A Third CEO Change Hits Pet Food in Three Weeks

Pet food's executive suite keeps turning over this summer. The natural-channel brand I and love and you added itself to the list this week, naming Dan Waters as chief executive just weeks after acquiring a rival cat food brand and hiring a celebrity chef.

I and love and you names Dan Waters as CEO

Waters has taken over as chief executive of I and love and you, the company said this week. He previously served as chief executive of Enjoy Life Foods and held chief marketing officer roles at Bel Brands across North America and Europe; his background also includes time at the chocolate brand Hu.

The appointment follows two moves the company made earlier this year: the acquisition of Made by Nacho, a culinary-focused cat food brand, and the addition of celebrity chef Bobby Flay as chief culinary officer. Michael Meyer, who had led the company as chief executive, moves into the chairman role.

The company says it has passed $100 million in annual retail sales and sells through more than 30,000 doors nationwide across natural, grocery, mass, and e-commerce channels. The natural pet food channel, once the exclusive province of independent brands like this one, has drawn increasing competition from mainstream players expanding upscale lines, raising the stakes for smaller companies trying to defend their shelf position.

Why leadership churn is hitting pet food brands now

This is the third pet-food leadership change The Underbite has tracked in roughly three weeks. Mars tapped a Coca-Cola executive to run its North American pet nutrition business in late July, and Phillips installed a grocery supply-chain veteran as chief executive just three months after its Central Garden distribution deal closed. All three moves share a theme: executives from outside the pet industry are being brought in to run pet food companies at a moment when growth increasingly depends on retail execution and supply chain discipline rather than product innovation alone.

Waters fits that pattern. His background is in consumer packaged goods marketing and brand turnarounds, not pet care specifically, and Enjoy Life Foods, the allergen-free snack brand he previously led, faced a problem similar to the one now facing his new employer: a loyal niche customer base that a larger, better-capitalized competitor could squeeze on price and distribution.

Some rough math helps size the operation Waters is inheriting. A little over $100 million in annual retail sales spread across more than 30,000 doors works out to roughly $3,300 in retail sales per door per year, on average, though actual sales almost certainly skew toward a smaller set of higher-volume locations. That's a modest per-door footprint next to national brands with tens of thousands more doors and deeper shelf commitments, and it's the kind of gap a new chief executive with large-CPG experience is typically brought in to close.

The timing lines up with consolidation pressure across the category. Agrolimen's purchase of Ollie and the string of private-equity deals moving through pet food distribution this summer both signal that independent brands without scale are becoming acquisition targets rather than long-term standalone players. A leadership change built around distribution and retail experience reads as a defensive move against that backdrop, not just a routine succession.

What Waters must prove in his first two quarters

The first real test will be whether the Made by Nacho deal and the Bobby Flay tie-in translate into shelf space gains rather than just marketing noise. Celebrity chef partnerships have a mixed record in pet food specifically: they generate press coverage quickly but don't always move a retail buyer's decision on which two or three natural brands get an end-cap.

Watch the door count over the next two quarters more than the revenue figure. Growing the retail footprint meaningfully beyond 30,000 doors without discounting into thinner margins would validate the bet that CPG-honed distribution experience was what the brand needed. If door count stalls while marketing spend rises around the Flay partnership, the Made by Nacho acquisition will look more like a cash-flow patch than the platform expansion the company is positioning it as.

Source: "I and love and you" via PR Newswire