When Dewar Gaines quit a well-paying job—and convinced his brother to do the same—to launch a single-ingredient, all-natural dog treat company in 2017, he knew it would likely be an uphill slog.
“We were woefully underfunded, and didn’t exactly know the pet market,” he recalled. “We were entering into an entirely new experience.”
Gaines, an avowed pet-lover, says the idea for the business took hold after he lost a dog to raw hide poisoning. He realized there was a need in the market for a healthy alternative to dog snacks.
“I learned that a lot of the products folks were feeding their dogs were very unhealthy, and had ingredient panels that we wouldn’t eat as humans,” he said.
He started experimenting in his garage with dehydrated sweet-potato chews made entirely from ingredients grown on American family-owned farms—hand-slicing hundreds of pounds each week and selling them at local farmers markets in Birmingham, Alabama. Those early years were grueling but family-filled.
“We have pictures of my 92-year-old grandmother bagging dog treats,” he said. “Any family-owned business has its challenges, but I don’t think there’s any other way I’d want to take this journey.”
By 2019, Gaines Family Farmstead was available in about 100 stores. Around that time, they landed their first distributor and partnered with a co-packer. That’s when the team launched in the Amazon store.
“We make more in a month with Amazon than we did in our first two calendar years combined,” said Gaines. “We’re projecting another 150 to 200% growth in 2025 and expect at least that in 2026—and it’s profitable growth, which Amazon makes possible.”
Amazon helped Gaines meet the moment when a viral video suddenly forced him to scale, quickly. In October 2022, a TikTok and Instagram video featuring the brand racked up 30 million views in 72 hours.
“It drove an insane amount of traffic to our Amazon storefront,” he said. “We sold out of every product in the country in a very short period of time.” Sales spiked more than 6,000% almost overnight, and Gaines Family Farmstead sold out of inventory all over the country.
Vowing to never sell out again, Gaines began sending up to 90 days of inventory to FBA centers around the country, before switching to Amazon Warehouse Distribution (AWD) in 2024, a program that helps sellers send bulk inventory to Amazon warehouses, which are then distributed automatically to fulfillment centers nationwide.
“AWD has been incredible for us,” he said. “We send anywhere between 12 and 15 pallets every two weeks, and we’re about to send 72. It cuts down on cardboard, on cost, and it’s incredibly efficient.”
Today, Gaines Family Farmstead’s all-natural line includes everything from salmon-and-sweet-potato fillets to duck feet, and even duck heads—all sourced from American family farms.
“We know the farmers who raise our sweet potatoes, our chickens and our beef,” Gaines said. “Even the people who make our bags are part of a fourth-generations family-owned American business.”
Gaines is dedicated to what he called “pup-cycling,” turning would-be waste into dog snacks.
“We work with a family-owned farm that raises 22 million ducks a year—they used to throw the feet away. We’re turning that waste into healthy, single-ingredient treats.”
The company now sells in more than 2,000 retailers nationwide, though Amazon remains its largest source of income.
“There’s no question Amazon is the most efficient place in the world to reach new customers. It’s more than 50% cheaper for us to acquire a new customer through Amazon than it is elsewhere.”
He added that Amazon’s data tools have also been a game changer in helping him achieve growth.
“The amount of data Amazon is putting at our fingertips lets us fine-tune everything,” he said. “It recently helped us figure out how to decrease the frequency of our shipments and increase cost efficiency. None of that would’ve been possible without that data.”
For Gaines, one of his biggest regrets as a businessman is not having launched in the Amazon store sooner.
“If I could go back and do it all again, I probably would’ve invested every penny we had in Amazon right from the start,” he said. “We never would’ve reached this level of success without them.”