What do dog-friendly popcorn, AI-powered pet feeders, and feline chin acne have in common? They were all part of the conversation at Global Pet Expo 2025—and they tell a bigger story about where the pet care industry is headed. Join us in this exclusive episode as host Jordan Tyler takes you to the heart of the show floor, where tech innovation and nutritional trends collided. From smart feeding systems to shelf-stable cat meals with roots in raw nutrition, we explore true novelty in the pet tech category—and share an important message about the overall state of pet care innovation.

Helpful Links

Learn more about Global Pet Expo 2025 🧠 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/road-global-pet-expo-2025-inside-show-beyond-innovation-9budf/?trackingId=LeZPuy5ib%2FzofY3UhGBJ9A%3D%3D

Check this out 👉 Exploring the pet obesity epidemic, the importance of addressing it, and how the pet industry and pet parents themselves can do so: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/getting-scale-national-pet-wellness-month-bsm-partners-2rwtc/?trackingId=jFXdNtoOC%2FBwD%2FO9LLamzw%3D%3D

Read this 👉 Love with Limits: Humanizing Pets, Without Losing What Makes Them Animals: https://www.petfoodprocessing.net/articles/18800-pets-or-people-the-impact-of-humanizing-pets

Hear more about personalized and preventive pet care and nutrition 🎧 https://bsmpartners.net/barking-mad-podcast/trends-to-watch-in-2025-part-5-personalized-nutrition-and-preventive-care

Learn more about the bird flu and pet food safety…

• In this article ➡️ https://bsmpartners.net/insights/the-hidden-risk-of-avian-influenza-in-pet-food-protecting-dogs-and-cats/
• And check out our FREE webinar for pet parents 📹 https://youtu.be/09YfbJPXWi4

Show Notes

00:00 – Welcome Back!

01:57 – Some Trends and Products Sighted at Global Pet Expo 2025

06:18 – Feeding the Future with Smart Pet Technology

07:14 – Introducing David Yoon and Pawsync

08:41 – Overfeeding and the Pet Obesity Epidemic

11:47 – Meet Sophie Liles and PiFi

13:44 – Tech-Powered Portion Control

14:16 – Meija Eller Shares More About Artie

16:12 – Home-Cooked Meals Without the Hassle

18:04 – A Solution for Feline Obesity

21:11 – Minimally Processed, Minimal Effort

23:10 – Innovation, or Iteration?

24:19 – Thank You and Farewell!

Jordan Tyler: Several weeks ago, I caught myself mindlessly pouring kibble into my dog's food bowl—no measuring cup, just vibes, just eyeballing what seemed “about right.” Mind you, this was about six o'clock in the morning and I wasn't fully awake yet. Everybody makes mistakes.

Fast forward about a week and I'm at Global Pet Expo in Orlando, Florida, where the North American pet industry convenes with global brands on a 300,000 square foot show floor to showcase their innovations, exchange ideas, learn, and develop new ideas.

It was at this show that I heard a rather humbling statistic: measuring your pet's food by volume—like using a measuring cup—instead of by weight, can lead to overfeeding by up to 150%... and in an age where 61 % of cats and 59 % of dogs are overweight or obese? For all my fellow pet parents out there, I'm sorry to break it to you, but we're part of the problem.

Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. I'm your host, Jordan Tyler.

Each year, the American Pet Products Association and the Pet Industry Distributors Association join forces to host Global Pet Expo, a trade show that brings 20,000 attendees to Orlando every March—and yes, it is a lovely time to be in Orlando. This year's show had more than 3,500 booths. And if you've ever been to a flea market or a Comic-Con or any type of convention, imagine that. But this is like, pets everywhere. There's dogs in backpacks. There's cats in strollers. This year there was a kangaroo. And I'm not kidding, the largest rabbit I've ever seen in person driving around the show floor in a Barbie car. I even got their card, if you don't believe me. It's @alex.thegreat100 on Instagram. Look it up. Thank me later.

Now, as far as trends go, smart pet technology seems to be one of the hottest right now. Although, pet nutrition continues to be driven by a few other core trends. For example, I heard the words longevity and vitality from a lot of folks at the show. These are similar ideas, but two different approaches.

This is Amber da Silva, team veterinarian at Vital Pet Life, which launched a species-specific Probiotic and a Vitality blend at this year’s show, explaining the difference between longevity and vitality right there on the show floor.

Amber da Silva: So I think of vitality as living their best dog life. They're at a healthy weight, they're able to be active, there's this bond with the owner, they're happy and healthy. And then, because you talk about longevity, obviously that's more obvious, like living a longer life. But living a longer life with a poorer quality is not what we want. We want a high-quality life with a longer life so that they can live into their senior years and still be feeling good and not be, you know, broken down and suffering.

Jordan Tyler: This trend can be seen as part of a larger one, which is all about delivering functional health benefits through nutrition. In recent years, we've seen a surge of supplements come to the market to target some of the health concerns our dogs and cats face. So things like joint care, skin and coat health, dental care, calming is a big one these days. But today, we're seeing functional nutritional products in all categories, in complete and balanced diets that are formulated with maybe a little something extra, in toppers that you can serve over your pet's daily diet, and even in treats that maybe were once reserved for indulgence, but now can delight pets while also delivering functional ingredients that pack a punch.

So yes, function remains a key priority for nutritional innovation. That said, it's not always all about function. Sometimes we just want to give our companions a good time. This brings us to humanization. Pets are part of our families. And whether it's best for them or not, we continue to look for ways to mirror their care around our own needs and desires. Humanization though is a slippery slope. And if you want to dive in there, BSM Partners consumer insights expert, Michael Johnson, has authored a really great article in Pet Food Processing magazine that begs the question: have we taken humanization too far? You can check that out in the show notes for this episode.

But to illustrate this trend, a quick story from the Global Pet Expo Show floor. The first morning of the show, I literally ran right into a guy who was there to promote a new product—popcorn for dogs. And the guy was not kidding. I saw it in the new product showcase later that day—which contained more than 1,000 new products, by the way, so that took me a couple hours—and this popcorn for dogs is exactly what you think. It even comes in a bag that's reminiscent of human popcorn, but just for dogs. And no, it’s not just regular popcorn with a dog’s face on the package. This is specially made, quote-unquote “popcorn” for dogs, without all that butter that we so crave.

And in case you’re wondering, regular popcorn is not good for dogs—and it’s not really “good” for us either. I mean, all that butter? And with all the fun powdered flavors they sell now to put on top? But we have the luxury to make our own nutritional decisions, good or bad. Dogs don’t, which is why it’s important that humanized products like this keep dog health and wellness at the forefront—the goal is not just to

Tech-enabled pet care is the future. From AI-powered feeders and appliances that effortlessly cook homemade meals to wearable sensors that track pet behavior and activity, companies are revolutionizing how we feed and care for our pets. This category really is a convergence of convenience and health monitoring that's changing the game for pets and pet parents everywhere.

And remember those pet obesity stats earlier? Well, pet tech can also provide a solution for portion control, as overfeeding is one of the key culprits in the pet obesity epidemic. One company pioneering smart feeding technology is Vesync, a small home appliance manufacturer through its newest division, Pawsync. And I was lucky enough to sit down with their team at the show.

David Yoon: My name is David Yoon. I'm heading Marketing and Commercialization Strategy at Pawsync.

Jordan Tyler: Pawsync specializes in smart pet care solutions, and they're starting with a smart pet feeder that can accurately dispense food by weight rather than volume, and pairs this technology with an integrated mobile app that lets pet parents set and track feeding times and amounts. The brand will use artificial intelligence to monitor pets' eating behaviors and glean health and wellbeing insights from those behaviors. According to David, Vesync's reasoning for entering the pet care space was to solve a specific and unfortunately common problem.

David Yoon: We wanted to venture in this category about two years ago and we wanted to identify an actual problem to solve. So we wanted to really study. We studied a lot of consumers, their pain points, and also we spoke to a lot of industry experts. And the core problem we found was about pet obesity.

We wanted to see how we can solve this problem by developing a pet feeder that not only automatically dispenses food out on time, but really measure the right amount of food for each pet at the right frequency. I would say the biggest differentiator we have against others is our feeder comes with an integrated built-in scale that actually measures food by weight instead of volume. Because if you measure food by volume, you can overestimate it up to 150%, which is alarming, right?

So obviously, that's one of the biggest differentiator. And another one is we are offering is very innovative app features that allow people to really understand overall pet food consumption trends and it helps identify any abnormalities in their consumption trends.

Jordan Tyler: There it is, that humbling stat. And I get it, we're all busy and absolute precision at mealtime isn't always realistic every time. That's where smart feeders shine. They keep you on track even when you're not home or when you're trying to wrangle you and your entire family for work and school in the morning.

And it may not seem like a big deal, but this precision is critically important to preventing overfeeding—or underfeeding, for that matter. But overfeeding can lead to pet obesity, which has been associated with a host of other health issues—things like chronic inflammation and pain, orthopedic issues, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, kidney dysfunction, liver disease, diabetes, dysplasia, and ultimately, a reduced quality of life and life expectancy.

So, from portion control to convenience, this innovation from Pawsync is definitely hitting on more than one trend. But David and his team aren't going to stop here.

David Yoon: Actually, we have a new product launching. And we talked about pet obesity, but after all, we're on a mission to really enhance pet wellness. So it's a smart water fountain. And I know it may sound like there's a lot of water fountain launching being launched by another brand, but we are actually taking a very different approach.

It's a patent technology, right? So it comes not only with a UVC light, to really sterilize water inside the tank up to 99%. It also comes with a stainless-steel tray that is specifically designed to make sure that it doesn't get clogged up, right? And everything just flushes down really easily. Just imagine yourself, you know, you're trying to wash your face at the sink and it's clogged up, you know, dirty water, just creating a ring around it. It just gets nasty.

One of the big problems that cats have is acne. And typically the way that where they get it from is a dirty water bowl. Right? So we want to make sure they were also solving that problem. Not only that we can also, through the app features, we can also encourage cats to drink more water by getting their attentions so that we can also help solve the cat dehydration problem which leads to kidney diseases.

Jordan Tyler: This was also the day I learned that cats can get acne. And according to our lovely co-host, Dr. Stephanie Clark, they’re actually called comodones, which is essentially a fancy word for blackheads. First thing I did when I got home? Checked my cat's chins. They seem fine, but you know, the more you know.

Now, as I was traversing the Global Pet Expo show floor, I found myself in a personal favorite section: the Startup Pavilion. This is where early-stage companies can set up smaller booths to showcase their emerging concepts and products. And I love this section because it really provides a window into how the pet care space is being disrupted by smaller, more agile players.

One of the companies in this section was PiFi, a dual-chamber smart pet feeder equipped with a camera and two-way audio so pet parents can set and forget meal times while also interacting with and monitoring their pets while they're away from home. At the show, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sophie Liles about this technology.

Sophie Liles: It's a pet feeder and it has AI technology built into it where it can recognize your face of your pets to up to five animals. So it can pretty much build out a pet profile about each of your animals. How it does this is you put your face, pet's face in there, it recognizes, and it kind of tracks their feeding habits. It can track how much they eat, how much they're not eating. And it builds up that profile on the app as well as having a camera on the top to detect, you know, what they're doing when you're gone. You can speak to them through the system and it has a dual feeder so you can feed cats or dogs.

Jordan Tyler: PiFi allows pet parents to set custom feeding schedules and portions to prevent overfeeding. Additionally, the feeders AI enabled pet recognition function prevents unauthorized animals from accessing the food. So if you want to put this outdoors, but don't want to worry about giving the neighborhood raccoons a free lunch, this feeder can do that!

Sophie Liles: Another interesting thing is if you have a cat, you know, you want to make sure to see how much they're eating. You can put like a certain amount of portion control and it will say, oh yeah, my cat is eating like this amount or she hasn't eaten this amount. Yeah. So you can track their portions and everything like that.

I think that obesity is such a problem today in dogs. Vets will tell you that, you know, it is. So the PiFi can help with the obesity issues and that's really how we're going to pioneer in the innovative tech world because we want to make sure that dogs are not overeating and getting enough nutrients and not undereating. So yeah, I think that's what we want to do. We want to come out with new innovative products as well. We have a water feeder coming out, a wet food feeder, and those are all going to integrate into the app too.

Jordan Tyler: Now alongside these two brands, of course, there are several others developing smart pet feeding technology. But the last one we'll talk about today is Artie. At the show, Meija Eller was eager to tell me more about the brand.

Meija Eller: My name is Meija Eller. I am one of the first employees of Artie. We're a super small team. There's only about eight of us. We were started by two father daughter duos. So our two founders, Scott and William. Scott has a huge history in the pet food industry. William has a history in the small appliances industry. And so the two of them came together and developed Artie.

Jordan Tyler: Artie has differentiated itself by not only offering a countertop appliance for cooking dog food, but by creating customized freeze-dried diets specifically for that appliance that are perfectly portioned based on a pet's individual daily caloric needs.

Meija Eller: So, we pre-portion cups of freeze-dried whole raw protein, fruits and veggies, healthy grains, vitamins and minerals, and then a dehydrated bone broth. You pop that cup that is pre-portioned for your pet's calorie needs into our appliance. You close the lid, you press one button. The appliance knows based on a barcode at the bottom of that cup how many calories, what recipe it is, so it knows exactly how to cook it.

So you press one button, it scans that barcode. We hit that cup with about two and a half minutes of super, super hot steam. And then we send in, in the last 30 seconds or so, warm water to finish hydrating the food inside the cup. And then it brings it to the perfect warm serving temperature, right around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So, when you pull it out of the machine, you have a warm but not hot cup of food ready to serve to your pet.

Jordan Tyler: The appliance is super cute, the way, and Meija wasn't kidding. You literally only have to press one button. It's like a K-cup for your dog.

Meija Eller: We pull in a lot of people that want to home cook for their pet. They want to serve them a warm meal. There is something, but we treat our pets like kids. Our pets are our children. They're our babies. And we want to feed them as such, so people are leaning into home cooking. They're leaning into these fresh frozen brands. But the fresh frozen, you know, it's frozen. You have to thaw it. You have to store leftovers. And home cooking, it's time consuming. It's expensive. And it's hard to know exactly what you are feeding your pet and if you're giving them all of the nutrients and vitamins that they need.

And we have a board-certified vet nutritionist on our staff, her name is Dr. Lindsey Bullen. She's been with us every step of the way, helping us formulate all of our recipes. So we, while we have a very cool appliance, we’re a pet food company first. So, we also want to make sure that we're serving some of the healthiest dog food out there on the market.

So we send you, it comes in 30-day pack. So, 60 cups of food, get breakfast and dinner servings. And those two cups are your dog's daily calorie needs split in half. So we send you through a quiz, you give us your dog's breed, weight, activity level, how many treats you're feeding in a day, whether you're a heavy treat feeder or not, I am. And then we take all that information and we base your dog's daily calorie needs on that result. And so we pre-portion everything. Everything is personalized for your pet. And there's no mistakes.

Jordan Tyler: No guesswork.

Meija Eller: No guesswork.

Jordan Tyler: So again, hitting on several trends here, the convenience aspect for the pet parent, providing a solution for overfeeding through these pre-portioned cups, personalized nutrition, which is another trend going on in the industry right now. And this is perfect for those who want to feed a minimally or gently processed diet, which is another trend influencing today's pet nutrition landscape.

While dogs have been the star for the pet industry for quite some time, cats are making their way into the limelight. But our feline friends present their own unique challenges when it comes to nutrition. And unfortunately, the pet obesity problem isn't isolated to dogs. More than 60% of domestic cats in the United States are currently overweight or obese. And while I was at Global Pet Expo, something in the new product showcase caught my attention: Smallbatch Pets’ Perfectly Cooked, shelf-stable meals for cats.

While I'm always excited to see new cat specific nutrition products, this one caught my eye because it could also provide a solution to feline obesity. I chatted with Nicole Erickson from Smallbatch who shared more about this new approach from the Global Show floor.

Nicole Erickson: My name is Nicole Erickson. I have been with Small Batch now for seven and a half years and came from independent pet retail for the seven years before that.

Jordan Tyler: Smallbatch Pets introduced its Perfectly Cooked cat diets at the show, offering pre-portioned meals for cats in a hassle-free format that mirrors the brand's legacy: raw nutrition. And its launch was, according to Nicole, a labor of love.

Nicole Erickson: So launching the Perfectly Cooked for Cats has actually been an undertaking for nearly three years.

Jordan Tyler: Oh my goodness!

Nicole Erickson: Yes, since its initial inception. But we have taken the essence of the raw food diets that we do in our freezers for cats currently and made them into a new gently cooked option. These are 98% meat, exclusively humanely raised and harvested. Everything is ground together and then portioned out in nice little convenient one-ounce sliders.

Those one-ounce sliders are really easy to thaw once you put them into the refrigerator. It's a consistent feeding portion. So you're not scooping, measuring. You don't have to augment anything. They are complete and balanced all on their own. The ingredients after they're batched go into a sous vide water bath. The temperature comes up to an internal safety temperature of 165 degrees. So it is fully cooked. That's the FDA marker for pathogen mitigation. So, especially in the landscape where avian flu concerns are something people want to be aware of, this is not only a solution for that specifically, but really kind of a new corner of freezer options.

Anyway, Nicole makes a great point here. Feeding fresh or frozen or raw is inherently more work. You have to keep it frozen or refrigerated. You have to thaw it, prepare it, and then you have to make sure to store it properly between meals so it doesn't spoil. But by offering a shelf-stable solution that's gently cooked, pet parents can still get minimally processed nutrition without all that hassle.

Nicole Erickson: We don't want people to have fresh food feeding be difficult or be concerned that there is a nutritional deficit that they need to be aware of. And then reaching for 16 different supplements to add to those bowls. We want people to have something to reach for that checks all of the boxes for quality and ease of use.

And that means that full panel of necessary ingredients and nutritional components, that guaranteed analysis down to the little tiny details, and understanding if I am feeding the appropriate ingredients, it will support weight management and translate to their general vitality and interest in more engaging feeding experiences and more activity when it comes to play and mental stimulation and engagement.

Jordan Tyler: And because we love our pets and often express that love through food, smart solutions like these can help us commit to portion control while still feeling like we're providing something special for our four-legged family members.

As we wrap up today, there's one more thing I'd like to say. The pet care industry and pet nutrition in particular continue to be shaped by technology, functionality, and scientific research. And there was certainly no shortage of new products at Global Pet Expo. The thing is, many of them felt like reboots of things we've already seen before.

Yes, the industry continues to move forward. And there are a few truly groundbreaking new products out there, but is it time to start asking tougher questions? As an industry, are we truly building products that solve real problems? Are we pushing the boundaries of what's possible? Or are we just repackaging the familiar in response to fleeting trends?

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Barking Mad. If you want to learn more about us or BSM Partners, please visit us at www.bsmpartners.net. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite leading podcast platform and share it with a friend to stay current on the latest pet industry trends and conversations.

And of course, if any part of today's episode sparked your curiosity, whether it was pet tech or the fact that cats can get chin acne, reach out and let us know. We're always excited to dig deeper into the trends and topics that matter most to you.