--- title: "eCommerce Financing | Customer Stories | The Butcher's Dog | Wayflyer" description: "How The Butcher's Dog used Wayflyer's working capital to cover the gap between paying suppliers upfront and getting paid by retailers, scaling into 265 stores." canonical: "https://wayflyer.com/au/our-customers/the-butchers-dog" locale: "en-AU" date: "2026-09-10" --- # How The Butcher's Dog Funded Its Push into National Retail ![The Butcher's Dog with Real Food For Dogs delivery boxes](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/1aendizt/redesign/19af6428cffe6ee08c2841743d5a000e2c8e55cd-1672x941.png) The Butcher's Dog makes truly human grade frozen raw dog food in Australia. Founded by Greg and Jo Bridgman after their own fussy dog, Wilson, refused to eat conventional pet food, the business started in a Sydney garage and has grown into a brand with nationwide retail distribution across 265 Petbarn stores, Pet Circle, Harris Farm Markets, PetO, and other selected independent pet stores. The hero product is a 250-gram frozen disc, six to a pack, each one a full day's serving of raw food for a 10 kg dog: convenience from pack to bowl. --- ### From Wilson's dinner to 265 stores It started with a dog who refused to eat. Greg and Jo Bridgman's dog, Wilson, was fussy enough to be a problem, so they started making his own recipes. At the dog park, friends noticed. They asked for samples. Greg and Jo saw something in that response and decided to find out whether a business could follow. > We started off in the garage with a headlamp on, packing dog food into bags and delivering them all around Sydney. The first month, The Butcher's Dog turned over $2,000. Eight years on, the business looks very different. The garage gave way to a unit in Seven Hills, then larger premises in Belrose, then the warehouse next door as that outgrew itself too. The product range has grown to around 40 SKUs. The core remains a 250-gram frozen disc, six to a pack, each one a full day's serving of raw food for a ten-kilogram dog: organic chicken, kangaroo, rabbit, duck, lamb. Human grade as a literal description of the ingredient quality, not a marketing approximation. Covid was good to the business. The Butcher's Dog was already operating in home delivery when lockdowns arrived, and the channel grew sharply. After Covid, Greg and Jo read the shift correctly. > After Covid we knew things were going to change. People wanted to get out and about, touch things, go to bricks and mortar, socialise more. The brand began positioning itself for retail. Petbarn came to them. Twelve months of proposals and negotiations followed before they were listed. Today The Butcher's Dog is in 265 Petbarn stores nationwide, alongside Pet Circle, PetO, Harris Farm Markets, and a network of independent retailers. A new product line in development is expected to roughly double revenue. --- ### Paying upfront, waiting weeks to get paid Scaling a pet food manufacturing business from a standing start means learning the hard way. > The meat industry works on a cash basis. You buy a pallet of beef and traditionally, for businesses like ours, it's a cash sale, COD. Raw meat, vegetables, packaging: all paid on delivery, before a single unit had been sold. Moving into retail distribution pulled payment terms in the other direction. Large retailers can take six to eight weeks to pay. > It affects our cash flow, and that's been the critical issue to overcome. Not running out of cash until we get paid. Cash pressure runs in both directions at once. To prepare for growth, The Butcher's Dog has to commit to packaging orders months in advance, while the receivables from completed sales arrive weeks after delivery. For a business expanding quickly into national retail, the gap between paying out and getting paid back becomes the central challenge to manage. --- ### Working with people you like and trust Greg was hesitant about Wayflyer at first. The daily repayment structure felt like a concern before he had seen it working in practice. > I was hesitant to come on board initially, just because of my perception of the drain on cash flow from the daily take. So we tested it out and it worked well for us. What followed was a rolling relationship that scaled with the business. As The Butcher's Dog grew into distribution with Petbarn and other retailers, adding staff, taking on bigger premises, and committing to larger production runs, Greg returned for additional rounds of funding. > As we've scaled, it meant I had to go and get additional advances from Wayflyer, and they seem to work very well for the business. What kept Greg coming back was simpler than the product terms. > What I've learned over the years, having been around the block a couple of times, is that you just have to work with people that you like and trust, and hopefully that trust manifests itself through the relationship and the business grows. The target is to double revenue by the end of 2027. New product development and export capability are in the works, and beyond the revenue targets, Greg and Jo have a valuation roadmap of $25 million in view within a year or two. > We love being involved in projects where there is actual growth happening, not just potential. And that's where we are right now. --- _Interested in following in The Butcher's Dog's footsteps? Wayflyer has funded over 6,000 businesses worldwide with $6 billion worth of working capital, backed by world-leading financial institutions. Apply in minutes and access funds in hours. [Start your application today](https://app.wayflyer.com/funding/how-to-apply)._ --- **Ready to grow like The Butcher's Dog?** ### Apply in minutes. Access funds in hours. [Get started](https://app.wayflyer.com/authn/signup)