After waking up and making himself an espresso one morning in 2012, Rodney Habib opened his computer and was greeted with a barrage of red notification icons.
His email program warned him it had reached maximum capacity. His Facebook notification counter, meanwhile, simply read “99+.” Scrolling down on his timeline, he started to understand that “99+” would be a massive understatement.
The previous night, Habib had arranged all of the ingredients in a bag of business dog food on white plates, including corn gluten meal, chicken byproduct and dye colouring. He took a picture from the unappetizing result, labelled the components and posted it on Facebook.
What became of my dog literally changed my whole life
“I kept scrolling and scrolling. It had been endless. I had been like, what’s going on?” Habib said. “I looked down in the counter and saw 500,000 shares and thought, ‘Oh my God.’”
You might not have heard about Habib’s Planet Paws Pet Essentials, a small pet food store locally of Dartmouth across the harbour from Halifax. But by its Facebook reach, it’s one of the most powerful brands in the united states.
The Planet Paws Facebook page has about 860,000 likes, appearing in 110 million newsfeeds every six days. The Financial Post could only find five Canadian brands with more Facebook likes than Planet Paws: Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Air Canada, Cirque du Soleil and Shoppers Drug Mart.
Habib is tapping into a growing skepticism from the safety and health of processed commercial pet food, which mirrors a similar trend for human food made with fresh and 100 % natural ingredients. “THE MOST DANGEROUS PET CHEW EVER: RAWHIDE!” reads one of his posts; “TURMERIC PASTE: THE POTION OF LONGEVITY,” reads the outlet shot of the video.
Habib is a proponent of a raw food diet for dogs, a trend that currently represents just 1.6 percent of U.S. commercial dog food sales but grew by 33 percent year over year in 2015, based on researching the market firm GfK.
This trend runs counter to recommendations in the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
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Calgary veterinarian Danny Joffe co-authored overview of studies examining raw food diets for pets that found no evidence of any health benefits. He said people are right to ask questions concerning the food they feed their pets since the Canadian industry is underregulated, but urged these to make decisions according to science and evidence.
“People are always searching for that panacea. And unfortunately, raw food is not the panacea for pets,” Joffe said. “This complete topic, unfortunately, is like arguing about religion. You’re never going to win.”
But public health position statements and scientific literature reviews don’t have the emotional impact or massive social reach of stories about owners who believe their pets’ lives were saved after switching to raw food. For example, Habib believes a raw diet and care from an integrative, or holistic, veterinarian in 2008 saved his first dog’s life after she got so sick from treats tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical, that traditional veterinarians recommended he put her down.
“What went down to my dog literally changed my very existence,” Habib said. “I ended up researching and learning what those treats did to her.”
At time, manufacturers recalled thousands of commercial dog food products contaminated with melamine, associated with ingredients imported from China. It’s unclear exactly how many pets died, however, many estimates place it in the thousands.
Maria Lange, who analyzes the pet retail niche for GfK, said the melamine-tainted commercial dog food scandal that started in 2007 sparked an interest in natural pet food that has grown from the trend to the norm, using the US$5.5-billion category representing 70 percent of commercial dog food sales within the U.S. in 2015.
Another factor fuelling natural dog-food sales is that young adults in delaying childbirth are treating their pets like family members. As a result, they’re more willing to spend a premium price and intensively research what to feed them, Lange said. “You care for it so much, so you want to feed it the best possible food.”
Habib finds success by feeding the growing appetite for pet food information. In a typical day, he’ll wake up each morning, focus on his Facebook page, take his three dogs to play at 11 a.m. and return to Facebook. Within the late afternoon, he’ll visit Planet Paws, where he usually remains until 10 p.m.
Habib said he runs the Facebook page entirely on their own, which includes making all of the content he posts. His infographics and videos are impressively high in quality, especially considering he’s focusing on his own without any formal training.
For all his hard work, Habib doesn’t make anything from the Facebook page directly. He said he’s dedicated to keeping it free from ads, despite getting pitches from people attempting to convince him to post their “offers and marketing gimmicks” every day.
He also spends about 50 % an hour or so every day preparing meals for his dogs from local, ethically-raised meat, organic vegetables, oils, seeds and nuts. “It’s called slow food. It’s how our parents and grandparents ate,” he said.
Habib said he gets about 250,000 Facebook messages each week from people all over the world asking them questions about pet nutrition, including where you can purchase the products he blogs about. He’d like to launch a web-based store so he can ship his products across the nation, since sales are presently confined to people who can click on Planet Paws personally, but he’s being kept busy enough using the store and also the Facebook pages.
Planet Paws has four employees and Habib said sales have been growing each month since he opened it this year – so quickly that he couldn’t say by how much. “I have to hire a cpa,” he said.
Habib recently migrated the Planet Paws Facebook page towards the social network’s Mentions app, which is only available to verified celebrities and politicians. Making no mistake, in this corner of the world, he’s a high profile. Facebook even invited him to speak at an event last year, where he gave ideas to other business people on using Facebook effectively.
“If you want to be able to reach everyone on the planet, then you have to visit where all the people on the planet are,” Habib said. “And Facebook may be the biggest platform in the world. There’s nothing bigger.”
cbrownell@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/clabrow
