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February 11, 2012

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Home cookin’ — for dogs

Culinary school grads use their expertise to create a line of healthful food for Fido

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Leila Navidi

Ian Kester and Jillian Plaster took a chance during a recession and started a gourmet dog food business. The couple, with bulldogs Trucker, left, and Penelope, worked with a veterinarian and an animal nutrition company to come up with their recipes, which include meat and vegetables.

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Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Click to enlarge photo

Leila Navidi

Trucker's Mutt-Loaf is one variety made by The Good Dog Food Company. Kester uses a rented industrial kitchen to cook batches of food -- 200 pounds at a time. Consumers buy it frozen.

Beyond the Sun

Jillian Plaster met her husband-to-be, Ian Kester, over sizzling pans three years ago at a Las Vegas cooking school.

Plaster had returned to Las Vegas after earning a bachelor’s degree in Italian society and culture and spending a year in Italy, where she concluded that the work wasn’t much fun.

Kester, a Missouri kid, had been working his way through kitchens since he was a teenager, most recently at the now-closed Commander’s Palace at the old Desert Passage mall. He wanted to build his credentials and so he, too, enrolled in the school.

One thing led to another and the couple — the kind of smiling good lookers that grandparents love — have scheduled an April 18 wedding date. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

After graduating, the couple worked together for a few months at the Sedona Lounge on Flamingo Road. That’s when they got the bug to go into business for themselves.

They considered a gourmet lunch wagon, but settled instead on packaging prepared meals made with organic ingredients, fresh meats, natural spices and without preservatives.

For dogs.

“There’s a lot of people selling lunch,” Plaster reasoned. “Not so many people are selling fresh food for dogs.”

The Good Dog Food Company was born.

Their rambunctious bulldog, Trucker, became the taste tester and, considering his diet had consisted of dry kibble, was surely the most spoiled dog in the neighborhood.

For more technical input, Plaster and Kester worked with a veterinarian and an animal nutrition firm in developing the recipe.

Now the couple rent an industrial kitchen in North Las Vegas. Kester cooks the beef and boils the vegetables, mixes the ingredients and adds healthy additives such as cod liver oil, ground flaxseed and garlic. He cools the mixture, a brownish batter the consistency of hummus, turning out 200-pound batches of the loaf at a time.

Next, the food is sealed in vacuum-packed wrappers, tucked into plastic tubs with a bulldog logo and frozen for sale at high-end grocery stores and a few pet boutiques.

The couple concede that this isn’t the best time to start a homegrown business, especially one that sells five pounds of dog food for $32.99. To compare, 50-pound bags of more generic dry dog food cost about $35.

Trucker loves the expensive stuff.

And what’s Kester’s opinion?

Like any good chef, he tasted it.

Not too bad, he says. A little plain, but not bad.

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