Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 24, 1995                   TAG: 9506260012
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                  LENGTH: Medium

DOG DAYS ARE WELCOMED YEAR-ROUND BY GRATEFUL PET

Business is really going to the dogs - and for Grateful Pet, that's a good thing.

Three years after James R. Justice Jr. and Robert J. Nelson started the Richmond-based company out of their walk-up apartment, their Gravy Time dog-food sauce is selling in more than 2,000 stores nationwide.

Billed as gourmet gravy for dry dog food, Gravy Time is enriched with nutrients and can be microwaved to enhance its meaty flavor.

The company's founders are longtime friends who lived in Roanoke through high school.

Nelson moved to Richmond as a sales-territory manager of Nelson-Roanoke Corp., a wholesale hardware distributor that had been owned by his family since 1888 until it was sold in 1993. Justice moved to Richmond when he started school at Virginia Commonwealth University.

While sharing an apartment in Richmond, the two got the idea for dog gravy when they were taking care of a friend's dog, Cheetah. The dog liked dry food mixed with canned food. They thought it would be easier to make the dry food more palatable by mixing in ready-made gravy.

``The average consumer feels a little sympathy for the dog when they feed them a cardboard-like substance,'' Justice said, so many people are mixing in water, table scraps or canned food.

``That's smelly, messy, inefficient and it's just kind of gross,'' he said. ``So we're providing consumers an alternative to these other methods. What we're about is packaging and convenience of the product..''

Gravy Time is sold in 32-ounce plastic jugs, which retail for about $4.49. It can be poured over dry dog food, which the company claims is cheaper per serving than canned dog food.

Justice and Nelson started the production process by traveling the country and seeking the help of food manufacturers, food technologists and Maryland veterinary nutritionist Ned Moser, a 20 percent owner of Grateful Pet.

They tested various versions of Gravy Time at local animal shelters, where dogs gulped it down. ``And dogs are actually more finicky than people,'' he said.

Have they tasted their own wares? ``Of course,'' Justice said after a brief pause, dipping his finger into an imaginary vat of dog-food gravy. ``It tastes better than some of the human gravies I've had.''

Several products similar to Gravy Time also have entered the market in recent years. Hills Pet Nutrition Inc. sells Mixit, a liver gravy used to ease pets' transition from supermarket-bought dog food to the company's upscale Science Diet line.

``It's not a big seller; it's more of a convenience for owners,'' said Dave Geier, a spokesman for Topeka, Kan.-based Hills. It's unclear whether dogs prefer their food with gravy, Geier said. ``It may be that people are giving (their dogs) anthropomorphic qualities.''

Mickey Webb, assistant director for a Petsmart mega-mart in Richmond, said dogs actually don't care what food tastes like because they lack taste buds.

``They just go for the smell,'' Webb said. ``I found out at a dog-food seminar that dogs don't have taste buds. They just rely on olfactory senses. I guess that's why they'll eat poop sometimes.''

Rita Davis, executive editor of Pet Business, a trade magazine for pet-products retailers, says the gravy products sell because they're successfully marketed to people who believe their dogs are like themselves - they'd get bored with eating the same thing every day.

``Sometimes you'll have a dog that will not eat, but eventually they'll get hungry enough,'' said Davis, who owns two dogs. ``Pet lovers will go to great lengths to give their dog what they think they want. One dog allowed me to cook for him for four years.''

Regardless of whether Fido finds Gravy Time tasty or just aromatic, Grateful Pet is finding more retailers. It just won a contract to supply Phoenix-based Petsmart, which recently acquired the PetStuff chain.

``We, in a sense, have been riding their coattails. They account for about 50 percent of our sales,'' Justice said. About 1,500 Kmart stores also sell Gravy Time, and ``now we're working on the Big W'' - Wal-Mart.

This year, Grateful Pet says it will be in the black for the first time, even though sales last year picked up dramatically. Justice expects his company to do between $500,000 and $1 million in sales in 1995 - up significantly from $50,000 in the first year. He declined to predict profits.

Grateful Pet plans to unleash a beef-and-liver-flavored gravy by mid-July to accompany its lamb-poultry version. Also in the works is cat-food gravy, which the company says should hit the shelves by the end of the year. A line of high-end vitamins also is on the way, Nelson said.

Although the manufacturing is contracted to a plant in Lexington, Ky., Nelson said at some point they may open a manufacturing center in Virginia.

Staff Writer Shannon D. Harrington contributed information to this story.