Frankie the King: The Best way to feed your companion.
Pet humanization is an unstoppable trend, pets are one more member of the family, and when I discovered that business model, I thought, everybody knows that one of the most important things to be healthy is a varied diet, but pets eat the same kibble every day, so if people have a convenient alternative, nobody would feed their “children” dry food every day.
I’m not a pet lover but talking about this model with my close friend Pablo Pazos, the founder of Barkibu, I understood how the trend of feeding pets with human-grade food is growing very quickly in markets like the USA or UK. Ventures like Myollie ($17M Funding), Freshpet (listed Nasdaq), NomNomNow ($13M Funding), The Farmer’s Dog ($49,1M Funding), PetPlate that just closed its Series C on February 24th for $9M, all of them in the USA, and Butternutbox ($28M funding before this Series C in February of this year with L Catterton Europe for $25M), in the UK. Pablo and I were convinced that this category would be a huge opportunity.
I met Javier Estevez, the founder of Frankie, in his last venture, Carrick Bracelets, that with his partner Brais achieved an extraordinary outcome with very few resources. I was their advisor and I feel that both of them are great entrepreneurs and they like me a lot. After Javi left Carrick, I told him about this business model and the opportunity to launch a European player from Spain. Javi loved that idea, launched it, and Pablo and I support him.
After that, Jaoquín Rodriguez joined Javi as a co-founder, he is the perfect complement for the venture. Joaquin was a former Associate at Deloitte and is the person that manages all finances and operations, which is especially relevant in this business model.
We have a great team with a good idea, now we can start to do the magic. At that moment when Frankie started, we were in the middle of launching Lanai2, but when I introduced the venture to my partners, Guille and Jeroen, they liked the business model and they decided to invest as Business Angels as well. Other well-known entrepreneurs like Eloi Gomez from Jeff, Andrés Casal from Wetaca, and also Kiwoko, the biggest pet retailer in Spain invested in the company too.
But what is exactly Frankie the King. Frankie is a subscription model of personalized human-grade food for pets. After completing a detailed quiz about your pet you will receive monthly frozen packs of food to feed your companion. The pets love it, if you do a blind test, between normal kibble and Frankie, the winner is clear, the dog devours Frankie and doesn’t want any more dry food. And obviously the quality is not comparable, better food means better health and a longer happier life.
And another very important point is that veterinary professionals are asking for fresh products to address a range of health issues, including obesity. And this is exactly what Frankie is offering, a product that is personalized to meet the unique needs of each dog. The Frankie meals are cooked, frozen and packaged in personalized portions depending on each dog’s size, age, breed, activity level, target weight, and allergies.
Currently, after 12 months Frankie can demonstrate that there is a strong demand for this product in Spain, their MRR is growing continuously at 15 % MoM with very few resources spent in marketing.
In Lanai Partners we have the opportunity to validate this model with two seasoned partners in this field, Alvaro Gutierrez Cofounder of Kiwoko and Joaquin Engel M&A Director of Agrolimen, the holding owner of Affinity. Both of them are convinced that the market is going in this path, and we reckon that Frankie will be the player that captures this opportunity. We have invested in Frankie and we are very proud to support them to increase the happiness and health of pets in the world.
