10/09/2026
Whoa Nelly turns 10!!! ๐ฅณ
Feels like an amazing achievement! And while it's taken an enormous amount of work, we're absolutely stoked to have so many people and dogs loving our food - and to be making a real improvement to the quality of dogs' lives.
We made our first batch of food in 2016 at the legendary Wandering Cooks commercial kitchen in South Brisbane. I think 4 orders went out that week and we were just so pumped!
Since then we tried the markets (3am start was hectic!), doing demos at various doggie daycares, ended up moving into our own kitchen in Boondall to increase production capacity, and acquired a fancy mincer and delivery truck. We continue to grow at a pretty healthy rate, which is no small feat in this extremely challenging economic climate.
We actually still have a customer from our third week of business - hi Phillipa! ๐๐
We are now QLD's #1 rated dog food on Google (and people tell me ChatGPT too). We have a perfect 5.0/5 star rating across 123 reviews, I think because we actually care and put the effort in to make genuinely amazing food. Plus if you have a question or a problem I'm only a phone call away.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to leave a review. They mean a lot.
We now deliver across Brisbane and SEQ, as well as all the way down to Sydney. Our blog is consistently rated in the FeedSpot Top 50 worldwide, with several of our articles ranking #1 on Google. Our aim is to gently educate humans so they can make better choices for their dog's health.
I always say my job is simply to look after every dog that comes into my world. Often that is with our food, but that's not always the solution. I always just give honest advice to help the dog live a better life, whatever that is. I figure if we actually look after dogs the business stuff will look after itself.
It's been an incredibly rewarding journey, and waaaay more work than we could have possibly imagined ๐
๐๐ก๐ฒ ๐๐ ๐๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ญ๐๐
We started Whoa Nelly because all the commercial dog food we looked at was either processed junk food or poorly formulated raw with low quality ingredients. Tory is a Human Nutritionist (with a science degree) so we began with a very clear idea of making the food we wanted to feed Nelly.
It took a couple of years of testing formulations before we thought about selling it to anyone. We've learned a lot, and continue to learn and make tweaks as we go.
We're always trying to make our food better!
Our ethos with Whoa Nelly has always been simple: to make optimally formulated raw food with a focus on gut health, made using organic ingredients and functional foods, and packaged in the most eco friendly way possible.
Because that's what we want - and as it turns out so do you guys ๐ฅน
I qualified as a Canine Nutritionist in 2019, and spent a few years doing private clinical consultations which massively improved my skills and knowledge. And it confirmed our basic premise: dogs' health improves simply by fixing the fundamentals of the diet. In most cases we find that improving the diet fixes the health problem completely. And in the majority of other cases, carefully targeted functional foods can make a huge difference.
Nelly is 14 now and has eaten our food for the last 12 years (since we got her). The proof is in the pudding! She is vibrant, happy and fit. Easily the healthiest "senior" dog I've met.
Can't ask for more than that.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ฑ๐ญ ๐๐ก๐๐ฉ๐ญ๐๐ซ
So what happens next?
Well, I'm currently slowly rebuilding our website. The new fancy feeding calculator looks great, and there's also lots of other stuff going on under the hood to make the overall customer experience smoother. We're a small business so this stuff takes time, but we're slowly getting there.
We're also working on improving our tools for subscribers. Hopefully we'll have some excellent news for subscribers early next yearโฆ ๐ค
Of course we're outgrowing our current kitchen so there is a big jump we'll have to make in the coming years, which will be scary but also amazing and necessary. It takes an enormous amount of money to set up a commercial kitchen facility so we're saving for that.
We want to reach as many dogs as we can and hopefully make the same positive impact on their lives as we have for your dog. And do it for the long term. Which means reducing the physical workload on us as we get older.
At the end of the day, we're just making the food that we want to feed Nelly. That's been the guiding principle the whole time, and it keeps things simple. We always strive to do the very best we can with our formulation, ingredient selection and packaging.
Because that's the food we want to feed our beautiful girl.
๐๐จ๐ฎ ๐๐ฎ๐ฒ๐ฌ ๐๐จ๐๐ค! ๐ค
Thank you so much for all your support over the many years of Whoa Nelly. We are so lucky to have met lots of you lovely people and your dogs, and are truly blessed to have such genuinely excellent humans as our customers.
Seriously, you guys rock.
Without you we don't have a business. We appreciate you all.
Our commitment remains the same. We promise to keep making the very best food for your dog that we can.
Thank you for our first 10 years of Whoa Nelly! Here's to the next decade โค๏ธ๐๐บ
