VIVA RAW

Jennifer Wu and Zach Ao Hillsborough, North Carolina Three-year growth rate: 5,670%

- ANNABEL BURBA

Jennifer Wu isn't afraid to admit that she pampers her dog. After purchasing their Rhodesian ridgeback, Karoo, in 2018, Wu, 28, and her partner, Zach Ao, 29, strove to give her “the best of everything.” That meant taking her on long walks, buying her the best toys, and preparing her homemade meals of raw meat. When the pandemic hit, the couple, who were both working in tech as project managers, finally had the space to consider what they really wanted to do next. The answer, Wu and Ao realized, was helping other pet parents provide their dogs and cats with high-quality food. The U.S. raw pet food market has grown significantly since then, and so has Viva Raw: In 2021, the brand made less than $500,000 in revenue. Last year, it made north of $10 million. Here, Wu explains how.

One mentality that stuck with us from our tech background is: Work in very small increments and get fast feedback. Following that philosophy, in 2020, we got people to preorder from us by creating a Google Form and sharing it in local Facebook groups. Then, we went to farms and were like, “Can you sell us 50 pounds of chicken and 50 pounds of rabbit?” Thanksgiving of that year, we spent the whole weekend in a commercial kitchen grinding and processing a bunch of meat with home-scale kitchen equipment, and then we drove around North Carolina delivering to five people.