How Beco became the eco-friendly option for dog food

The surge in dog ownership during lockdown and a growing market for sustainable products helped Beco deliver huge online sales last year, their CEO tells Andy Martin

CEO George Bramble (and Tarka the lab) saw a gap in the market (Matthew G Lloyd)

Tarka the black labrador has the dream job. She is “chief product tester” at Beco Pets. Every day she goes into work with bounding enthusiasm. She tests out the food, she tests out the toys, and then she has to have a lie-down and test out one or other of several possible beds. And, when she is not working, she gets to play with her pet human, George Bramble, who happens to be CEO and co-founder of Beco.

There is a natural bond and affinity between Tarka and George. Every summer when he was growing up, Mr and Mrs Bramble used to drive all the way from Dorset to Scotland and then take the ferry over to the Outer Hebrides, where the young George spent most of his time outside, roaming about off the leash, exploring nature.

Which partly explains how he went on to study geography and environmental science – and play a lot of rugby – at Birmingham University. After graduating in 2005, he considered going into medicine but his dad, a surgeon, said it would take another five or six years just to do a first degree, and then there were all the qualifying hoops to jump through. “I thought I’d be 50 before I even got going,” says Bramble, so he went to work in marketing for Bacardi instead.