Manufacturer record

Stella & Chewy's, LLC

1 plant

Nutritionist

Unknown

Quality control

Documented

Publishes research

Transparency

Answers-publicly

Owns its plants

Yes

Credibility score

11 / 20

Credibility scored on the 20-point WSAVA tier, High confidence. An unverified field scores at half credit, never zero. How this feeds the grade →

Brands they own

Stella & Chewy's

Recall history

Date	Class	What	Brands named
2015-12	II	Listeria monocytogenes	Stella & Chewy's
2015-07	II	Listeria monocytogenes	Stella & Chewy's

Recall events in the last 10 years weigh most; older events decay. Repeat events in the 10-year window: 0.

The detail

OWNERSHIP: Founded 2003 by Marie Moody (in her NYC apartment, after her dog Chewy recovered on a raw diet). The company is PE-backed, not a subsidiary of an operating pet-food parent (so parent_company is null). Best-sourced position: growth-equity firm Stripes has held Stella & Chewy's 'since 2013' and classifies it as a 'Growth Buyout' (i.e. controlling/majority-type stake), co-invested with Convergent Capital Partners; Moody is still listed as Founder and remains involved. A secondary blog (thefishandbone.com, 2025) instead claims a 2015 acquisition by Catterton/L Catterton; this is NOT corroborated by the PE-tracking sources (Stripes.co, Mergr, PitchBook, privateequityinfo all point to Stripes/Convergent since 2013) and is treated as an UNRESOLVED discrepancy, leaning Stripes. Leadership: Marie Moody served as interim CEO May 2024-June 2025 after Marc Hill resigned; Jay Thompson was appointed CEO on 2025-06-30. WSAVA DRIVERS: who_formulates marked 'credentialed' because S&C states consistently across its own materials that products are 'formulated by an animal nutritionist and reviewed by a veterinarian,' with 'an animal nutritionist with their PhD in animal nutrition' on the team; HOWEVER the individual is never named, so qualified_nutritionist is left 'unknown' (cannot verify employment status staff-vs-consultant, the specific PhD, or any ACVN/ECVCN board certification; this is a sourced CLAIM, not a verified named credential). substantiation_policy 'formulation-only': S&C explicitly states it substantiates 'complete and balanced' via nutrient-profile formulation, NOT AAFCO feeding trials, and its help center states it 'does not feel that feeding trials are the best, or the most scientific way' to ensure adequacy (WSAVA prefers feeding trials, so this is a weakness under the WSAVA lens). qc 'documented': S&C is SQF (Safe Quality Food, GFSI-recognized third-party) certified, applies High-Pressure Processing (HPP) to raw products, batch-tests every batch for Salmonella/E. coli/Listeria, and publishes a per-lot Certificate of Analysis lookup on its site; this is a more documented finished-product pathogen program than most makers, though note two 2015 Listeria recalls were triggered by STATE surveillance finding Listeria in already-released product, so the documented program is not infallible. publishes_research 'no': no peer-reviewed companion-animal nutrition research found; the company holds a food-safety PROCESS patent (HPP + plasma surface sanitation) but that is not nutrition research. transparency 'answers-publicly': extensive public help center + blog addressing formulation, the feeding-trial question, HPP, SQF, per-lot COAs, and the DCM/grain-free concern.

Sources

AI-assisted research, pending human review · 2026-07-05