Q&A with Greg Ramier, CEO, Pet Valu
Tell us how you decided to join Pet Valu in the fall of 2024. What can you tell us about transitioning from overseeing all aspects of grocery to focusing solely on pet?
I was drawn to Pet Valu because of the strength of the business, combined with its growth potential. It has a strong legacy and leadership serving devoted pet lovers across Canada, a compelling runway to serve a growing number of communities across the country and the opportunities to deliver great experiences in-store and online. I think the most pleasant surprise was how knowledgeable and engaged our in-store associates (which we call our Animal Care Experts, or ACEs) and franchisees are with the products we sell and the bond that they have with our customers. That is something that I think is special within the neighbourhood pet channel and Pet Valu specifically.
How would you describe your leadership style? How are you mentoring your team members to develop and flex their leadership skills?
My style is customer and store first. I also believe alignment and collaboration, combined with critical thinking and data-driven decision-making, are the keys to a high-performing team. We’ve got an excellent leadership team with deep operational experience, and so I see my job as how to best challenge them to continually seek ways we can serve our customers and franchisees better every day.
What aspect or aspects of your personal work ethic have helped you most to become successful?
I grew up in a small town. This, and my family, helped me understand the value of hard work, clear messages and strong relationships early on in life. Ultimately, these values have made the biggest difference in both my personal and business life. I also started my career as an engineer, which put structure into how I work, and helps with assessing situations as well as solving problems in dynamic industries like retail.
What makes the pet specialty channel and the pet industry at large dynamic and vibrant? How would you describe the current state of the pet industry?
There are several resilient factors supporting our industry. First, there are demographic tailwinds both from young adults (getting pets before starting a family) and empty-nesters (seeking companionship from pets when kids leave home). And second, pet owners are consistently looking for better ways to feed and care for their pets, a trend often coined as humanization and premiumization.
How will AI play a larger role in the pet industry in the coming months and years?
In the near term, I believe AI can help us find efficiencies in workflow and everyday tasks to free up time for more value-added activities. Longer-term, I think there could be opportunities in how we can leverage our data to deliver a more personalized retail experience with our customers, which is something we consistently strive to improve.
How are recent developments on the distribution side of pet affecting retailers?
We have very strong and collaborative relationships with many of Canada’s leading pet specialty brands. This is something that is very important to our business and that we are very proud of. We know the important role these brands play in helping devoted pet lovers care for their pets, and these brands recognize that Pet Valu can provide them with the broadest (and fastest-growing) access to Canada’s most discerning pet parents.
What sparked Pet Valu’s decision to invest in consolidating warehouses into three distribution centers, thereby creating one of Canada’s largest distribution centers?
As a result of the explosive growth in the pet industry through the pandemic, our distribution centers were operating at well over 100 percent capacity at the end of 2022, resulting in the need for expensive third-party storage and an inefficient supply chain. We capitalized on an opportunity to make a once-in-a-decade investment in our supply chain to consolidate into three new, modern and partially automated DCs. This unlocked greater capacity to continue our industry-leading store growth pace, supply a broader selection of products to our stores and capture productivity and efficiency savings. We now operate what we believe to be Canada’s strongest supply chain in the pet specialty industry and are set up to maximize growth over the next decade.
How are meaningful topics such as the humanization of pets and sustainability shaping the industry? What impact are these topics having on retailers?
Humanization and premiumization trends have been tailwinds in the pet industry for decades, as Canadians have incorporated our pets more and more into our daily lives. This has and continues to spur lots of innovation around nutrition and care, and pet specialty retailers like us play a pivotal role in this through the advice and education we provide in-aisle. We invest heavily in the expertise of our ACEs and franchisees, as we know that’s one of the main points of difference devoted pet lovers are looking for when visiting our stores.
What are the top challenges pet owners are facing and how are retailers like Pet Valu supporting these owners?
With the rising cost of living, pet parents (like all consumers) are increasingly looking for better value for what they purchase. Over the last 18 months, we’ve made a series of investments to provide greater everyday value to our customers, led by our strong proprietary brands, which are often priced 5 to 20 percent lower than comparable national brands. At the same time, we’ve added more brands to our frequent-buyer loyalty program, which has industry-leading coverage, and introduced everyday offers on our subscription service, AutoShip.
What are your immediate goals as the new CEO of Pet Valu?
I am focused on continuing to advance many of our long-standing strategic initiatives, such as expanding our store network, driving merchandising excellence and enhancing our points of difference in our loyalty program and proprietary brand offering. Each of these has been a key driver to our success, and there’s still so much more opportunity on these fronts for us to go out and capture. And with the recent completion of our supply chain transformation, we are also focused on realizing the planned productivity and efficiency benefits from that multi-year investment.
Touching on the completion of the new distribution center in Calgary and the opening of 16 new stores, what are some of the recent developments unfolding that you can share? How is the distribution center proving its resilience and its capacity to support Pet Valu’s franchises and corporate stores?
With the opening of our third and final modern distribution center, in Calgary, we now have over 1.3 million square feet of distribution capacity, representing the strongest supply chain serving the Canadian pet specialty sector. We believe this is a real strategic advantage for us, as it has unlocked another decade or more of industry-leading store growth and enables us to be an even better supplier for our franchisees, all while delivering productivity and efficiency improvements.
Pet Valu’s latest quarterly financial results—increasing revenues, a robust presence of 849 stores, and the official opening of the distribution center—indicate the company is on solid footing and has a bright future. You’ve characterized it as “responsible growth”—how will you maintain this sustainable pace to achieve revenues of up to 1.185 billion?
As we shared on our Q3 earnings call, we plan to continue many of the initiatives that have driven growth for us year-to-date: open new stores, win the monthly shop led by our proprietary brands and key specialty brand partners, and increase our wholesale penetration with our franchisees.
How did Roark Capital help Pet Valu become Canada’s largest pet specialty retailer? How has Roark Capital’s exit last summer impacted Pet Valu’s day-to-day operations and growth goals?
Roark was a fantastic sponsor and steward of our business for an important phase of our growth as we broadened our presence across all Canadian provinces and significantly expanded our franchise community. At the same time, we’ve brought in and developed strong leadership talent within our executive team, which I am confident will help drive continued success in our next chapter of growth.
What do you attribute to Pet Valu’s continued success? What are some key values and features of Pet Valu that make you a leader in the pet specialty space?
I believe our ongoing success ties directly back to a combination of strengths in convenience, quality, value and expertise. We, and our franchisees, operate Canada’s largest network of pet specialty stores, putting us within 5km of over 75 percent of Canadians, complemented by a full suite of digital capabilities. We offer a fantastic selection of high-quality specialty pet products, many of which are made right here in Canada. We provide value through our award-winning proprietary brand offering and loyalty programs. And we invest in training our ACEs so that they can deliver trusted product advice in-aisle.
Given the highly competitive nature of the pet retail channel, what is Pet Valu’s strategy to stand out from the crowd heading into the new year?
I’d go back to my comment on excelling in convenience, quality, value and expertise. We’ve got initiatives in each of these pillars underway, which we’ll continue to advance in 2026. We’ll have more to share on our 2026 plans when we release our Q4 results in early March.
How does operating both franchised and corporate stores continue to allow for Pet Valu to create a meaningful experience for pets and pet parents?
Having both franchised and corporate store networks provides many strategic benefits. Our franchisees are fantastic owner-operators who live and invest in their local communities, driving deep connections with devoted pet lovers. At the same time, our corporate stores provide an excellent test ground to innovate and develop operational practices, which can then be shared with franchisees. Together, we have the flexibility to act quickly when the right real estate opportunities open up, so that we can serve more communities across Canada, whether it be with a corporate or franchised store.
How does Pet Valu remain committed to supporting pets and pet parents?
Our actions and decisions all tie back to serving the devoted pet lover, who is continually seeking ways to provide better for their pets. As a result, we are constantly enhancing our product offering, in-store services and in-aisle expertise to better serve this need.
