Freshpet Will Need to Leverage Its Store Footprint to Yield Profitable Sales Growth in the Long Term

With its fresh products, Freshpet is well positioned to capitalize on continued growing pet ownership along with humanization trends by expanding its store footprint and growing its sales-per-store. It primarily focuses on the $37 billion U.S. dog food market (2023 estimate according to Euromonitor) through company-owned and -maintained refrigerators in 26,000 grocery, mass and club, pet specialty, and natural stores. The company estimates a market opportunity of at least 30,000 stores, though we forecast about 35,000 by the end of our 10-year forecast period given the 46,000 supermarkets in the U.S. alone, not including pet specialty stores.