We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kim Hehir a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

Our mission is “to nourish your pet while giving back to the community,” so giving back to the community has always been at the core of what we do. We support over 100 shelters and animal welfare organizations across the US, so we are always trying to find fun and innovative ways to help raise funds and awareness for our partner organizations. For example, we recently launched in H-E-B, and to celebrate the launch, we partnered with a Texas-based non-profit organization (Emancipet), and an Austin-based well-known dog influencer to spread the word that we’d be donating back a portion of our sales at H-E-B during the first couple of weeks were on the shelves. We received an amazing response to and support of the partnership, and best of all, funds were raised for an amazing organization. With giving back being so important to us, partnerships and activations like this are perfectly aligned with our brand mission.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My background is actually in the investment banking, hospitality and sustainability sectors. My last corporate position was as VP of Strategy at Leading Hotels of the World, but had stepped away from that position to spend more time with my kids. On Thanksgiving Day in 2016, our entire family was together and we were chatting about my sister’s rescue dog Brutus who lived well beyond his life expectancy despite health challenges – and she said the secrets to his longevity were love and grandma’s bone broth. Sue was spending hours each week making it because she could not find anything on the market that was affordable or pet safe (most human broths are high in sodium and contain onions an/or garlic that are harmful to dogs). The more we talked about the bone broth specifically, we knew there was an amazing opportunity to bring a product to pet parents that was affordable, accessible and most importantly could help their dogs live longer and healthier lives. Our journey began shortly thereafter to create the highest-quality human grade bone broth for dogs.

Our product is considered to be a food topper because you just add it to whatever your dog is already eating.
Brutus Broth provides a daily dose of nutrients and helps aid in digestion, detoxifies dog’s systems (they come into contact with so many toxins on a daily basis), and has naturally occurring collagen that has a host of benefits. Our bone broth is the only bone broth on the market that is fortified with glucosamine and chondroitin for hip and joint health and turmeric for inflammation. Generally speaking, we feel like we do things the right way: we do not take any shortcuts, and we go above and beyond as far as certifications go to ensure our product is truly industry-leading.

We have a massive emphasis on giving back as mentioned, and sustainability is very important to us . We’ve been named a Top Performer by the Pet Sustainability Coalition – an honor we’re very proud of. We are woman and Veteran founded and family owned. We are a small but mighty team, and have grown to 5,000 points of distribution across the U.S. in just a few short years!

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We did a lot of R&D, market research, and planning on the front end to make sure we could produce a commercial version of our recipe and scale our business from the start. We found an amazing USA-based manufacturing partner who create bone broths for starving humans in third world countries. They have the knowledge and capability to infuse supplements into our broth which is very difficult to do scientifically without changing the flavor profile. We knew that they were the perfect partner in that they had the ability to do what we were hoping they could to bring our product to life, and are also impactful on a global scale.

There are daily lessons to be learned about manufacturing a product – especially at the beginning, but it just goes back to doing your research, especially for food products. Understand regulations, requirements and more on the front end so you can plan accordingly and get ahead of anything. There is nothing worse than ‘surprises’ that pop up once the manufacturing process is already underway – and it can be costly to have to pivot when those instances occur. After we did our first production run we had a state regulator (pet food is regulated state by state and the rules are all different) come back with changes to our packaging and wanted us to change the terminology from “with glucosamine” to “with added glucosamine” and redo our entire run. We could not afford that so we made stickers and just stuck them on the packaging with the correct language.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Shortly after we secured our first retailer – Wegmans – for our product beta testing, we received the news that our father who had been battling cancer had the BRCA2 gene mutation.  We realized that many family members on his side had died young or suddenly (or in some cases both) – likely due to various forms of cancer. My sister (and Co-Founder) and I were immediately tested, and realized that we both also carried the BRCA2 gene mutation as well.  We had to make the very quick decision to both undergo double mastectomies.  Something like this is not ideal at any point in life – but especially as your start up is just getting going.  We both felt strongly that given the history of cancer in our family, it was in our (and our children’s and our husbands) best interest to do this. Neither of us wanted to wait until a cancer diagnosis – knowing that it could be far more challenging for all.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brutusbroth.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/brutusbroth
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/brutusbroth
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberly-hehir-6753391
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/brutusbroth
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@brutusbonebroth1716