Review: Ollie’s Fresh Dog Food Is Winning the Market for a Reason

Digging In to Ollie’s Fresh Dog Food

Our Ollie starter pack included two weeks’ worth of Ollie dog food—14 packages of turkey and beef frozen fresh packs—plus a solid food dish and one-cup scoop. Some introductory packages also include a dishwasher-safe bamboo storage container to hold opened food packages.

Portions are customized by weight groupings. Test pup Pepper weighs 39 pounds, so one 707-calorie package was her daily portion of food, to be divided between her two daily meals. An information page in the box advises pet parents about how to portion, and another pamphlet includes details on transitioning your pup from their old food in a stomach-friendly way.

Ollie’s dry pâté is easier to serve than a lot of fresh foods

We’ve tried a few different variations on fresh dog food over the years, and the texture of this one is among the humans’ favorite. It’s a dry-ish pâté that was easy to stuff in Pepper’s KONG without it being too onerous to clean afterwards. The ingredients are recognizable, and there isn’t a very strong odor to any of the Ollie recipes we tried.

All of Ollie’s fresh dog food options contain single-protein meats (for example, beef and beef kidneys are the main sources of protein in the “beef” recipe)—an allergy-friendly move that should please pups with sensitive stomachs. Ollie’s fresh food is available in four different recipes:

• beef
• turkey
• lamb
• chicken

The food is cooked per guidance from a veterinary nutritionist at low temperatures in small batches and hand-packed at the company’s Minnesota facility.

Ollie’s subscription offers a high degree of customizability

Ollie food is customized for your dog’s calorie needs based on weight, breed, age, activity level, and body composition—information gathered at the start of your subscription in a questionnaire on the Ollie website. You can use this space to report any allergies; Ollie will avoid recommending foods with your pet’s triggers. You can even specify that you’d like your pup to go on a weight-loss plan, and Ollie’s algorithm will adjust portions accordingly.

Ollie is subscription-based, and you can only get it via mail. Frequency can be weekly, every two weeks, or every four weeks. Opting for bigger deliveries further apart will reduce your monthly costs.

For example, a weekly delivery of Pepper’s beef and turkey recipes, which would include seven 16.4-ounce packs of dog food, is $76.88, while a four-week plan, with 28 packs, is $56.38 per week.

Fresh food arrives frozen and packed in dry ice; you can store these for up to six months. Once you open a package, you can store it in the fridge for up to four days.

Ollie also makes dry “baked foods” for dogs, which don’t need a fridge or freezer. You can mix and match your subscription to include both fresh and baked foods, plus add treats and supplements to your orders.

Ollie’s commitment to sustainability and sourcing

Ollie relies heavily on recyclable packaging; its food is shipped in recyclable boxes, and the insulating liner is curbside recyclable. The exception is the food packages themselves (the easy-peel seal makes them non-recyclable).

Ollie’s sourcing is relatively transparent. The company’s human-grade beef, chicken, and turkey are sourced in the United States, while its lamb comes from the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia.

All fresh ingredients (including potatoes, carrots, blueberries, and chickpeas) are sourced from the US. While some seeds and vitamins are sourced globally, all Ollie food meets the US standards required for “human-grade” designation—though Ollie doesn’t go as far as some competitors in identifying the regional supplier and batch number so you can verify the origin of your ingredients yourself.

Every batch of Ollie’s food is tested both for safety and to make sure it meets the AAFCO feeding standards for all life stages, including large-breed dogs.

How Does Ollie Compare to Other Fresh Dog Foods?

Pepper tested several fresh options from Ollie competitor Just Food for Dogs—here’s a quick look at how Ollie stacks up.

	Ollie	Just Food for Dogs
Price per ounce	$0.50 per ounce (for every four weeks subscription)	$0.54 per ounce (for small box)
Dry and fresh options	Yes	Fresh options in 2 forms: freezer and shelf-stable, plus a DIY kit option
Subscription frequency	Weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly	Customize by week; from weekly to every 8 weeks
Shelf life/storage	Freezer 6 months; fridge up to 4 days	Unopened thawed food, 7 days; opened, 5 days (fish-based meals, subtract 2 days).
Texture	coarse pâté	moist pâté
Protein options (single, insect, plant)	Single-source meat proteins (e.g., lamb and lamb liver, etc.). No fish.	Meat, fish, and plant-based options; single-source proteins
Human-grade	Yes	Yes
Ingredient source transparency	Somewhat	Somewhat
Customizability	Recommendations are made from existing recipes and consider weight, activity, age, breed; portion sizes are customized	Options based on weight, age, breed, and allergies, plus prescription diet support
Discounts	60% off starter box; less frequent deliveries are cheaper	Free shipping on autoship and frozen over $99; flat rate for non-autoship items

Our Ollie Dog Food Review Recommendation

Our test pup, Pepper, always gets excited about food. Even so, you can tell when some things are more appealing than others. While I thought I’ve seen peak mealtime excitement, Pepper’s reaction as we were reviewing Ollie’s fresh dog food portions proved there’s a level above that.

She loves this stuff, and her humans do too. It’s a great dry-ish pâté texture that is easy to serve and store. We loved the simplicity of each package being customized to equal one day’s worth of food, too.

It is harder to swallow the cost, however, especially if you are comparing this to a dry kibble-based diet, which is what Pepper usually eats. But if you’re already in the market for fresher foods that are closer to home-cooked than traditional types of dog food, Ollie’s price point is comparable (see our chart above), and even competitive if you get onto the four-week delivery plan.

In short, we think Ollie is a huge win for pet palates and pet parents looking for a convenient fresh-food option with good safety and nutrition guardrails, with an impressive degree of customizability.

We also like Ollie’s efforts toward sustainability and sourcing transparency, though pet parents for whom that’s a priority may be more interested in competitors who have invested more there to date.

For allergic pups, Ollie’s single-protein recipes with relatively few ingredients are a smart choice, though dogs with undiagnosed or mystery food allergies may want to stick to even slimmer recipe profiles.

Who will like this:

• Pet parents looking to make the switch to fresh food with a trusted, widely popular brand
• Pet parents looking for an especially convenient fresh-food subscription that’s relatively easy to store and feed
• Dogs who are picky eaters or who have diagnosed food allergies
• Pet parents who want to mix and match wet and dry dog food, either with their pup’s own favorite kibble or with Ollie’s own baked food options

Who might want to look elsewhere:

• Pet parents aiming to keep a dog’s food budget to a healthy minimum
• Those who free feed or whose schedules can’t accommodate wet/fresh feeding
• People who want more purchasing options, such as an in-store pick-up
• Pet parents prioritizing extreme commitments to sustainability and sourcing transparency or exceptionally limited-ingredient recipes

Find on Ollie

Further Reading

• The 11 Best Subscription and Fresh Dog Food Brands: Tested by Real Dogs
• Review: Just Food For Dogs Offers Fresh Food Three Ways
• Review: A Pup Above’s Bone Broth Food Wins With Picky Eaters
• Review: Raised Right Dog Food Offers Appealing Fresh, High-Protein Food