Our mantra is quality.
Our mantra is quality.
Personality in Pet Food
Identity is a new and innovative pet food company devoted to bringing you the best possible all-meat dog food and cat food. Our low-ingredient, small-batch canned foods are not about trends or fads or hype.
They’re about purposeful, real and honest 100% deliberate nutrition-crafting for the pets we treat like humans.
We want to give your pet the blank canvas of good, simple, delicious food to let their identities shine through.
By developing this superior quality value-filled pet food, we believe that luxurious taste should know no boundaries. Every pet deserves access to responsibly and sustainably sourced products that offer comprehensive health and wellness benefits from the first taste.
Our Founder's Story
The journey that led Jeremy and Trevar Petersen to create Identity Pet Nutrition is just about as natural as the delicious, human-grade pet food they produce for your beloved pets. From their family history in the business to their previous experiences in the industry, their passion for superior quality pet food is no passing interest.
Born and raised in agricultural Weld County, Colorado, their grandfather was a successful entrepreneur in farm seed and pet food businesses and remains a major inspiration to the two brothers. As the third generation of their family working in pet food, Jeremy and Trevar have a perspective on agriculture & the industry that goes beyond trends and catchphrases. They know farmers, they know ranchers, they know local neighborhood pet distributors, retailers & consumers, and they know the rewards and hardships that go into raising animals and crops. They’ve seen agriculture become bigger and more consolidated, and they recognize the value of small, local sustainable farmers who are passionate about their animals, their humane treatment and regenerative farming practices.
These roots in small and local businesses translate to how they run Identity. They pride themselves on being owner-led, and now based in the Denver area, they continue to passionately support local neighborhood stores and entrepreneurs. However, their approach is more than entrepreneurial. They didn’t just create Identity to follow marketing fads. They saw a real problem – low quality frozen ingredients, overuse of genetically modified organisms, hormones & antibiotics and a lack of supply-chain transparency – and set out to solve it.
In genuine small business fashion, Jeremy and Trevar take a truly hands-on approach, not beholden to private equity or external financial backers and involved at every stage – from creating recipes to graphic design to chatting with individual customers. Before financials or trends, their focus is on producing the best tasting, most beneficial products for your pets. And that focus means that every decision has a reason or meaning behind it. They know the people at every stage of production, they know the true value of what they produce, and because of that, they are able to deliver transparent methods and honest pricing to you.
As animal lovers passionate about sports, great food, and travel, Jeremy and Trevar have plenty in common. In running Identity, their individual strengths and interests shine through. Jeremy takes a direct role in branding, design & sales while Trevar takes pride in being the numbers and efficiency guy. Both brothers keep a close eye on operations and pride themselves on knowing the pet food industry from every angle.
Jeremy and Trevar’s ambitions for Identity are both grand and rooted in their belief in the value of small-batch, top quality natural food to your pets. Their vision is not to mass-produce for the biggest retailers but to create the first true closed loop pet food company, ensuring the highest quality product from farm to bowl. From farms to manufacturing to retail to customer education, their goals for Identity revolve around continuing to bring you honest, transparent, and healthy food for your pets.
Jeremy J. Petersen
Founder | President & CEO
Born and raised in rural Weld County Colorado, Jeremy has the land’s richness in his character and outlook. He grew up learning and appreciating absolutely everything that was agriculture-related. Jeremy now lives in Denver, not that far from his roots. He is a graduate of the International Baccalaureate High School Program and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with a degree in business and entrepreneurship. Jeremy has strong opinions about the future of small business in the USA, having co-founded and run three pet food companies before he was thirty (30).
He sees the red tape that hampers innovation and industry and he tries to do something about it. He has made solid proposals to state and federal governments to fund entrepreneurial high schoolers via stipends to attend community college while building their businesses and to directly provide business loans to those who have degrees already but otherwise cannot afford to finance a good idea without investors. Jeremy is also passionate about the skills gap in this country, and says not everyone has to get a BA or MBA. He challenges limited thinking and outdated approaches and says business is a solution for almost every problem out there – as long as it’s approached with a 360-degree view of the impacts of every decision made.
Jeremy views himself as a disruptor creating consumer packaged goods not based merely on marketing trends but education and actual consumer demand for uncompromising high-quality ingredients, transparency and honest formulations. Using his deep knowledge and expertise of the pet industry (2015 Pet Age 40 under 40 Award Recipient), he’s on a journey for innovation and change. His dream is to create the first closed-loop pet food company at Identity Pet Nutrition.
Jeremy’s heroes are his grandfather, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Deion Sanders and John Mackey – all for their entrepreneurial thinking and enduring success.
His hobbies are investing (he would have been an investment banker had he not found the pet food industry) and he is a big basketball and football fan (Go Blue!). He enjoys reading and is constantly learning. Jeremy is an avid traveler (he holds a private pilot license) and a bit of a foodie – he cooks at home and also enjoys going out to local restaurants or hitting the food scene in new places he discovers on his travels. Maybe that epicureanism matches up with his entrepreneurialism to make for a one-of-a-kind pet food guru!
Jeremy’s main areas of focus at Identity Pet Nutrition are finance & accounting, formulation, branding, design, customer care, sales and marketing. He is a loving father to a Shih Tzu named Zoey.
Trevar Petersen
Founder | Chief Operating Officer
Trevar attended an International Baccalaureate High School and
then went on to get a degree in business from the University of Colorado at Boulder Leeds School of Business. He focuses at Identity Pet Nutrition on numbers and efficiencies. He especially likes to dig into the data on competitors and find the errors in their ways. Where have there been recalls, and why? What corners are being cut in price-driven formulations? While Trevar is knee-deep into financials and analysis, he also has a big heart for pets. They are the real bottom line.
He is most proud of this being his third pet food company that
he helped start from scratch - and his small company’s adventures in big business. He likes being the David against many Goliaths. He points to the innovations Identity Pet Nutrition has made and continues to make - whether that’s in exotic protein formulations or new hybrid distribution models that work for both buyers and distributors.
Trevar’s hobbies are being a sports fan to the max – and hanging with the family out in the country – and their pups!