Chef and Fishermen Partner on Pacific Pet Treats

May 10, 2022 – Samba dances for her dinner. Three spins in front of her bowl, then she dives in.

Despite her name, it wasn’t always like this for the boxer-German shepherd rescue mutt. She’s so finicky she spits out Milk Bones and turns her nose up to top-shelf wet food if it’s served more than one day in a row.

That changed when her humans Lance and Christina Koehler of Seaside started adding scraps from fish he caught on Monterey Bay, after dehydrating them. 

“I hate food waste!” says Lance, who’s also chef and GM at Louie Linguini’s on Cannery Row.

Cue the spin moves. 

And that wasn’t all that changed. “Her coat became amazing,” Lance says, adding that her overall mood improved noticeably. 

Her border collie brother Doug, a rescue himself, is similarly finicky and similarly all-in. His long coat is now a source of shiny family pride. 

Then there’s their boxer-Rhodesian ridgeback little brother Randy, another SPCA rescue, who will eat anything, so he’s not the best reference. But bust out a fish treat and suddenly his puppy ADD evaporates. 

“You have his undivided attention,” Lance says, “and so much water works that we have to give him the treat faster so he doesn’t drool on the carpet.”

Maybe that shouldn’t be a shocker. After all, it’s fresh, pure, natural stuff. 

“Do you want to feed your pets something with a million ingredients?” Lance asks. “It was a complete game changer for our pups.”

“Pets live longer and healthier lives when you feed them well,” adds Christina, who as a mental health therapist brings Samba to sessions.

The Koehlers started sharing their dried scraps with friends and family. An aunt tested them on the pickiest pooches in her dog training classes. Samba’s enthusiasm was echoed unanimously, which got Christina and Lance thinking: Should we turn this into something?

As a longtime chef, Lance had the connections to make a business more realistic. 

“Knowing fishermen allowed us to, pun intended, scale this,” he says.

About 16 months ago, they decided to go for it, and began working on Department of Agriculture and California Department of Public Health approvals, designing logos and attending dog product trade shows.

Last weekend they debuted Pacific Pet Treats on Wave Street. It occupies a split level space across from the former Cannery Row Brewing Company and IMAX Theater, on the bottom floor of the Cannery Row Parking Garage—a location which promises plenty of foot traffic trekking past the former Monterey Crepe Company on the way to Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Featured items are gourmet dog treats, namely baked, dried or dehydrated halibut, king salmon, squid, black cod and lingcod, all single- or limited-ingredient. They come in simple pouches, mainly sourced from Moss Landing-based CSA-of-the-sea Real Good Fish. (They also work with Monterey Fish Company and Pacific Harvest Seafoods.)

PPT also does designer calamari cookies with tentacles mixed with blueberry, egg and whole wheat flour and salmon “burgers” with coconut flour, egg, red apple, celery and curly parsley. 

“Everything in our cookies is going to be functional,” he says, citing the digestive benefits of celery and breath-enhancing power of parsley. “No preservatives, no additives, no added sugars or salts, no filler, nothing that doesn’t need to be in there.”

As RGF takes its processing scraps and unsold inventory and relays it to Pacific Pet Treats, a waste stream is transformed into a revenue stream that’s healthy in more ways than one. (When Edible visited pre-opening, one of PPT’s storage freezers was filled entirely with Monterey Bay salmon collars originally packaged for RGF retail.) 

RGF founder and CEO Alan Lovewell puts it well. “Animals don’t need to be eating all that processed food either,” he says. “And for better or worse, pet owners are willing to spend more on their pets than themselves.”

Lance enjoys the chance to support local fishermen, and knows that that attention to sourcing will appeal to a discerning audience.

“It’s definitely part of our mission to be community-minded,” he says. 

Community connectivity also brightens the decor: Local artists like Amanda Burkman and Hanif Wondir have crafted portraits of good bois and girls and more exotic animals to hang on the walls. 

There’s a lot more going on beneath the artwork, where a smorgasbord of specifically sourced snacks and ridiculous playthings multiply. 

There are sustainable cricket-based Jimini’s treats, chew toys up-cycled from ocean plastics, “snuffle mats” that hide treats, stuffed cat burrito squeakies and tennis ball cannons. Christina clearly had a blast curating the selection, and it’s hard to escape the store without giggling (or buying at least one silly thing for your furry BFF). The dog-crazy community that we live in is going to eat this up. 

“People come in and smile,” Christina says. “That’s what we want: smiles.”

Not quite, because they want one other thing: The kind of seven-star review you can only get from a dog. 

I turned to Atticus Orion Rowe, another rescue who happens to be my spiritual advisor and closest labradoodle friend. (He also turns 8 today, so HBD, AOR.)

He’s at least as finicky as Samba, and is willing to go on extended hunger strikes if his routine is interrupted for, say, a road trip. Give him one of his favorite treats, and he’ll migrate to a corner for privacy and eat it slowly. 

Not so with the Pacific Pet Treats I tested on him. 

That rock cod skin went sayonara, fast—faster than I’ve seen him eat anything. Suddenly the most aloof dog on the continent wants to kick it with me hard.

He was so enthusiastic that his mom and I decided to nibble a small piece. Not bad, but a little too intense to swallow. 

Which brought me back to a key point: It’s not about us. It’s about the Atticuses, Dougs, Randys and Sambas.

They’re our biggest fans, our joy and our comfort, our inspiration to be the humans they believe us to be.   

Which deserves a special treat.

More at pacificpettreats.com.