Finger & Paw Licking - These Vegan Treats Are For Dogs To Share With Their Humans

Meet Mareli Pelzer, a private chef passionate about creative catering and unique cakes for big events. Mareli lives in Hackney Wick, East London, surrounded by many inspiring food startups and artists. 

During the pandemic, she started making food for her neighbours as a way to connect during unprecedented times. Someone's dog fell ill, and she was asked to prepare food for her. As a chef interested in understanding nutrition, it took her down a rabbit hole into the world of dog food. Together with her neighbour, they nursed the doggy back to health, and she's now doing great. 

Soon after, a doggy daycare centre with a vegan café opened down the road from me, and Mareli was eager to do catering for them.

When she presented her vegan food menu and - as an experiment - vegan dog treats and cake, she noticed that all the humans were happily enjoying the dog treats and quite naturally sharing with their dogs! 

That was when she realised that it makes sense to create healthy, natural treats and cakes that dogs can share with their owners.

Being a chef is my second career after theatre; so, naturally, I wanted to do something purposeful with my life, enhancing the lives of others. 

I think we all realise that we have to do better for our animals and for our planet, and making treats with spent grain just makes sense. 

Spent grain is normally a waste product of the beer-making industry: breweries produce 600-1000kg of spent grain every time they brew. It's fantastic food, brimming with fibre (70%), plant protein (20%) and amino acids. I just want to do my bit for the circular economy.

Yes, I believe so! There are a lot of other companies that make vegan dog treats, but ours is the first to create treats that are specially designed for people to share with their dogs. I worked on the recipes for over a year, perfecting them for human and dog palates.

All our ingredients are completely natural and plant-based, with no nasties. Our doggy birthday cake, for example, is a vegan carrot and banana cake - which is naturally sweet, topped with peanut butter and healthy seeds. And it's always freshly baked - delicious!

There is no reason why your dog should have meat at every meal or with every snacking opportunity. In fact, a lot of dogs on raw food diets don't get nearly enough fibre in their diets. Upcycled grain is so good for dog tummies and contains 20% plant protein, which is a lot more than traditional kibble.

There has now been plenty of studies to show that dogs can actually thrive on a vegan diet! I can honestly say that I was sceptical myself at first, which is why I got expert advice. All our treats are approved by both a sport dog nutritionist and a human nutritionist and classified as healthy and wholesome for both humans and dogs. We also add healthy supplements, like spirulina, natural seeds and nutritional yeast to our treats. This makes sure we're providing healthy, low-calorie treats.

Our range includes: Bone Shaped Treats: Coconut Bones, Beer Bones, Dog Choc Bones, Peanut Banana Bones, and Pizza Bones. Training Treats: Peanut Butter Pyramids and Spinach & Spirulina Pyramids.

Doggy Granola: Quite excited about this one; made with oats, spent grain, cinnamon, banana and seeds. So healthy, with no added sugar. This is especially nice, as you can share breakfast with your dog!

Vegan cakes for dogs and humans: Carrot & Banana Cake with Peanut Butter and Seeds, and Vegan Vanilla Blueberry Beauty with Raspberry Sprinkle. 

We source our grain from three local breweries: East London Brewing, Mammoth Beer and Old Street Brewery. Our production kitchen is in Hackney Wick, where we are proud to take our time to make all our products by hand. We only use the freshest, human-grade ingredients, like carrots, bananas, oats, peanut butter, apples, berries, nuts and seeds, spirulina, nutritional yeast, and carob. Our freshly baked vegan cakes can be shipped nationwide and are perfect for any celebration.

You can now buy our vegan dog treats online, including Beer Bones, Pizza Bones, Peanut Banana Bones, Doggy Granola and Spinach & Spirulina Pyramids. We are currently in talks to create a special edition Christmas cake for TVK for the end of the year - so look out for it in a couple of months!