Bringing it all back home.

Our heart and soul will always remain in San Francisco, it's where smallbatch was created and where we drew so much inspiration and gained so much love, support and strength, the place that put us on this journey. A few months ago, we decided to move our facility back to where it all started, back in San Francisco. Unfortunately, this is not an easy task otherwise we would of done it a long time ago! It's not as easy as moving your house or office, it requires build out, applying for grants, inspections, more inspections from city, state etc. In the interim, while things are sorted out, we are working hard to iron out the necessary tasks at hand. We're continuing the processing of our formulas up in Oregon, where we do our Pacific North West production. Since we don’t make large batches of food and store it, timing of materials, production and delivery have to be in-sync. Because of this, we'd like to apologize in advance...if you go to your local store and find yourself in a pickle because they're out of your dog or cat's favorite smallbatch flavor or product don't freak out. Just hang tight and know we are working our tails off to sort it all out and make it all work for everyone in a timely fashion. As always thank you for the tremendous amount of support and love.

see ya in two shakes of a lamb's tail, San Francisco! 

woof & meow, 

-the smallbatch team 

Ash in food

This is volcanic ash. This is not the same ash found in our pet food!

Every now and then we'll get a phone call or email from a concerned customer inquiring about the ash content in our food. Questions such as...do you really add ash to your products? or...is it the same stuff you find in your fireplace?

To this is there is an easy reply, ash isn't what it sounds like. So what is ash? It is the total mineral content in food and every food has ash regardless of whether it is raw or processed(kibble or can). The ash reported on a label represents the total of all minerals found in that food. These minerals are calcium, iron, magnesium, sodium, zinc along with trace amounts of others. Generally, any natural food will have less than 5% sometimes up to 8% ash in content while processed foods have ash content of 10-14%.

Pet owners become easily confused and concerned with ash specially cat owners, as vets will sometimes recommend they only purchase foods low in ash (high ash content is often associated to feline lower urinary tract disease). Sometimes people will take it further and want to do whatever it takes to nearly eliminate ash completely not knowing exactly what their vet really means. Because ash is made up of essential mineral nutrients, feeding too little can lead to a mineral deficiency and cause other health problems in their pets. 

We can probably get into many different discussions just by explaining ash, perhaps we'll save some topics for future posts! 

Meet Purl

Hey, it's Purl!

Hi world!

Two new flavors were added to our cat slider line, turkey and lamb. Although we had a mix of opinions from customers on which should be the next two, we ultimately went with the opinion of none other than an actual feline. Of course, we plan on adding more flavors to the line and soon everyone will be pleased, but this time around our feedback came from a very finicky source. 

Let us introduce you to one of the smallbatch head honchos, her name is Purl and she is quite delightful. She came to us from a litter of rescued cats and has been on raw food since she was weaned from her mother. She is athletic, incredibly sweet, head huntress, pillow warmer, a lover not a fighter. And she is by all means, a true finicky eater. We have another boss cat around who eats all of our flavors, including the dog batches and blends, complete opposite of little miss picky pants. 

Purl's favorite of the two new flavors is the lamb. We know, when on earth would a domestic cat take down a lamb out in the wild? Although we do try to mimic a prey diet let's face it, never would their food be perfectly formed into sliders and served to them on pretty little dishes, mother nature doesn't offer fancy dining. The lamb we use in all of our products is not only grass fed and free range, it is never placed in feedlots or given hormones or antibiotics. This is an incredibly important aspect for us when sourcing not only our lamb but also all our other proteins. Imagine lambs that forage and eat on green pastures the way nature intended. Because they graze for long distances on large open pastures they are lean fit and healthy. Their diet consisting of wild grasses, herbs and rich alfalfa fields making,  them rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E and beta-carotene and much lower in fat than grain fed lamb. 

Sure, Purl likes the lamb sliders over the turkey ones, but that's because she's a red meat kinda girl. Our turkey also amazingly sourced, are never fed anything with animal by-products, GMO's, pesticides, chemicals, or synthetics and free of antibiotics and hormones. These turkeys, are allowed to roam in areas four times the size of commercial turkey ranches, they breed naturally, as well as run and even fly. Only healthy lean and nutritious turkeys here, full of amino acids, good lean protein, full of vitamins, and low in fat. 

For now, we can relax knowing we have pleased one finicky feline, but we know our work does not end here...there are many more to please and we will continue introducing new flavors!