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!