Marleybones, the London-based dog food startup built around shelf-stable “Pantry Fresh” meals, has expanded into over 400 Pets at Home stores and online in the largest retail deal in the company’s history.
The startup’s full nine-SKU range, including chicken, lamb, beef and salmon meals, 12 packs, and two variety box formats, will be on shelves nationwide for the first time, and the company describes the expansion as a “milestone”, carrying through the next chapter in its mission to make fresh, nutritious feeding simpler and more accessible.
Landing at hundreds of Pets at Home locations at once puts the brand’s full range of gently-cooked recipes in front of a wider slice of Britain’s estimated 13.5 million dog owners, especially at a moment when fresh and premium dog food continues to emerge as one of the fastest growing corners of the UK pet food market.
“From day one, our mission has been to make better nutrition easier for more dogs and the people who love them,” said Josephine Rode Bager, co-founder of Marleybones.
“Launching nationally with Pets at Home is an incredibly exciting milestone because it brings Pantry Fresh nutrition within reach of families across the UK. We’re proud to partner with a retailer that shares our commitment to helping pets live happier, healthier lives.”
“Fresh” becomes priority for dog owners
Ultimately, Marleybones’ pitch is convenience without compromise: the meals are cooked in-pack at roughly 89°C, a lower-heat method the company says preserves nutrients while leaving the food shelf-stable. This entails no freezer space, defrosting or subscription required.
The recipes are built around real meat, vegetables, superfoods and gut-friendly prebiotics, which scholars have found to be “generally linked” to better fecal scores and healthier short-chain fatty acid levels.
The brand traces its origins to Marley, a cocker spaniel with a sensitive stomach belonging to co-founders Bager and Mikala Skov, whose difficulty in finding the food he could tolerate pushed the pair to develop their own recipes. Since its founding in 2020, Marleybones has built a customer base of more than 12,000 customers, and holds a 4.8 rating on Trustpilot.
“We created Marleybones because we believed fresh feeding shouldn’t be complicated. Today’s pet parents want food they can feel good about feeding every day, but they also need convenience that fits into real life,” said Skov.
And the timing tracks with a broader shift in how UK owners feed their dogs. 70% of UK dog owners now consider their pets full family members, a mindset which Mordor Intelligence links to rising spend on premium, minimally-processed food even as overall household budgets tighten.
Unsurprisingly, then, the UK dog food market is on track to grow from £3 billion ($4 billion USD) to £4 billion ($5.3 billion USD) by the early 2030s, with premiumization, not volume, driving most of that growth. Meanwhile, Statista’s data on UK pet spending shows the same pattern from a different angle: total consumer spend on pets rose by more than £4 billion between 2021 and 2024 alone, even as the average household’s weekly pet food outlay remained modest.
In sum: owners are trading up in quality rather than simply buying more.
A nutritional case for gentler cooking methods, much like probiotic ingredients, have peer-reviewed backing. A University of Illinois study, for one, found that dog food made with human-grade ingredients and processed at lower temperatures was highly digestible.
Researchers also compared frozen raw, freeze dried, fresh and extruded kibble in 2024, and found that dietary format meaningfully affects digestibility and gut microbiota composition in dogs.
Why Pets at Home
The retailer Marleybones picked is not just another set of shelves, but the UK’s leading pet care brand, running more than 460 stores, over 350 grooming salons, and close to 500 veterinary practices across the country, largely under an omnichannel model that folds retail, grooming, and clinical vet care into the same physical locations.
That structure is deliberate: the company has been converting sites into larger “pet centers” that combine all three under one roof with the aim of building repeat visits and deepening customer relationships across a pet’s lifetime.
Dani Lowry, head of category at Pets at Home, framed the deal in similar terms. “We’re always looking to bring innovative, high-quality products to our customers, and Marleybones is a fantastic addition to our dog food range,” she said.
“As more pet owners seek convenient ways to feed their dogs nutritious food, we’re pleased to be working with a growing brand that is helping to meet that demand.”
Pets at Home’s advice-led retail model, which considers staff trained to talk through diet decisions, not just ring up a sale, is arguably a harder distribution channel to win than a supermarket shelf.
An increasingly crowded category
Marleybones isn’t launching into an empty field. Fresh and human grade formats are one of the UK pet food industry’s clearest growth drivers, alongside rising e-commerce adoption. Industry coverage of the fresh and raw segment specifically, however, has traditionally been commanded by a handful of players, with one benchmark report estimating it as a roughly £200 million slice of the wider market.
The scale of this rollout gives Marleybones something most of that competition doesn’t have easily: a shopper who can pick the product off a shelf, no subscription or cold-chain delivery required.
And it’s also a bet on timing. 76% of UK dog owners say they never travel without their dog, according to a survey by DogFriendly Magazine, and campsite operator WCF, and Skyes Holiday Cottegas reported that dog-friendly bookings made up 31% of its 2026 reservations, part of a wider UK staycation boom.
Six years after Bager first built recipes around one dog’s upset stomach, Marleybones is now betting on retail infrastructure it didn’t build itself; the same wager most founder-led food brands eventually have to make once demand for what a small team makes outpaces what the team can deliver alone.
Marleybones’ Pantry Fresh range is available now at Pets at Home, marleybones.com, and Waitrose, Ocado, Co-op, and Whole Foods Market.
Featured image: via Marleybones
Disclosure: This article mentions clients of an Espacio portfolio company.
