Champion Petfoods, a small Alberta town and a brand added twenty years in.

ORIJEN — the brand writes its name in capital letters — is the dog and cat food line of Champion Petfoods, a company from the Canadian province of Alberta. English Wikipedia says Champion was founded in 1985 by Reinhard Muhlenfeld, citing a January 2018 profile of the company in The Globe and Mail. Champion itself says it has been making pet food since 1985 and describes its beginnings as a company “founded in a small town in Alberta.” The magazine Site Selection described Champion in March 2015 as a company based in Morinville, Alberta, with agricultural roots going back to 1985.

The ORIJEN name came two decades after the company. English Wikipedia dates the brand to 2005 and describes it as a premium line of dog and cat food made by Champion in Alberta and in Kentucky. Champion makes it alongside a second brand, ACANA, and trade coverage of the company, from Kentucky to Alberta, has named the two brands together.

The business was built largely on exports. Site Selection reported in 2015 that ORIJEN and ACANA were sold in more than 70 countries, and Trade & Industry Development gave a figure of more than 80 in May 2017. Champion now says its two brands are sold in more than 90 countries. Through much of that period the company was led by Frank Burdzy, named as Champion’s president and chief executive in both reports. In May 2017, announcing new kitchens in Alberta, he spoke of “the place we have called home for over 30 years,” Trade & Industry Development reported.

Kitchens, not factories, and a vocabulary of its own.

ORIJEN’s identity rests as much on words as on pictures. The brand’s own site groups its explanations under a small set of coined or trademarked phrases. Its foods are “Biologically Appropriate,” it says, built on what it calls “WholePrey” nutrition, and its home page carries the line “Nourish as Nature Intended.” The site also says ORIJEN foods are made with fresh and raw ingredients, and that refrigeration is the sole method used to preserve its fresh ingredients. All of these are the company’s own descriptions of its products.

The same habit of naming runs through the company’s buildings. Champion does not describe its plants as factories but as kitchens, and it gives each one a name. When the builder Gray Construction reported the grand opening of Champion’s plant in Auburn, Kentucky, in May 2016, the facility was called the DogStar Kitchens; the plant announced for Alberta in 2017 was called the NorthStar Kitchens. Gray’s 2016 report also spelled out another of the company’s coinages, BAFRINO, which it said stood for “Biologically Appropriate Fresh Regional Ingredients Never Outsourced.” Champion’s own site still speaks of foods prepared in “our state-of-the-art kitchens.”

That language of region and origin has shaped where the food is made. Site Selection reported in 2015 that the planned Kentucky plant would buy from local farmers and suppliers, and that, as a result, the American recipes would differ from the Canadian ones. Gray said in 2016 that the Kentucky kitchens would supply only Champion’s American market.

On its own website the brand keeps its name in capitals throughout, followed by a registered-trademark symbol. No designer or agency for the ORIJEN wordmark or bags is named in the company material or trade coverage used for this guide, so none is credited here.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all sell to people who keep pets: Hurtta, LickiMat, ORIJEN, Tiki Cat, Wellness, Stella & Chewy’s and Frisco. Some make food and treats, some make the gear around the bowl — coats, mats, crates and toys — and they reach owners through very different routes, from specialist pet shops to large online retailers.

They also sit at different points in the trade, and two examples show the range. ORIJEN is made by Champion Petfoods, which Mars Petcare has owned since 2023, when the closing of its purchase from an investor group was announced. Frisco is not a separate company at all but an own label of the online retailer Chewy, which says it launched the brand in 2016 as its first private brand for durable goods.

A pet brand’s identity is usually carried by its packaging, its name and the story it tells about where its products come from, and those can stay the same while the company behind them changes hands or moves production. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started the brand, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging and marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word. None of these guides makes any claim about the health effects of a product.

Two countries of kitchens, then a sale to Mars.

Champion’s first plant outside Canada took about two years to site. Site Selection reported in March 2015 that the company had chosen Logan County, Kentucky, after a search that followed a 2013 trade mission to Canada led by Kentucky’s then governor, Steve Beshear, and that the plant was due to open in 2016. Trade & Industry Development later gave 4 January 2016 as the date the DogStar Kitchens opened, and Gray Construction, which designed and built the plant, reported a grand opening on 12 May 2016, describing it as Champion’s first pet food operation in the United States, with separate kitchens for ACANA and ORIJEN.

Alberta came next. In May 2017 Trade & Industry Development reported that Champion would build the NorthStar Kitchens on 75 acres of farmland in Parkland County, Alberta, with ground to be broken in late June 2017 and production of ACANA and ORIJEN scheduled to start in spring 2019.

Ownership then changed hands. On 1 November 2022, Mars Petcare, part of Mars, Incorporated, signed a definitive agreement to buy Champion Petfoods LP from an investor group led by Bedford Capital and the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, the law firm Torys reported, and the completion was announced on 28 February 2023. Terms were not disclosed. Mars, the family-owned American company, is also the owner of confectionery brands such as Snickers and M&M’s. Mars has owned ORIJEN since February 2023.

The brand’s own web address is orijenpetfoods.com, and Champion’s is championpetfoods.com.

For a design guide, ORIJEN shows how a pet food brand can build an identity out of language — a capitalised name, a few coined phrases and named “kitchens” — and carry it from one Alberta town to shelves in dozens of countries. Compare Stella & Chewy’s, another meat-led pet food brand, and Snickers, a fellow Mars brand. For this guide we use prairie black, wheat and sky slate with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep ORIJEN’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.