GREEN BAY, Wis. — If your name happened to be, say, Spot, the dog days of summer took on a whole new meaning Monday.

In a good way.

Carnivore Meat Company broke ground on a 235,0000-square-foot facility that will bring an additional 150 jobs to the Green Bay area. Carnivore, which has four locations and over 200 employees, specializes in ultra-premium freeze-dried and frozen raw pet food.

And what exactly is that?

“It is different from your traditional kibble that you might find in a grocery store,’’ sad Lanny Viegut, Carnivore’s CEO who founded the company in 2012.

“Big picture, what we try to do is reassemble the prey as a dog or cat in the wild would consume. So, we try to put back together the chicken, the beef animal, the pork, the turkey, the duck, the rabbit; whatever we’re producing, we try to put that back together to really be a prey diet."

“When you do that, the difference between what we do and the grocery store food is really the carbohydrates and the food being in the natural state. Putting together the meat, the organs and all the bone products and make a diet, it’s virtually identical to what they would have eaten in their natural habitat.’’

Viegut said the initial intention was to sell this product to pet owners with a lot of discretionary income, but found over the past 10 years that people from all economic backgrounds have become customers. Today, Carnivore Meat Company products, highlighted by its featured Vital Essentials brand, can be found in 6,000 pet specialty stores nationally and 14 international markets.

Carnivore was one of the rare business that was helped in some degree by the pandemic, as 23 million U.S. household adopted a pet during that time, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That same time, pet owners spent $28.4 billion on dog food, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.

The 28-acre, dog-friendly facility is expected to take 12 to 18 months to complete and open in late 2023. The facility will be the largest of its kind if North America and will allow a nearly a six-fold increase in production capacity.

“This is going to be a vital project for Green Bay’s economy for several reasons,’’ said Neil Stechschulte, development director for the City of Green Bay. “Meat processing is a $100 billion industry for the state of Wisconsin, and it’s especially true up here in the Green Bay area.

“This is also going to serve as an anchor tenant to our new Grandview Industrial Park. This is going to allow us to invest in additional infrastructure to help make that happen. A total of 150 jobs being retained and created through this project and provide $10 million in annual salary. It’s adding $35 million in tax base to the local community and construction investment, it’s going to be almost twice that amount.’’

Viegut has built a reputation for scribbling outside the lines, and he knows that has worked to his benefit.

“From day one, we just we took the approach of being different,’’ he said. “Blue Ocean Strategy was a book that I had read prior to this starting and it talked about going places where others aren’t. So as we created products, as we created our packaging, as we’ve grown developed the business, we took that approach of being a disruptor, being different and unique. And that’s really propelled us to where we’re at today.”

And today, as Viegut noted, a lot of pets have it pretty good.

“It’s not uncommon for people to drive through McDonald’s for their kids,’’ he said, “and then go to the pet store and spend a couple hundred dollars on pet food.”

Story idea? You can reach Mike Woods at 920-246-6321 or at: michael.t.woods1@charter.com

August 9 Editor's Note: Carnivore Meat Company's title has been edited to correctly reflect the proper name.