Michael Meyer: CEO of I and love and you
Episode 847
On today’s episode, we welcome Michael Meyer, CEO of I and love and you — a leader who’s built his career spotting opportunities others overlook and turning them into category-defining brands.
From organic baby food to natural pet food, Michael has been at the center of major shifts in how consumers shop and what they expect. Now, he’s making a bold bet on one of the most underdeveloped spaces in the industry—premium cat food. With the recent acquisition of Made by Nacho and the addition of Bobby Flay as Chief Culinary Officer, Investor, and Board Member, the company is doubling down on a category that’s finally having its moment.
In this episode, Michael breaks down why cats—not dogs—represent one of the biggest growth opportunities in pet, how he built an omnichannel brand across natural, grocery, mass, and ecommerce, and what it takes to scale to 30,000+ retail doors without losing quality or trust. We also get into the reality of working with strategic investors like L Catterton, how to separate real partnerships from marketing noise, and why the best founders are the ones willing to make contrarian bets early.
This is a must listen.
Resources from
this episode:
Enjoying this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow? Let Kara know by clicking on the links below and sending her a quick shout-out on social!
Follow Kara on LinkedIn – Instagram – X – Facebook – TikTok – YouTube – Threads
Have a question for Kara about one of our episodes? Reach out to Kara directly at [email protected]
To learn more about Michael Meyer and I and love and you:
https://iandloveandyou.com/
https://www.instagram.com/iandloveandyoupet/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmeyerus/
Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control, control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go, let’s go. Hi everyone. everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Have you ever noticed how the biggest opportunities in business are often the ones everyone else is overlooking, the categories people assume are figured out? Well, because sometimes the real opportunity isn’t in doing what everyone else is doing, it’s in seeing what they’re not. So today’s guest has built a career doing exactly that, spotting white space in the market and joining companies, joining founders often to help build brands, build consumer spaces, and whether it’s in organic baby food, natural pet food. Our next guest has done just that throughout his career. So, Michael Meyer is with I and Love and You, an incredible pet brand that has done so much in the category. I absolutely love what they’ve done. I’ve watched them from afar for quite some time, and Michael Meyer has been the CEO of the company. He’s just recently making a little announcement. We’ll probably get into that, but I cannot wait to hear everything that he’s done to really build this business and build the category overall. So, Michael, welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Super excited to have you here.
Michael Meyer 2:07
Kara, thank you so much. It’s so great to reconnect.
Kara Goldin 2:10
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, for listeners just discovering the brand I and love and you, how do you describe the brand, and what makes it truly different and unique from other pet food in the market.
Michael Meyer 2:28
Sure. Well, first of all, it obviously, obviously starts with the name, right? So, I, and love, and you, right, is like the best, and for anybody who has a dog or a cat, they’re your plus one, right? They’re part of the family. What you want for yourself, you want for your best friend. And so that’s where the brand starts. The brand was actually founded in Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, and it was founded around natural food principles. So that first, first part, natural food. The second focus on dog and cat equally. Most pet brands are dog dominated and have a little cat or just cat. So this brand figured out how to resonate right with the dog and the cat owner. And then number three, the premise of the brand was to make it accessible to humans for where they shop for their own food, so, so this brand, this pet food brand, is not in a pet store, it’s in Kroger’s, it’s in Albertsons, it’s in Publix, it’s now online with Amazon and Thrive Market, and so it’s everywhere, they’re what we say everywhere, they’re human shop, so those are kind of the key points of differentiation within the brand.
Kara Goldin 3:46
So you joined the brand four years ago, and at a time when natural pet food and the category overall was still very much in its kind of growth phase. I mean, there’s been a number of pet brands over the years, and you’ve been a part of this industry overall for over 20 years now, which is incredible, but now I and love and you is is the number one independent pet food brand in the natural channel, so what do you think that you’ve gotten right with the brand and building the brand that maybe other founders listening can really learn from.
Michael Meyer 4:28
Yeah, so again it comes back to the founding of the brand, right? It was, it was built to resonate with the consumer to really understand what the consumer feels, they feel about their dog or cat, but also what they believe in, in terms of human food values. It all starts there. It goes right back to the founding days and is building upon that and expanding that in the market.
Kara Goldin 4:54
So you made a very intentional decision to build the brand across. Us multiple channels and become an omnichannel brand, so there are many CEOs who come in who might think, oh, we just have to be in mass, or maybe for a natural brand you’ve just got to really kill it in natural, or maybe even e-commerce, and just become a direct to consumer brand, that I think there’s less and less of that today, but I think there’s there’s an intentional decision that you’ve made to really make sure that you’re in all these channels. So, why was that decision? And sort of historically, can you talk a little bit about that, and kind of where the brand was, and where you grew it from there.
Michael Meyer 5:46
So, again, from the founding days, it was to bring much better pet food to the grocery aisle, to the center of the store, right? So that was the premise, but again, as we started interacting with our consumers, it became very apparent that those consumers shopped in multiple places, and so we really thought through, well, what is that next logical extension of the selling experience? Right, so conventional grocery, natural grocery with sprouts, right? If you go to a Sprouts, you can’t miss us. It’s an amazing display in Sprouts, as you said, the number number one independent brand in that channel. And then e-commerce – we probably leaned in maybe six years ago, so I was on the board. So I’ve been on the board since 2017 and then in the CEO position since 2022 and probably in maybe around 19 or 20 we said people are buying more and more online and let’s start to explore it we didn’t really know how big it could be everybody was learning but we leaned in we leaned in we hired a sales lead just to own that channel, and you know a founder of Wellness Pet Food, Jim Scott, used to say, we sell one bag at a time, one bag at a time, and it will grow, and that’s what we started, that’s what we did.
Kara Goldin 7:16
So you recently made a deal with a very famous chef, Bobby Flay, who has been involved in another brand made by Nacho. Can you talk about that, and sort of that combination that just went into effect?
Michael Meyer 7:35
Sure. We, well, first of all, we love the combination. We’ve known the brand for a number of years, it’s a nascent brand, it’s a young brand. So Nachos, maybe four or five years old, right? Lemon, you is 14 years old. They are very much in their toddler stage, and we’re in probably the young beginning to become an adult stage, right. And what we loved about the brand, well, two things we loved about the brand was that it shared the same cultural values as us, right? It’s got to be what’s best for baby, right, natural, and it has a culinary aspect to the offering, right? The taste profile, we loved that it’s in the cat space, the cat space, we’ve always believed in the cat space, as we said, we founded 5050 Dog and Cat, and to this day is 5050 Dog and Cat, and so we know there are more, actually, just now I think there are more cat households than dog households in the United States.
Kara Goldin 8:37
Interesting,
Michael Meyer 8:37
and the cat households, I think, grew double digits last year, right. So, there is a growing population of cat, and the cat has been somewhat neglected. The dog is dog is taking all of the, all of the press, and all of the headlines, so you know, leaning in and doubling up, as I like to say, on cat, and bringing that variety to our consumers, so the products you know, our products, I in love and you and Nacho’s products are very distinctive, and they’re very complementary. They’re complementary in different proteins, they’re complementary in different profiles. So I in Love in You is very strong in pates and stews, Nacho is very strong and minced and flaked, so that texture matters a lot to cats, and so having that variety of textures and flavor profiles is all about building that category.
Kara Goldin 9:34
So interesting, so when you look at the combined businesses, because this is a very small business, right, and you’re bringing it into a larger business. Obviously, there’s, you know, you’ve almost got to go back to the basics, because you can’t just put a small business in, you’ve got to build the brand, all of these things. What advice would you give to any founder who’s thinking I. About should I go and work with the celebrity on building the brand? Should I start another brand within my brand or go buy another brand? I mean, what are kind of the thinking that goes on, and I guess the risk as well.
Michael Meyer 10:16
Well, I think there’s a couple things. First of all, again, cultural fit critical and culture has to do with people and who people are and what people believe in, and if you don’t have the right alignment in terms of the brand beliefs, the product beliefs, even the way you interact with people beliefs, really, really critical, really is foundational. So it starts there, and the second is really thinking through what skill sets does each bring to the table, and you know, so, so for I in love and you and Nacho, what Bobby loves, Bobby and Ellie’s the co-founder too, there’s two individuals there, Bobby and Ellie felt that they had a brand that was beginning to resonate in the market, but how great would it be to be with a brand that can help them to deliver that product, so people, processes, systems, retailer relationships, broker relationships, manufacturing partner relationships, like all of that infrastructure takes takes a long time to build and to refine, and so it’s almost, it’s never as easy as that, but it’s almost a plugin. It’s like, okay, come on in, right? We’ll help to propel this brand together.
Kara Goldin 11:35
So you’ve been backed by firms, including El Caderton and growing multiple businesses, not just in the pets category, but also as we talked about Plum Organic. What advice would you give to founders who are maybe thinking about, do I go the private equity route? What do you think they’re looking for that maybe a founder might not be aware of knowing what you know today.
Michael Meyer 12:06
Yes, well, you know, again it comes back to people and relationships, and it’s a partnership, it’s a marriage, it’s a marriage. It might have two founders, co-founders in a business, that’s a marriage, and when you bring in a potentially a private equity partner that’s a shareholder, that’s another partner in the business, so you know that’s the first stop. Is do you, does everybody around the table have a shared sense of beliefs and a shared sense of where collectively those folks around the table can take the business and the brand to the next level. It could be a beautiful, wonderful thing, but if it’s not, if it’s not right, it may not be so. So you know it comes down to the people, and then you know private equity, and all private equity is a fancy name for capital. There’s different sources of capital, right? They could be bank capital, it could be capital that’s in private hands, it can be capital that’s in public hands, like an IPO. So it’s just a form of bringing capital, and then the key is like, how do you utilize the capital to build the business together with shared again, shared beliefs, shared values, and shared goals.
Kara Goldin 13:22
Is there time to bring in, I guess, private equity as well into a business, because I think that there’s, you know, as you, as you mentioned, there’s family offices, you know, there’s there’s different types of capital, but I think with private equity they’re typically not always, but they’re typically buying a majority right of the business, and, and definitely board seats, and all of that stuff that goes along, right, that goes along with it. But I get this question from founders all the time. I mean, do you bring in somebody like that when you’re a $5 million business, a $50 million business. It sounds like with Made by Nacho. I mean, it was pretty early, right?
Michael Meyer 14:08
Yeah, so they Nacho had private equity before we brought them into the business, and that private equity helped them to get to where they were, and I think you know, it’s all time and place, whether it’s a $5 million startup or it’s a $20 million you know, just getting its legs, you know, it really depends on the stage of the business, what and what capital is needed to drive the business, as opposed to how much you can raise, and at what valuation,
Michael Meyer 14:40
like
Michael Meyer 14:40
that’s secondary, the first is like what do we need, and how to, how do we deploy,
Kara Goldin 14:46
so interesting, so you’ve been involved in in numerous companies that have been growing over the years that some have been founder led initially, where you come into the. Companies others have sold as plum did when you were involved in in that company, so when you look at kind of maybe your successful road along the way, what like where do you try and get a brand to be? I mean, is it about growth, is it about profitability, is it like what are the key metrics for you that you feel are just you know that you’re doing the right thing for the brand
Michael Meyer 15:28
well again it starts with the consumer right do we feel we have an offering where there’s a need or want in the market for the product and a brand that can represent what that that that product stands for, so it starts there, and then there’s to your point, there’s growth, and then there’s profitability. I’m using my hands, the growth is at the top of the P and L, and the profit is at the bottom, but the middle is really important, which is called gross margin, right? So it’s a learning experience, I think, for a lot of people, but you want to sell the product, you want to want to get on shelf. It’s a tough world out there, right, and everybody’s vying for the lowest price and the highest margin for the retailers, and a lot of times founders and new brands get squeezed, and it’s really important for the founder to truly not lose sight of the value of the product and the brand that they’re building, and having the appropriate economics, because if you have the appropriate economics, meaning the price and the cost, and therefore the margin, if you have the proper economics, you can support the business. If you don’t have the proper economics and kind of give it all away, that that doesn’t help anybody either, so it’s just like don’t lose lose your passion and your head for, you know, what makes a good brand product in business,
Kara Goldin 16:57
and I think also the point about the consumer, right? So that consumer that had been there from the beginning, the loyal consumer, I think, is often confused by, you know, maybe too much innovation that I see some companies doing that they, you know, really want the new products launched, and maybe a grocery buyer has said, well, how about you know what? Do you have new in your bag, right? We’ve all heard it. Anybody who’s dealt with grocery buyers, and I think you just have to be really careful, because it starts to get too many SKUs or too much, and then lots of things start to fall apart, but how do you think about innovation and a category where trust is everything?
Michael Meyer 17:48
Yeah, well, innovation is very important. Innovation drives the category, innovation drives the business. We learn new things every day, but to your point, there’s a balance, and you know it’s important for a business to build its brand and product set and make sure that again those products resonate and that they turn and that they grow, and then the innovation supports the brand, and you know, when you’re on shelf in the store, you can’t just keep taking products on and off and on and off, right? You have to build that trust, trust to your point, trust in the brand, trust in delivery, trust that that product’s going to be there, but then also believing in the brand, that the brand will bring more innovation, you know, as, as, as the market continues to grow, so it’s just about balance.
Kara Goldin 18:43
So, what does a great brand look like today in pet versus maybe five or 10 years ago?
Michael Meyer 18:50
Yeah, I think, well, a couple things: natural, right, natural real ingredients. So, when we talk about real ingredients, it’s like real meat versus everything, but meat. It’s you knowing the providence of your ingredients. It’s exploring different form factors, you know. And I in love and you, we explore what’s called a baked product. A baked kibble is made like a biscuit, right, but it’s food, and it has bone broth, the dried bone broth coating. You add water, and it makes a gravy. How beautiful is that, right? You know, there’s there’s ambient food where it’s lightly processed, but it’s cooked and is offered on shelf. You know, there’s new brands out there that have super fresh, like you go in the store, you buy fresh meat, right, fresh food, and there’s a role for all of those products and businesses in the market, and the important thing is that each of the brands on their own like continue to innovate and bring new things to the market, while not losing sight of the of the core.
Kara Goldin 19:50
Yeah, definitely. I think for any founder that’s launching something new, it’s always scary when a new brand comes out. And and also has a lot of backing, right. There’s a lot of money, but how do you think about competition when you see competition, knowing what you know today, and maybe the spending that goes on along with that. But what advice would you give to anybody who’s, you know, whether it’s a founder or a new CEO that’s come in. What do you think is key?
Michael Meyer 20:25
Yeah, well, it’s.. it’s a.. the pet food industry is very large, very large, 10s of billions of dollars, right? And there are a lot of brands, there are a lot of brands, and therefore, if there’s a lot of brands, there’s a lot of competition, right, but competition is okay, because it keeps everybody focused on the consumer, and, and bringing the best to market, and there’s a place for everybody, so you know, I like to say, don’t look at, don’t look into the light, don’t look into the shiny object, right, don’t lose sight of what you stand for as a brand and what your products stand for, and, and, and continue to believe in it, and drive it. Yes, you should be aware of what’s on the left, the right, the top, or below you, but don’t lose sight of what you’re standing for.
Kara Goldin 21:14
Yeah, definitely. So, Michael, thank you so much for joining today. I love this conversation, and talking about the pets industry overall is one of my favorite topics, having two Labradors that I love so much, and love everything that you guys are doing over there, and also just love your willingness to really talk about kind of what makes a brand stand out in a category, so for everyone listening, you can learn more about I and love and you and follow along with Michael and see what he and his team are building. And thank you again, Michael. Really appreciate it. Michael Meyer of I and Love and You, and thank you everyone for listening until next time on the Kara Goldin show.
Michael Meyer 22:01
Kara, thank you.
Kara Goldin 22:02
Thanks so much, Michael. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course, feel free to subscribe, so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.
