In a world where pet owners increasingly seek natural alternatives to traditional pharmaceuticals, Zen Frenz has emerged as a leader in the hemp-derived CBD pet wellness space. Founded in 2018 by entrepreneur Alex Gray, this Los Angeles-based company has built its reputation on a simple yet powerful mission: to be the future of pet wellness through all-natural, affordable products that bring both pets and their owners the best lives possible.
The company’s product portfolio spans multiple wellness categories, including calming and anxiety relief, immunity boosting, and skin and coat health. What sets Zen Frenz apart isn’t just their product line—it’s their philosophy. Gray and his team take a firm stance against pharmaceutical interventions like Prozac, Trazodone, and Xanax for pets, instead advocating for holistic wellness solutions that don’t come with the dependency risks and side effects associated with traditional medications.
For pet owners seeking natural alternatives to pharmaceutical interventions, Zen Frenz represents more than just another CBD company—it’s a movement toward holistic pet wellness that recognizes the deep bond between humans and their animal companions. In an industry often dominated by large corporations, Zen Frenz proves that genuine care, quality products, and community building can create lasting impact in the lives of pets and their devoted owners.
Dogish was fortunate to sit down with Alex Gray of Zen Frenz for a conversation. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity:
Alex, please introduce yourself and your company, Zen Frenz, to the Dogish community, and tell us what got you interested in the pet wellness industry. Definitely! My name is Alex Gray, and I’m the founder of Zen Frenz pet wellness brand. Zen Frenz specializes in all natural, consumable, and topical products both for dogs and cats. The main health functions that we focus on are calming support for pets, mobility and joint support products, and we’ll be moving into coat and also immune system products as well.
A little bit about myself. I grew up on the East Coast. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and then I moved to Long Island, New York, when I was young. Lacrosse was a big hotbed in Long Island when I was growing up, so many kids went to university for that; however, both of my parents were entrepreneurs, so I had a little bit of a business bug in me from a young age. I ended up going to San Diego State University to study entrepreneurship.
One thing that’s defined me: I’ve had pets my entire life. That’s been a focal point. We had an English bulldog that lived to be 15 years old, and he had some hip issues in the later stages of his life. A friend recommended that we try out a hemp CBD product for him for mobility support, and he got a lot of relief. That experience, and conducting a lot of my own market research, led to me starting Zen Frenz in 2018, and I’ve been doing it full time since.
You’ve positioned Zen Frenz as “the future of pet wellness.” What does that future look like to you? The idea of using CBD products to achieve wellness has only been around since 2018, when the Federal Government passed the Farm Bill that legalized all distribution and production of hemp products that don’t contain THC. A boom came about and Zen Frenz started within that boom in 2018. The future of pet wellness is a consciousness and a mindset. As a former athlete, I’m always looking to take care of my body with the foods that I put into it, getting adequate supplements, adequate exercise, adequate rest, all those different things to live a long, a strong, and a healthy life. The same mindset is now being shifted and geared towards our pets. We want to give our pets the best that we can so that they live long, happy, and healthy lives. Specifically, when it comes to supplements, that’s where we come in as the future of pet wellness, offering new ingredients that are on the market now and have been shown to have many benefits and wellness capabilities for pets. Zen Frenz wants to be at the forefront of this cultural shift that’s happening here in the country and all over the world.
What role do your products play for pets and pet parents? In 2018, our main niche was CBD products for pets. But the company and our product offerings have grown and expanded since then. We think of ourselves as an all-natural wellness company for pets. And what we mean by all-natural is that we want to source ingredients that are plant-derived and have therapeutic effects for pets. This is contrary to and different from a pharmaceutical medical-grade product. For instance, when it comes to calming, Trazodone, Xanax, or Prozac may be prescribed to a pet. Instead, we use CBD for products, or natural ingredients like l-theanine, valerian root, chamomile and passionflower.
When I got the entrepreneurial bug and started looking into e-commerce and starting a business, the market research I did was showing a lot of high demand for calming supplements for pets. This opened my eyes to the need to address separation anxiety for pets, travel anxiety, and reactions to overstimulating environments. I was seeing a ton of marketing that surrounded this. Our motivation at Zen Frenz was, how can we achieve a calming product for pets that only uses natural ingredients. That’s where the name Zen comes into play with what we do. Zen is a way of life, a way of wellness, and in the pet wellness context, also a way of calming for pets.
How do you educate your customers about CBD and its use for pets? Everything we do at Zen Frenz is THC-free, so there is no risk of psychoactive effects for your pet. CBD is sourced from the hemp plant, not the cannabis plant. We take pains to ensure that all ingredients are transparent. Most questions come down to dosage directions. How much do I give to my pet? We provide guided dosage directions for each of our products, based on pet body weight.
We provide informational brochures that answer the following questions: What is CBD? How does it work? What are the occasions that it’s good for? What are the pet wellness functions? We supply this information to all of our resellers as well. We also provide informational blogs on our website. I would highly encourage all pet owners to do their own research, with their own pet in mind. We also always encourage our customers to consult with their veterinarians.
Describe for us your product line and how it has evolved over time. We started off with an oil product, Zen drops, that has many uses with long-term capabilities. Oil drops are our best sellers and the most popular. I’ve learned that palatability is something within the pet industry that’s super important. If a pet is not going to eat a product, or if it’s off-putting, it’s not going to be a successful product for them. So we want to make sure that all of our drops are flavorless and scentless, and that they’re easy to put in a pet’s mouth, in food, or on a surface.
But there may be pet owners out there who are put off by an oil product or too intimidated to use a tincture, or they just don’t prefer it. So the next step was for us to expand into functional soft chews–Zen bites. After that, we expanded into the Zen butters, our peanut butter products. We also do topical products as well, shampoo formulas, healing balms, and immunity droppers geared towards boosting the immune system and improving their skin and coat. And we also do accessories. Right now, we have lick mat toys that are going with our peanut butters.
What made you decide to turn toward peanut butters? It’s well-suited to dogs with separation anxiety. The peanut butter is an occupying tactic for pets, as it takes time to lick and consume. It creates stress relief by keeping them busy. It can be provided on a lick mat or in a Kong toy. And I love peanut butter myself! I’ve been eating peanut butter my entire life, PB&J before bed or peanut butter and celery. So I was excited to launch something that I enjoyed myself for the pet market.
You carry a non-CBD peanut butter as well. What motivated your expansion into non-CBD products? The federal farm bill in 2018 legalized CBD. But some large-scale companies, such as Amazon, are under pressure to disallow the sale of CBD products. This is really unfortunate for the consumer, because sellers are resorting to offering hemp seed oil rather than CBD oil and claiming similar calming benefits, though the research doesn’t support the claim. Hemp seed oil is nutrient-rich and great for the immune system and for skin care, but I would not make the claim that hemp seed oil has calming properties.
But l-theanine, valerian root, chamomile, passion flower–these natural calming amino acids–can achieve a subtle, calming effect without drowsiness, which is the most popular and the highest demand category. Our non-CBD products allow us to compete in non-CBD-friendly markets.
How do you reach your customers who are looking for CBD products? A majority of our business, and I take a lot of pride in this, is through independent retail stores. I have great relationships with and am very fortunate to do business with independent store owners around the country who stock our products. We’re really passionate about working directly with independent resellers. Part of the mission statement that we have for Zen Frenz is to build a passionate community of pet owners who strive to bring themselves and their pets the best lives possible. A lot of that gets fueled through search engine optimization, through Google, through our social media presence. We’re up to almost 13,000 followers. And one thing that’s unique about those followers is that they are pet-obsessed people. They live a lifestyle we want to promote. This year, we also got into Walmart, and Chewy approached us. It’s really exciting to take the next step in the distribution of our products.
What goes into manufacturing your products? I’ve found that to successfully work with suppliers, it’s crucial to go visit their production facilities, see their operation and how they do production from start to finish, and see where they’re sourcing their materials. This helps build trust. It’s very important to us that all ingredients are sourced within the United States and that our supplier is GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices)-certified, ensuring that they have good practices in place and ingredients are sustainably sourced. That way, we know that the end consumer is getting a healthy product. We also do independent testing to ensure safety and efficacy. It’s been validating to have consumers reorder our product, which gives us the confidence to invest and expand.
A question that I get a lot from customers is, “What’s the difference between a human CBD product and a pet CBD product?” The biggest difference is that for pets, we incorporate MCT oil as a carrier oil or a base oil, which stands for medium-chain triglyceride. It’s a healthy fat that’s purified from coconut, and it’s been an essential ingredient in all Zen Frenz formulations. As a consumer myself, I’m aware of MCT oil and its benefits, and that there are many supplements geared toward people that contain it. Research on MCT oil shows that it’s a sustainable energy source, that it helps to boost energy and aids cognitive function. We include it in our formulation for pets because it helps in absorbing the CBD effectively. It also makes the product easier on a pet’s stomach.
Branding and packaging is also important to us. If product packaging doesn’t resonate with consumers, they won’t want to purchase. Through a lot of my e-commerce research and as a young pet owner, I see a lot of generic products out there, nothing that looks modern, nothing that looks like something I would want to shop for.
Does your logo on your packaging feature your own French bulldog? Believe it or not, the logo actually came first. With the logo, we wanted to create a sort of Buddha dog, a dog that was meditating. I did not have a French bulldog when starting Zen Frenz, but I knew I wanted one. After a period of traveling extensively for the business, it was time to start the search. And so I got Yoshi when he was 8 weeks old, a little black French bulldog. He’s been with me pretty much every day since. He’s always been pretty comfortable traveling or being on my lap or being next to me. Whenever we travel to work markets, and we’re connecting with the local community, Yoshi is that Zen dog on the table. Potential customers often exclaim, “Oh, my God! He’s the best marketing tool you could have. Your dog’s so chill right now. I want my dog to be like that.” So Yoshi plays his part when it comes to doing business.
Is Yoshi also a customer? If you have a look at some recent videos that we posted on Zen Frenz’s Instagram, you’ll see that he gets to test every product out. He’s lucky in that sense. The drops are easy for him, no problem. And the chews–he’s a bulldog. He’ll eat as many as you want to give him. He loves the peanut butter. I also use the balm on him. Because he’s a French bulldog, he can get skin irritation, peeling nose or paws. And I use a shampoo product for him, too, maybe about once a week. He gets the full treatment.
Learn more about Zen Frenz and their products at their website.
