Jul. 19—The Marty's Meals sign is still up at the organic pet food company near Trader Joe's, but as of a year ago, the company branding has changed to Shine Pet Food.

Much else has changed, really, for Sandy Bosben's organic, downright gourmet, pet food operation that started in her kitchen in 2010.

Shine Pet Food is a creature of the pandemic years.

Along with the new name, Bosben under the coronavirus umbrella has opened a raw materials storage and customer pickup center in Denver, started online sales, introduced freeze-dried products, plans to build a new manufacturing center on the south side and keep selling at her second store in Boulder, Colo.

Eyeing national expansion, Bosben discovered potential brand confusion with the national pet food brand Dr. Marty.

"We came up with maybe a hundred names before we came up with Shine," Bosben said.

Shine Pet Food labeling started in July 2021, but the corporate name remains Marty's Meals, named after a dog she picked up at a Starbucks in Emeryville (neighboring Berkeley) while living on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay as she worked as project manager for the Treasure Island renovation after the naval station closed.

"I like the name Shine because it represents the shiny coat, shiny eyes, shiny teeth," Bosben said. "It represents health. One of the things we are trying to accomplish is improving the transparency of the pet food industry. Try to shine a light on it."

Bosben has built company annual revenue to $3.5 million, with her projections reaching $5 million in two or three years, "if not $6 million." Marty's Meals has grown from six employees in 2013 to 11 employees in 2019 and now 24 employees.

"I have no business partners, no investors," Bosben said.

Shine carries 44 certified organic products. The store carries dog and cat treats in paper bag packaging; frozen balanced meals that come raw or "gently cooked" and come in recyclable packaging; frozen raw bulk meat and bones; and freeze-dried minnows, salmon, chicken hearts and chicken necks.

All of it currently is produced in the manufacturing area just behind the retail store in the Coronado Center on Cordova Road, an 8,000-square-foot facility Marty's Meals/Shine Pet Food has occupied since November 2018. Bosben previously operated in a 2,500-square-foot space on Pen Road starting in 2013 after stints at home; in a former Subway shop in Eldorado; and at Legal Tender in Lamy.

Shine produces about 6,000 pounds of pet food now per week, up from 4,000 pounds in 2019 and 1,000 to 1,400 pounds in 2013.

"I would say we could get up to 8,000 to 10,000 pounds a week," she said.

Bosben said she could double production in the existing Cordova facility, but Shine Pet Food isn't just producing Shine products these days. Bosben has become a co-packer for some other companies, producing and packaging human food products for outside entities.

She is scouting the south side for a location to build a 25,000- to 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. She has not decided how she will split up manufacturing for Shine and co-packers between the two centers.

"I would say there will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the next 24 months, maybe 30 months," she said.

Bosben added a freeze dryer in September, which is also in play with co-packing.

"It's one of the fastest growing areas in the pet food industry," she said. "Now that we are doing freeze drying, it's a whole different operation."

Bosben added online sales in September 2021. So far, online shoppers haven't flocked in great numbers to Shine Pet Food, but Bosben is ready for the eventuality that they will.

"We have 25 to 30 online shipments a week," she said. "When we started, we did one or two a week. At some point, our online sales will eclipse our brick-and-mortar sales. I would say in the next five years if not sooner."

Business growth has been on Bosben's mind since the early days.

"As soon as I realized people wanted our product, I wanted to expand," Bosben said.

Bosben opened a second store in Boulder in 2015 that has about 2,500 to 3,000 customers in addition to the 5,000 customers that frequent the Santa Fe store. Shine Pet Food expanded to Denver in May.

"We were trying to figure out how to serve the Denver market," she said. "We had [Denver] clients that didn't want to keep going to Boulder [30 miles up the road]. We were originally considering having delivery, but that was immediately too complicated."

Her store manager in Boulder suggested a combination storage and pickup shop in Denver. Not a retail store, but rather customers order online and pick up orders at the location that opened in May a mile from the high-end Cherry Creek Shopping Center.

The Denver facility has a 30-by-15-foot walk-in freezer and has come to serve as the receiving center for raw materials from out of state. Bosben last year acquired a 26-foot freezer truck that goes to Denver with finished product and returns to Santa Fe with much of the raw materials to produce Shine products.

Bosben said it is more convenient to receive and store materials in Denver than Santa Fe.

"We sell directly to our clients," Bosben said. "We're never going to be in stores."

As for the organic pet food merchandise offered at Shine Pet Food: "Nothing has changed," she said.