Encore Pet Food

Encore’s parent company, MPM, started in 2002 when three co-founders, Roger Wood, Roger Coleman, and Jon Kinsey, decided they didn’t want to feed their own dogs food filled with additives and fillers. That frustration became the whole basis for the business. MPM stands for “Making Pet Food Matters,” and the company has stuck closely to its founding philosophy ever since: if they couldn’t make better pet food, they wouldn’t make it at all.

Applaws came first, launching in 2006 as a 100% natural, ethically sourced premium range sold through specialty retailers, aimed at owners who already knew what they were looking for in a pet food label. Applaws went on to launch a world-first 80% grain-free chicken dry food in 2009. Encore followed in 2008, originally built for the UK grocery market specifically, a more accessible, supermarket-facing counterpart to Applaws’ specialty positioning. It’s since expanded well beyond its grocery-store roots and is now sold globally.

The company grew steadily through that period: by 2013, MPM had sold its 100 millionth unit of wet cat food worldwide, and its brands, including Encore, Applaws, Reveal, and Nature’s Calling, are now sold in 49 markets, with offices across the UK, Australia, China, and the US. Encore itself is based in Cheshire, employs around 200 people, and manufactures its wet cat food in Thailand, using facilities built to human food manufacturing standards.

The product itself stays close to the founding brief: real meat, no unnecessary cereals, fillers or preservatives, and recipes built around amino acids like taurine and arginine for balanced nutrition. Encore’s range spans pouches, tins, and pots for both cats and dogs, sold through UK retailers including Morrisons, Waitrose, Ocado, and Amazon, and the brand has avoided any recorded product recalls throughout its history, something reviewers have pointed to as a mark of consistency for a company still built, more than two decades on, around the same question its founders started with: would we feed this to our own dogs?