a positive effect on their mental health, and nearly half say they would cut their own spending before they cut spending on their dogs, according to the report.
Owners are also choosing smaller dogs. On Sept. 8, at Barclays’ Global Consumer Staples Conference, Dana McNabb, chief operating officer of General Mills, told the audience that adoption had slowed and that owners were moving from bigger breeds to smaller ones, according to Petfood Industry. A small dog eats fewer pounds of food than a large one, and the shift cuts into volume for traditional dog food formats.
Freshpet’s investor materials cite NielsenIQ figures of about $57 billion in U.S. pet food sales for the year through June 27. Dog food and treats came to roughly $38 billion of that, and Freshpet’s share of the dog food and treats total stood at 4.3%, against 4.2% one quarter earlier. The gap between that 4.3% and the 11% in William Blair’s table comes down to scope, because the NielsenIQ base adds treats and is far larger.
The Incumbents’ Year
Nestlé’s Purina PetCare, the category leader, grew 2.8% organically from April through June 2026. Volume and mix contributed 2 points and pricing 0.8 point. Six-month organic growth reached 2.7%. According to Nestlé, its dog food business improved over the quarter and blamed inventory reductions at U.S. retailers for holding back growth in the Americas. The company also reported strengthening consumer sellout trends in both cat and dog food.
The year before had been weaker. Purina’s first-half organic growth in 2025 was 1.3%, with 1% in the second quarter alone, Global Pet Industry reported. Anna Manz, Nestlé’s finance chief, said in July 2025, “The growth of [the] pet category has come down from a year ago, but is now stabilizing.”
General Mills reported higher pet sales in fiscal 2026, though acquisitions did most of the work. North America Pet net sales climbed 6% to $2.61 billion. The Whitebridge purchase accounted for 6 points and an extra week for 2, and organic sales declined 3%. In the final quarter of the fiscal year, General Mills’ cat food grew by double digits, its dog food by low single digits, and its treats shrank. McNabb used the words “acute challenges” for the Blue Buffalo Wilderness line.
Mars owns two of the five largest dog food brands by William Blair’s count. Pedigree grew 6% a year from 2021 to 2025 and finished with a 16% share, 40 basis points below its 2021 level. Cesar’s sales were flat over those four years, and its share dropped 190 basis points to 6%. Blue Buffalo grew at the same 6% annual pace as Pedigree and closed at a 7% share, also down 40 basis points.
Freshpet was the one brand in the top five whose share went up.
Reach is where the incumbents lead. Purina is in about 50% of U.S. households, Mars about 35% and Blue Buffalo about 23%, according to William Blair, compared with roughly 9% for Freshpet. Fresh food is a low priority at Nestlé, which has only a small fresh and frozen brand in Merrick, William Blair wrote. Owners have been switching to fresh, and Purina has grown more slowly than the overall category as a result, according to the report.
Freshpet’s Second Quarter, Line by Line
Adjusted gross margin came in at 48.6%, a 170-basis-point improvement from 46.9%. On a GAAP basis, gross margin reached 42.1%, compared with 40.9%. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $52.2 million, up from $44.4 million, and the margin was 17.1%.
Those margin gains build on a longer run. William Blair calculated that Freshpet’s gross margin widened by roughly 10 percentage points between 2022 and 2025 and reached 46% last year. After six months of 2026, management doubled the bottom of its full-year adjusted gross margin improvement target to 100 basis points, with a new top of 150.
Net income was $19.5 million, versus $16.4 million in the prior-year quarter. Agrolimen’s purchase of Ollie, a direct-to-consumer fresh brand in which Freshpet owned a non-controlling stake, produced a $4.5 million gain that is included in that total.
Cash generation moved sharply higher. Freshpet produced $14.7 million of free cash flow in the quarter, against $0.5 million a year earlier, per MarketBeat’s recap of the earnings call. Six-month free cash flow was $27.4 million, and capital spending over the same period was $57.3 million. June closed with $350.8 million of cash on the balance sheet. Buybacks through July totaled 1.6 million shares and $86.5 million, out of a $150 million authorization.
Management changed its 2026 guidance in several places:
- Sales growth of 10% to 12%, previously 8% to 11%
- Adjusted EBITDA between $210 million and $220 million, previously $205 million to $215 million
- Adjusted gross margin improvement of 100 to 150 basis points, previously 50 to 100
- Capital expenditures of about $150 million, no change
Freshpet’s 2027 adjusted gross margin goal moved up one point, to 49% or better, and its EBITDA margin goal stayed at 20% to 22%. Sales growth in 2027 should be “well in excess of the category growth rate,” according to the company.
“Our second quarter performance demonstrates the strength and resilience of our business model,” Chief Executive Billy Cyr’s statement in the earnings release began. Pet Food Processing reported a second remark from Cyr: “Despite economic headwinds and new competitors, we grew significantly faster than the category.”
Freshpet reached 15.9 million households in the year through June 28, a gain of roughly 800,000, Numerator data in the investor presentation show. Annual spending per household was $117, 7% higher than a year earlier. In 2022, that figure was $81.
Household counts have risen in every year since 2022, from 10.2 million that year to 11.2 million in 2023, 13.4 million in 2024 and 15.1 million in 2025. First-quarter data for 2026 looked much like the second quarter’s. Penetration grew 8%, buy rate grew 6%, and e-commerce reached 16.1% of sales.
Concentration is high. Freshpet’s 2.6 million MVP households, 16% of its buyers, produced 71% of sales. Four years ago, the group numbered 1.2 million households and 11% of buyers.
Growth in new households has cooled from 19% in 2024 to 5% in the latest year. Chief Operating Officer Nicki Baty described a shift beyond trial toward a “more durable consumer franchise,” MarketBeat reported. The company’s internal model puts the pool of potential Freshpet households at 36 million as of 2025. “We believe we can reach 33 million households,” the company has said.
Results for the third quarter arrive on Wednesday, Nov. 4, before the opening bell, with a call at 8 a.m. Eastern. Management has flagged a drag of more than two points on reported growth for that quarter, which it tied to a club retailer’s expansion and to Independence Day ordering in 2025. The bottom of the full-year sales range assumes the economy stays as it is.
Who Owns the Shares
InsiderSet’s data for the quarter ended June 30 list BlackRock, two Vanguard entities, Wellington, State Street and Armistice among Freshpet’s institutional holders. BlackRock’s position carried a reported value of $347.99 million, the largest of that group. Vanguard Portfolio Management held 2,936,578 shares and Vanguard Capital Management 2,227,464. Wellington’s position was valued at $167.29 million and State Street’s at $94.78 million.
At each of the four large managers, Freshpet accounts for well under 0.1% of each firm’s reported holdings. Armistice has a much larger allocation. By InsiderSet’s math, the stock made up 2.06% of the fund’s reported long equity positions. StockZoa, which adds the fund’s index options to the denominator, calculates 0.9%. The dollar values for the June quarter reflect a Freshpet share price of $59.12, the figure StockZoa applies to the filing.
Freshpet is Armistice’s largest consumer holding. Its 325 positions at June 30 included Amazon at $68 million, Uber at $36 million, Crocs at $13 million, e.l.f. Beauty and Airbnb at $11 million apiece, Best Buy at $9.7 million, and Nike and Starbucks at $7 million each. Among those, Airbnb, e.l.f. and Best Buy saw the largest percentage increases during the quarter. Starbucks was a new position.
Armistice’s Freshpet stake has moved in both directions this year. Arkolith’s review of the first-quarter filing showed the fund reduced the position, which was valued at $64.5 million on March 31. Over the following three months, Armistice added shares and lifted its count by 15%. Holdings as of Sept. 30 will appear in the next round of 13F filings in November.
Fresh as a Segment
All-channel retail sales of fresh dog food total about $2 billion, by William Blair’s estimate, or 8% of the category. Fresh compounded at 28% a year in measured retail from 2021 to 2025, and at about 30% across every channel. “Clearly fresh dog food has been, and should continue to be, the growth engine for the category,” the analysts wrote.
Companies in the business disagree on how large it can get. General Mills has put current fresh sales at “more than $3 billion in retail sales today” and sees a path to $10 billion within 10 years, the report noted. Chewy’s estimate lands “somewhere in the $8 billion to $12 billion range” over the next several years.
Most households have never bought fresh. William Blair found that only a low-double-digit percentage had, against roughly 60% that buy dog food of any type. Fresh buyers spent $120 to $130 annually on fresh, compared with about $300 that a typical dog food buyer spends on the whole category.
Inside measured retail, Freshpet holds about 95% of fresh dog food sales. It generates about 26% more sales for each point of distribution than the category’s biggest brand. On breadth, Freshpet trails, with all-commodity-volume distribution of 60% versus 79% for the leader and 1,104 total distribution points versus 3,689.
Refrigerators, Production Lines and Trucks
Branded refrigerators inside retail stores carried 78% of Freshpet’s delivered sales as of June 30. The company sold through 30,721 stores at quarter-end, an increase of 286 since March. One fridge stands in three out of four of those stores, and the rest have two or three. Year over year, store count and fridge count each rose 5% and refrigerated cubic footage 6%. Total distribution points climbed 13%.
New formats are part of the plan. Freshpet has set a target of 700 or more rural lifestyle outlets by December, and a third club-store item is in test, MarketBeat reported. The company runs 33 larger “Fridge Islands” and does not plan a material increase in that number this year.
Competing coolers are going in. General Mills took Love Made Fresh, a Blue Buffalo line sold in tubs and rolls, national in October 2025. Its sales grew 80% in fiscal 2026’s final quarter and then 30% in the opening quarter of fiscal 2027, and the line sat in roughly 6,000 refrigerated cases, McNabb said, according to Petfood Industry. The rollout had problems. A resealable stand-up pouch was not ready at launch because of supply chain issues, and stores needed more frequent restocking visits than planned, Petfood Industry reported. General Mills has since added Tender Meatball recipes and ran a “Dog Tax Credit” promotion in March. William Blair counted close to 39,000 Freshpet fridges in early 2026. Mars sells fresh food under Cesar, Royal Canin and Nom Nom. The Farmer’s Dog leads fresh frozen food shipped directly to consumers.
Freshpet makes its food in three kitchens. Sixteen lines run today, and the build-out plan calls for 24. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has all seven of its lines in place. Kitchen South has four of seven, and Ennis, Texas, five of 10. A new bag technology on three lines is still being optimized, and Freshpet projects that it will add roughly a quarter point of gross margin this year and upward of a full point once it runs at full efficiency. Cyr said Freshpet has “ample capacity to support projected demand this year and much of 2027.”
Freight got more expensive in the quarter. Logistics climbed to 6.9% of net sales from 5.7% on fuel prices and scarce trucking capacity, MarketBeat reported. Media spending declined to 13.4% of sales from 15%. Digital orders jumped 41%, and e-commerce made up 16.7% of sales.
Consumers are spending carefully. Cyr cited costlier gasoline and softer consumer confidence as reasons shoppers have become more hesitant to trade up in pet food. Price and mix subtracted 2 points from Freshpet’s first-quarter growth, when net sales climbed 13.1% to $297.6 million, and 0.2 point in the second. Finance chief John O’Connor told analysts the company would “remain cautiously optimistic with our outlook for the remainder of the year given the volatile macro environment.”
