Pet Store Promotions: Starter Kits, Refills

A pet store has two moments that matter. The first is the new pet, when a household buys everything at once and has no loyalty to anyone yet. The second is the fifth bag of food, when the household has a routine and the only question is whether it stays with you. Pet store promotions that treat those as one moment give away margin at the second and under-serve the first. This page covers a starter kit for the first moment, a refill subscription for the second, the limits of a free treat or sample, and a gift for repeat buyers that costs you only when the buyer stays.

The new-pet moment: a starter kit

A starter kit is a bundle of the first things a new owner needs: a bowl or a lead, a first supply of food or treats, and something to read. It works because the owner would have bought each item somewhere, and one box at one price saves the search. Price it from cost, with the floor and the discount depth worked out in bundle pricing from cost, and put one item in the kit that you do not sell alone, so the kit does not take sales from the singles.

One technical caution applies if you plan to put the kit on a subscription. Shopify's documentation for the Cart Transform Function API, which can expand or merge cart lines into a bundle, says checkout rejects expand, merge and update operations when a selling plan is present, and that subscriptions are not supported. If your kit is built that way, the safe design is a one-time kit, followed by a separate subscription for the food. Check how your own bundle is built before you promise "kit plus subscription" in a banner.

The refill moment: delivery timed to the pack

The second moment is a subscription. The interval comes from how long a pack lasts one animal: the pack's weight divided by the amount fed each day gives the days, and the interval is that number rounded to a schedule your subscription app supports. The coffee subscription post works that calculation through for a bag of coffee; the method is the same here. Shopify's selling plan documentation shows plans built on weekly, two-weekly or monthly deliveries, with a percentage price adjustment as its example, so check what your app offers before you choose a schedule. Shopify's help page says a subscription app, either Shopify's own Subscriptions app or a third-party one, manages your subscription products in the admin, and the developer documentation adds that most subscription apps request API access through the Partner Dashboard.

Prices can change over the life of a subscription, which is what the Subscription cycle pricing template does. The template index describes it as different prices for each delivery of a subscription, with the example of 20 percent off the first box and then 2 dollars off. That shape suits pet food because the deepest discount is on the first order, when a new customer is deciding, and a smaller one holds for the refills.

A free treat or sample is still pet food

A free treat is the classic pet store giveaway, and the instinct that it is "just a sample" deserves a check. FDA's pet food pages describe what federal regulations require for pet food: proper identification of the product, a net quantity statement, the name and place of business of the manufacturer or distributor, and a list of ingredients from most to least by weight. They add that some states enforce their own labeling rules, many based on a model from the Association of American Feed Control Officials. The pages we read do not mention samples or giveaways, so we cannot tell you that a sample is exempt from those rules or covered by them. A treat made by another manufacturer carries that manufacturer's label. If you make the treat, ask FDA or your state's feed control office before you ship it as a gift.

FDA's page on claims adds a second point that applies to your copy. It defines labeling to include promotional brochures, promotional pamphlets, testimonials and product information sheets, and it says a claim that a product treats or prevents disease would need approval through the new animal drug process to appear on the label. We do not read that as a ruling on a banner. It is a reason to keep health claims out of your free-treat copy and say what the treat is and what it costs you to give it.

The Federal Trade Commission's guide to the word "free" applies as well, since it asks that the conditions of a free offer appear next to the offer. Our post on free gift with purchase covers that, and free samples with purchase covers the economics of a sample.

What households spend on pets

The Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the market a size, with its year. Its 2024 Consumer Expenditure Surveys table for all consumer units puts average spending on pets at 880.11 dollars a year per consumer unit, of which pet food was 295.90 dollars; the other lines are pet purchases, supplies and medicine at 176.15 dollars and pet services at 100.55 dollars. The table's weekly percent reporting for pet food is 14.72 percent, meaning the share of consumer units that reported buying pet food in a given week. These are averages across all consumer units, pet owners or not, so they understate what a household with a pet spends. An earlier BLS article, published November 6, 2023, put total pet expenditures at 102.8 billion dollars in 2021, up from 57.8 billion in 2013. Together they say that pet spending is large and recurring, which is a reason a refill relationship is worth designing. They do not say what an individual store will sell.

A gift for repeat buyers that costs you only when they stay

A gift at the first order costs you for every subscriber. A gift at the third delivery costs you only for the ones who reach it. Take a store that starts 100 subscribers a month and gives a 3 dollar treat pack as a thank-you. At the first order the gift costs 100 times 3 dollars, or 300 dollars. If 60 of the 100 reach the third delivery, a gift at that point costs 60 times 3, or 180 dollars: 120 dollars less, and it goes to customers who have already shown they will stay. The retention rate here is an assumption for the example; use your own. The post on customer lifetime value shows how to find it from your orders.

Put the condition in the copy. "Free treat pack with your third delivery" tells a subscriber what they must do and when. If they pause or cancel before then, they do not get it, and the offer should say so beside the word "free."

Setting up cycle pricing

Start from the Subscription cycle pricing template. Choose the product, the delivery interval from your pack math and the price for each delivery, with the deepest discount on the first. If you use a third-delivery gift, build it as its own offer and name the condition in its copy. Then subscribe to your own product with a test order, step through the first three deliveries, and read what the subscriber sees at each one. The call-to-action below prints the plan requirement for the template.