A what? A Branstone is a dog biscuit that looks something like Ry Crisp, and is concocted of pristine natural ingredients including wheat bran, ground wheat, dried cottage cheese, brewer's yeast, cod-liver oil and honey. The inventors and merchandisers—Ron Hansen, 29, and Rick Marks, 26—point out that traditional products have been full of chemical preservatives. "Those moist-packaged dog foods stay that way because they are suspended in sugar," shudders Rick.
Neither, though, is a food faddist or a dog lover. Friends since their undergraduate days at Cal Poly, they had previously been in the whole wheat baklava business. Two years ago, hearing there wasn't any good baklava in Northern California, Hansen quit his job as a soil tester and began producing a version of the nutty Middle Eastern dessert that was sensational—except he had trouble marketing it. At that point Marks was laid off from his job in an architectural firm and joined the failing Novato, Calif. bakery. Then when a pet food distributor jokingly suggested that the partners bail themselves out by switching to dog biscuits, Marks boned up on the subject. "There is more known about dog nutrition than human," he found. But the first batch they produced was meatless and a bomb. The canine guinea pigs sniffed it and turned up their noses. But when meat and bonemeal were added (but no artificial coloring, of course) the dogs wolfed down the biscuits.
Now Branstone is being marketed in California and other Western states at the rate of eight tons a month. It retails for 50 to 60 cents a pound, roughly competitive with regular dog food, though the biscuits are handmade. The only remaining question is whether dog's best friend in time of need is—like man's—junk food.
Get up-to-the-minute celebrity news and photos on your cellphone, iPhone or Blackberry at www.people.com!
