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After getting out of bed and making himself a coffee one morning in 2012, Rodney Habib opened his computer and was greeted by 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 recorded on his timeline, he soon started to understand that “99+” would be a massive understatement.
The previous night, Habib had arranged all of the ingredients in a bag of commercial dog food on white plates, including corn gluten meal, chicken byproduct and dye colouring. He took an image of the unappetizing result, labelled the ingredients and posted it on Facebook.
What became of my dog literally changed my whole life
“I kept scrolling and scrolling. It was endless. I had been like, what’s going on?” Habib said. “I looked down in the counter and saw half a million shares and thought, ‘My dear God.’”
You might not have heard of Habib’s Planet Paws Pet Essentials, a little pet food store in the community of Dartmouth over the harbour from Halifax. But judging by its Facebook reach, it’s one of the most powerful brands in the country.
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 increased Facebook likes than Planet Paws: Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Air Canada, Cirque du Soleil and Shoppers Drug Mart.
Habib is making use of an increasing skepticism of the health and safety of processed commercial commercial dog food, which mirrors a similar trend for human food made with fresh and 100 % natural ingredients. “THE MOST DANGEROUS PET CHEW EVER: RAWHIDE!” reads certainly one of his posts; “TURMERIC PASTE: THE POTION OF LONGEVITY,” reads the outlet shot of a video.
Habib is a proponent of the raw food diet for dogs, a trend that currently represents just 1.6 per cent of U.S. pet food sales but grew by 33 per cent annually in 2015, according to researching the market firm GfK.
This trend runs counter to recommendations in the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and also 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 proof of any health advantages. He said people are right to inquire concerning the food they feed their pets since the Canadian industry is underregulated, but urged them to make decisions according to science and evidence.
“People are always searching for that panacea. And unfortunately, raw meals are not the panacea for pets,” Joffe said. “This whole topic, unfortunately, is much like arguing about religion. You’re not 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 instance, 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 finished up researching and learning what those treats did to her.”
At the time, manufacturers recalled a large number of commercial dog food products contaminated with melamine, associated with ingredients imported from China. It’s unclear just how many pets died, but some estimates put it in the thousands.
Maria Lange, who analyzes your pet retail niche for GfK, said the melamine-tainted pet food scandal that started in 2007 sparked an interest in natural commercial dog food that has grown from a trend to the norm, with the US$5.5-billion category representing 70 per cent of pet food sales in the U.S. in 2015.
Another factor fuelling natural dog-food sales is the fact that young people in delaying childbirth are treating their pets like family members. Consequently, they’re more prepared to spend top dollar and intensively research what to feed them, Lange said. “You care for it so much, would you like 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 awaken each morning, focus on his Facebook page, take his three dogs out 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 full of quality, especially considering he’s working on their own without any formal training.
For all his effort, Habib doesn’t make any money in the Facebook page directly. He said he’s committed to keeping it free from ads, despite getting pitches from people trying to convince him to publish their “offers and marketing gimmicks” every day.
He also spends about 50 % an hour each 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 explained.
Habib said he gets about 250,000 Facebook messages each week from people around the world asking questions about pet nutrition, including where to buy the products he blogs about. He’d prefer to launch an online store so he can ship his products across the country, since sales are currently confined to individuals who can click on Planet Paws in person, but he’s being kept busy enough with the store and also the Facebook pages.
Planet Paws has four employees and Habib said sales have been growing every month since he opened it in 2012 – so quickly that he couldn’t say by how much. “I have to hire an accountant,” he explained.
Habib recently migrated the Planet Paws Facebook page to the social network’s Mentions app, which is only available to verified celebrities and politicians. Making no mistake, within this corner around the globe, he is a high profile. Facebook even invited him to speak at an event last year, where he gave tips to other business people on using Facebook effectively.
“If you wish to be able to reach all the people on the planet, then you have to visit where everyone in the world are,” Habib said. “And Facebook may be the biggest platform in the world. There’s nothing bigger.”
cbrownell@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/clabrow
