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The workarounds quietly growing around your pet food formulation software
Has your pet food formulation process outgrown your software?
5 signs your formulation process has grown past what your system was built to handle
Recipes still calculate. Specifications still generate. Production keeps running.
Somewhere along the way, though, a spreadsheet started tracking a few things the system doesn't. A calculation gets checked by hand, just to be sure. A margin gets added to a recipe, not because the system asked for it, but because nobody was entirely certain of the numbers behind it.
None of it shows up as a problem. Nothing breaks, and no one raises it in a meeting. It just becomes part of how the day goes; easy to miss in an industry already asking a lot of its systems. A 2025 industry analysis identified 602 standardized ingredients used across U.S. dog and cat foods, with 9.28 million tons of ingredients worth $13.23 billion used in U.S. pet food manufacturing (source).
When your software was introduced, the process it was built for may have looked different. Recipes may have been simpler. Fewer people needed access to the same data. Formulation, quality and production may not have needed to talk to each other as closely as they do now.
The software hasn't changed what it does. What's changed is everything happening around it.
So the more useful question isn't whether the software still works. It's how much of your day now happens outside it.
5 signs to look for.
1. Parts of the recipe live outside the system
Spreadsheets, manual calculations and separate files often start as quick fixes. Over time, formulators can find themselves copying data, checking calculations and keeping track of which version is current.
The more information that lives outside the formulation system, the more effort it takes to manage every change and the more room there is for manual mistakes.
BESTMIX Recipe Management keeps formulations, specifications, quality data and version history in one system, so formulators always work from the same live data instead of parallel spreadsheets and files.
The value: Less time spent maintaining workarounds and checking manual entries. Scientists can focus more on developing and optimizing recipes, while R&D has a clearer way to manage changes.
2. Your pet food production steps are formulated separately
Base recipe. Extrusion. Drying. Coating. Finished product.
They are different steps, but they are not different products.
Moisture, ingredients, yield and nutrient composition can change throughout production. When these stages are difficult to manage together, scientists have to work out how a change in one step affects what eventually ends up in the bag.
This is particularly relevant for dry pet food production. Dry dog food accounted for 5.4 million tons, or 55% of total U.S. dog and cat food sales volume, in the 2025 analysis (source).
Multi-step formulation keeps the different production stages within one recipe structure. In BESTMIX, individual steps can have their own constraints while ingredients and nutrients are rolled up into a consolidated finished-product view.
The value: Formulators can see the impact of changes across the complete recipe before it reaches production. R&D can develop and adjust products more efficiently, while production receives a formulation that better reflects how the product is actually made.
One finished product. One connected formulation.
3. QC tells you what happened. Then the information stops there.
QC already generates valuable information from NIR readings, laboratory analyses, supplier data, deviations and finished-product testing.
But if that information stays in QC, the next formulation may still be based on the same ingredient assumptions.
BESTMIX Quality Control can use approved ingredient results to update ingredient values used by Recipe Management. Finished-product results can also be compared with the expected values from the original formulation.
The value: QA can do more than identify and investigate deviations. Formulators can work with more current ingredient information and see the difference between expected and actual results, helping them make the next formulation with more confidence.
4. Ingredient variability means adding more safety margin
Raw materials do not arrive with exactly the same nutritional composition every time. When formulators have to formulate using typical or average values, adding a buffer is a logical way to protect the finished-product specification.
But that protection can also mean using more of an expensive nutrient than necessary.
The financial scale makes this worth looking at. The 2025 analysis estimates that U.S. dog and cat food manufacturing used $13.23 billion worth of ingredients . Animal-based ingredients alone represented approximately $8.5 billion (source).
Across that scale, even small amounts of unnecessary over-formulation are worth paying attention to.
BESTMIX Procision can use the actual price and quality of individual raw-material lots from NIR or laboratory data when optimizing production orders instead of relying only on averages.
The value: Scientists can formulate closer to the ingredients actually available. Procurement and management gain an opportunity to reduce unnecessary raw-material costs, while QA still gets the nutritional protection the finished product requires.
The goal is not to remove the safety margin you need. It is to reduce the uncertainty behind it.
5. Production learns. Formulation doesn’t.
Every production run generates information. How did the ingredients behave? Where did moisture end up? How closely did the finished product match the formulation?
If that knowledge stays on the production floor or in QC reports, formulators start the next formulation without the full picture.
Connecting formulation, production and quality makes that information more useful across teams.
The value: Formulators can make better-informed formulation decisions, production gets recipes that better reflect manufacturing reality, and QA gains a clearer connection between the target and the finished result.
Every production run generates knowledge. The value comes from being able to use it.
Has your formulation process outgrown your software?
You do not need to start by looking for new software. Start with one product and follow it from formulation through production and quality.
Look at where your team leaves the system to get the job done. Where is information copied manually? Where are calculations repeated? Where does QC learn something that never reaches formulation? Where are extra margins used because the information available is not precise enough?
These gaps point to where there is something to gain: less manual work, fewer mistakes, better use of ingredient and quality data, tighter formulations and a smoother path from recipe to finished product.
Closing those gaps may mean improving the way you use your current systems, connecting data differently or deciding that your formulation setup needs to change. The important part is knowing where the work, cost and uncertainty are coming from.
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