Fairbowl is an independent dog food rating site built by the team at BK Pets. We grade brands on a 100-point rubric, publish the methodology, take no money from the brands we review, and build homemade recipes with a veterinary nutritionist. Nobody paid for these grades.
We're Bryce and Kenzie, co-founders of BK Pets and the people behind Fairbowl. Our team also includes Madison, our content director. We work with Dr. Danielle Conway, a veterinary nutritionist who formulates our homemade recipes. She does not review or grade commercial brands. Those are separate things.
We spent three years in the holistic pet industry. We promoted raw food, stopped vaccinating our dogs, stopped giving them flea and tick medication, and shared that advice with millions of pet parents. We wrote a book. We went on a book tour. We built a brand on those beliefs.
And then we started asking harder questions. The answers were not adding up.
Once we began following doctors and scientists who were trained in the fields they were speaking about, we started to notice the gaps in what we had been sharing. Logical fallacies we had repeated without realizing it. Credentials we had overstated. Claims we had treated as fact that were really just anecdotes.
We lost friendships over it. We were threatened with a defamation lawsuit for saying we no longer recommended raw milk. We walked away from a $40,000 website we had built because we were not confident in the information it would have delivered to pet parents.
We are not here to pretend that never happened. Our old content is still up because we think it is important to show what it looks like to change your mind. We are not here to be right. We are here to get it right.
If you want the full story, we recorded a podcast about it.
Most dog food advice online comes from affiliate sites, influencer deals, or the brands themselves. That makes it really hard for a regular pet parent to figure out what actually matters and what is marketing.
We wanted a single place where you could compare brands on the things that count: formulator credentials, feeding trials, testing protocols, transparency, safety record, and marketing honesty. And we wanted the site doing the reviewing to not be paid by the companies making the food.
Every brand goes through the same rubric: five categories, 100 points possible. We evaluate formulation and expertise, safety and quality, scientific integrity, marketing ethics, and transparency. Grades range from A to F. The full methodology, including how grade caps work, is on our How We Grade page.
Fairbowl+ is a pay-what-you-can membership that gives you access to vet-formulated homemade dog food recipes and a calculator that adjusts portions for your dog's size, age, and activity level. The recipes are formulated by Dr. Danielle Conway, a veterinary nutritionist who completed a three-year nutrition residency at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine.
The pay-what-you-can model exists for two reasons. First, money is the most common reason pet parents can not access nutrition expertise, and we want to remove that barrier. Second, we do not take dog food brand sponsorships, so the higher tiers help fund our independence.
If we share a claim as fact, we cite the research behind it. If something is our personal belief or based on anecdotal experience, we say so. We qualify claims based on the strength of the evidence. We recognize logical fallacies and credential inflation, because we used to do both.
Our beliefs are going to keep evolving. If the evidence changes, we change with it. If we stop doing something with our own dogs that we previously recommended, we will tell you.
Questions, corrections, or just want to say hi? Get in touch.