Russell Breuer: From Studio Apartment
to Nine-Figure Pet Health Empire

We recently sat down with Russell Breuer, founder and CEO of Spot and Tango, on the Start to Scale Podcast. Russell shared the full arc of his journey — from management consulting in London to launching a fresh dog food company in a New York City studio apartment, scaling through COVID, building a factory from scratch, and launching Pup Gum, a first-of-its-kind dental innovation for dogs. Below are excerpts from the conversation.

Russell Breuer, Founder & CEO of Spot and Tango

The Studio Apartment Origin Story

Russell Breuer describes himself simply: a Cleveland kid. Born in 1980, he grew up in the Rust Belt before a traditional career in management consulting and private equity took him to London for eight years. When he returned to New York City in 2012, he brought with him years of operational experience across multinationals — and a mini Golden Doodle named Jack.

The business began as a family habit. Russell's mother-in-law had been cooking fresh, human-grade meals for her dog, George, for decades. That same approach made its way into Russell's NYC studio apartment, where he and his wife began preparing meals for Jack. What happened next is the kind of organic growth founders dream about — neighbors wanted it, friends of friends wanted it, and before long, the phones were ringing off the hook.

"The dog used to sleep outside. Now the dog sleeps in the bed. Everything people are doing for themselves, they’re doing for their pets."

That cultural shift — the humanization of pets — was the macro tailwind Russell had already been studying. Six to seven out of ten U.S. households own a dog, and the interest in organic, grain-free, and human-grade food had reached pets just as it had people. The demand signal was too clear to ignore.

From Side Hustle to CPG Company: The First Moves

Like most founders, Russell didn't wait for a perfect plan. The first version of Spot and Tango — originally named Brewer Premium Pet Foods after his surname — was a commissary kitchen operation making fresh frozen meals: ground turkey, brown rice, carrots, and fruit and veg, cooked and frozen for safe delivery. The recipes were formulated to meet the full dietary needs of dogs, using food-grade (not feed-grade) ingredients sourced from the same upstream suppliers that serve grocery stores and restaurants.

Before going all-in on e-commerce, Russell tested the product in retail — up to 14 pet specialty stores across the five boroughs of New York City, with branded freezers at point of sale. That experiment taught him fast: brick-and-mortar required distributors who ate margin, long lead times for changes, and enormous door count to scale. DTC, by contrast, let them move quickly — update creative, adjust copy, personalize at the individual level — all in real time.

They chose DTC. The company rebranded to Spot and Tango in February 2019 — the new name came from Russell's co-founder's father, and it stuck. "No one else has the word Spot and Tango if you do a Google search," Russell notes. "We were the only company that pops up." The rebrand also came with a critical product evolution: moving away from small/medium/large portion sizes to a personalized quiz-based algorithm that accounts for each dog's breed, weight, and activity level. That shift unlocked a new level of product-market fit — and a subscription model that made retention genuinely sticky.

Unkibble: The $2M to $20M Moment

Fresh frozen food solved the quality problem. But it came with two friction points customers kept raising: it was expensive (cold-chain logistics and dry ice aren't cheap), and it was inconvenient (urban dog owners don't have the freezer space). Russell's team went back to the drawing board with a simple brief: same mission, same human-grade whole ingredients, nothing artificial or synthetic — but shelf-stable.

The result was Unkibble. Using a unique fresh dry process that removes water while preserving nutrients, Unkibble delivers the same quality as fresh frozen at 30–40% less cost. It launched in April 2020 — five people on the team, all dealing with COVID themselves.

"We ordered what we thought was three or four months of product. The first purchase order sold out in four days. The business went from $2 million run rate to $5, $10, and $20 million in six months."

Russell at the Spot and Tango manufacturing facility in Allentown, PA

The timing was fortuitous but not accidental. The team had responded directly to customer feedback. COVID then accelerated every tailwind at once: 23 million dogs were adopted during the pandemic, competing DTC brands pulled back on performance marketing spend, and Spot and Tango was right there — with a more accessible product, at the exact moment demand surged. Unkibble wasn't a pivot; it was a customer-driven product extension that became the engine of the company.

Why Spot and Tango Built Its Own Factory

At peak outsourcing, Spot and Tango was running six co-manufacturers across the country — full truckloads shipping from East Coast to West Coast, across six different buildings. That model worked at a certain scale. Then it didn't.

Most DTC brands outsource indefinitely. Russell made the contrarian call to build. In October 2022, Spot and Tango launched its own manufacturing facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It now employs over 100 people, has been further automated, and is operating in its third year.

"People don't build factories because they're expensive and they're hard," Russell says plainly. "We did it." The decision took two years to execute — office trailers outside the building, a steep manufacturing learning curve, heavy reliance on an institutional investor with factory-building expertise. But the payoff was control: over quality, over margin, over the supply chain at true scale. Owning the factory wasn't a vanity move. It was a necessary one for a company with Spot and Tango's ambitions.

Pup Gum: First-of-Its-Kind Dental Innovation

Spot and Tango was always positioned as a pet health company, not just a food company. Ninety-three percent of dogs aged three and above have periodontal disease. Most dental products on the market use mechanical action — ridges and shapes that scrape plaque — or require expensive vet cleanings. Russell's team saw a white space.

Pup Gum combines three elements: mechanical brushing, flaxseed to help clean the surface, and a clinically proven post-biotic that targets the biofilm on dogs' teeth at the source. Biofilm is the root cause of plaque and bad breath — most products mask the symptom. Pup Gum addresses it directly. The product launched in May and sold out in a week and a half. It's available standalone at pupgum.com (including a one-time purchase option, not just subscription) and within the Spot and Tango platform. Russell views it as proof of concept for the company's broader ambition: to be the one-stop shop for pet health across all categories.

How Spot and Tango Acquires Customers

Spot and Tango is a lower-funnel, direct response marketing operation. The primary channels are Meta, Google, and TikTok — paid performance advertising where creative quality is everything. "If our creative doesn't break through the noise, we won't be successful," Russell says. "We are in the entertainment business. I've got to compete with clicks from every other e-com brand out there — cat food brands, tennis shoes, t-shirts. Anything in consumer is going to draw the attention of the consumer."

The approach is test-and-learn at speed: launch new creative assets, measure customer acquisition cost efficiency, kill what's not working, and double down on what is. The same philosophy extends to product launches. Unkibble's first purchase order sold out in four days — but not because they were certain it would work. They launched it because you can only learn so much from research. Eventually you pull the trigger and get live feedback.

Building the Team That Can Scale

Russell's framework for early hiring is clear: find athletes who can do it all. In the early days, the marketer might handle ops, customer experience, and logistics simultaneously. As the company scales, those generalists give way to specialists with deep functional expertise who unlock specific wins — margin improvements, new distribution channels, better unit economics.

The two values Russell screens for are empathy and humility. "Traveling overseas and working in London and Europe, I met so many people from very different backgrounds," he says. That exposure, he believes, made him a better manager — and it shaped the culture at Spot and Tango. Russell and his co-founder interview every hire. It's not a formality. They are looking for specific pattern recognition, and no one joins the company without them making the call directly.

The Founder's Edge: Grit

Asked what advice he would give to an early-stage founder, Russell doesn't hesitate.

"Grit. You need grit. Every founder has a bad day — things break every day. It can be quite an emotional journey, and it’s easy to give up and throw in the towel. The people who are successful wake up the next day and get back on the saddle. You look back after 10 days, 25 days, 35 days, and you will have made progress. You may be in a hole — but you may be further out of the hole."

Eight-plus years in the seat, a nine-figure business, a factory of 100+ employees, two product lines that have each sold out on launch — and the lesson Russell leads with is the same one he'd give himself in 2017: keep showing up. One day at a time, seven days a week.