nd nutrition. Silbery developed probiotics company Life Space probiotics which was sold for $700 million in 2018.  After the sale, Silbery had time to reflect and spend much of it with his two dogs, Tokyo and Murray. With the pet food market dominated by big brands and highly processed foods, he decided to take the matter into his own hands.  “A lot of that food has a four-year shelf life so that it can be transported all around the world and be indestructible. It just felt wrong to me,” Silbery told Inside Retail. “For all intents and purposes, I was retired. I ticked that box of starting a business from scratch and had nothing to prove. My advisor told me it was just a phase I was going through but I told them they were wrong.”   Silbery invested into clinical studies with two renowned Australian and New Zealand universities to better understand what nutritious diet looks like for a dog.  “What’s healthy for dogs isn’t that different from what’s healthy for humans. It’s fresh food, wholefoods, fresh fruits and vegetables and quality cuts of meat, and for dogs [that includes] amino acids,” he explained.  The main focus for Ilume is freshness, with each delivery made to order, like at a restaurant.  “We don’t make food to keep in a warehouse for days, weeks or months before it goes. We’ve designed our whole production processes and systems to be an agile facility. We receive orders, we prepare those orders, and we dispatch them almost immediately,” Silbery said.  The subscription model requires customers to place their orders by Friday evening, they are then cooked and prepared on Monday, before being shopped out on wednesday.  “Essentially, there’s 48 hours of cooking, another 24 hours of quality control and the safety side of our business. Then the meals get delivered to a provider [nearby] who can deliver to customers’ homes,” he said.  Technology to tackle overfeeding When undertaking research, Silbery found that the majority of adult dogs are overweight and 40 per cent are obese. The majority of feeding guides on dog food packets are based on the weight of the dog, which Silbery says is “grossly inadequate”.  “Overfeeding or inaccurate feeding is a huge issue that clearly ends dogs lives earlier than they should,” he said.  Ilume’s smart collar is designed to monitor the dog’s activity and sleep levels, which are recorded on the app, and can then be used to personalise their meals. Silbery says every dog will have a different energy output, even those from the same breed.  “Dogs’ energy requirements vary significantly from dog to dog. You could have two Kelpies from the same litter with energy levels that vary by up to 40 per cent,” he said.  Interestingly, Illume is as much about catering to the psychology of humans as it is to the nutritional needs of dogs. Because many owners feel guilty about restricting their dog’s food, Ilume has designed its product so that it looks like they are getting a lot, but it is strictly calorie controlled. “We see dogs as little little children I guess. And then might only be one tenth the size but sometimes they are getting half of what we eat, and that’s a huge amount. We’ve developed a food to help the owners feel like they’re not underfeeding just to help with that psychological tendency,” Silbery said. The smart bowl advises owners when to stop putting food in, to ensure that the dog is not being overfed.  Ilume is currently providing meals to customers in Sydney and Melbourne and is expanding nationally early this year.  “We can make [meals] to order for the eastern seaboard, both metro and regional areas, the piece of the puzzle that challenges that is Perth, WA. It  may be a case that we need longer lead times to cater to those customers,” Silbery said.