I fed my pup Ollie fresh food for a month, and I've never seen her more excited for mealtime

My dog is obsessed with food — and I'm obsessed with giving her the happiest, healthiest post-rescue life possible. While vets don't claim fresh dog food is always healthier, it makes sense that meals made from whole ingredients with real-food flavors offer my 60-pound mutt, Crocodile, a far more exciting dinnertime experience.

Ollie is one of the more prominent fresh dog food brands, promising 100% whole food recipes designed to be not only delicious for dogs, but also help improve their weight, stool quality, and overall happiness. As a health and pet health writer — including deep dives into the best dog supplements — I was curious to see how Ollie stacked up, especially when considering that one month of Ollie costs more than double Croc's usual food.

Over the course of four weeks, we tested four of Ollie's Fresh Food recipes. Croc, who's healthy and already eats a nutritionally complete and balanced dehydrated diet, did most of the hard work, carefully analyzing the tastiness of each recipe. I focused on Ollie's subscription process, delivery model, food packaging and storage, and, of course, how wildly excited Croc got when mealtime rolled around.

How it works

Recipes: Each of Ollie's five Fresh recipes is made with 100% whole food and for all life stages, from puppies to older dogs. Each formula is made with a whole meat protein base — beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, or pork — and then a combination of fruit, veggies, and grains. There's no salmon option, but Ollie adds salmon oil to all of their recipes. Research shows that fish oil offers many health-boosting benefits.

All of Ollie's recipes meet the American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) nutritional standards for puppies and adult dogs. That said, without a full-time veterinary nutritionist (the brand consults with two board-certified veterinary nutritionists), they don't fulfill the Global Nutrition Guidelines set by the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA).

Ordering: Ordering through Ollie is incredibly easy: You complete a short screening outlining your dog's name, current and goal weight, spayed status, and how active they are (mellow, active, or very active). The system then generates a recommended meal plan for your dog of either full fresh, half fresh (which you'd mix with their current food), or a mixed plan of Ollie's fresh recipes and its baked kibble. For all options, you can also select up to four out of the five fresh food recipe options, as well as any add-ons, such as Ollie-branded treats and supplement chews.

Customization: Based on the initial screening, you're able to select one of three potential meal plans: full fresh, half fresh, or a mixed plan. Within each of these, you can customize which fresh recipes you want (up to four) and which baked recipes, if applicable. There are five fresh recipes to choose from, each with a different protein base, but you can't customize ingredients in the recipes themselves.

It's important to note if your dog has a sensitivity or allergy, such as to grains, the ordering process doesn't explicitly tell you which formulas have potential triggers. Instead, you have to click "view ingredients" to see, though they do make this easy to spot and access in the customization process.

Delivery: Your first Ollie order takes around six days to ship, and then another one to two days to be delivered, so seven to eight days total. After your initial order, Ollie runs on a recurring subscription at the default of every two weeks. If you need your pup's food delivered sooner than planned, you can go into your account and click "ship now," and it's delivered within two to five days. While two weeks' worth of delivery is the default, you can also opt to have a larger supply delivered every four weeks.

Packaging: Ollie's fresh food is packaged as a plastic-wrapped food brick, which is frozen and shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard box with a Climacell cooler inside, covered with dry ice bags. The frozen food bricks are stacked inside the cooler, and this overall setup does a great job of keeping the food frozen.

In your first shipment, you'll also get a welcome kit which includes a silicone food storage container that perfectly fits two food bricks, a plastic food scoop, and a pamphlet outlining how to best switch your dog to their new food over the course of the first week.

Our review of Ollie dog food

After placing my Ollie order, I received emails with tracking info and an estimated shipping and delivery timeline. My box arrived a day earlier than expected, in the evening, and sat on my porch overnight in June, so I felt mildly stressed. But I opened the box the next morning to find all 28 of my fresh food bricks still fully frozen — a true testament to Ollie's packing method.

While the dry ice on top of the cooler was packed in disposable plastic, I was happy to find the Climacell cooler was recyclable, and the cardboard box, too, of course. The 28 frozen bricks stacked nicely in my freezer, taking up about a quarter of the space in my standard top-door freezer.

My first Ollie order came with a silicone container to hold two food bricks side by side while they defrost in the fridge, as well as a paddle to chop the food up. At first, the container seemed like a nice but unnecessary touch. Two days in, I realized its real value: Sure, it caught any melting ice before it could puddle on my fridge shelf and made it easy to stack other containers around Croc's defrosting meals. But most importantly, it served as a visual reminder to keep the food rotation on track. Croc eats one brick per meal, so I always needed one defrosting for serving in 24 hours and another partially defrosted and ready in 12. The new house rule became two bricks in the container at all times. If you take one out, replace it. Ollie recommends a 24-hour defrost, which I found spot-on, and many were even ready in 20. The food is good for up to four days once thawed.

The food looked a lot like ground-up human food with small chunks of recognizable ingredients like sweet potatoes and spinach — reassuring proof of the 100% fresh promise. I was especially pleased to find the food didn't smell, unlike Croc's regular dehydrated food. Its texture was also perfect. It crumbled easily with the included paddle or a fork, but was just sticky enough that I didn't lose pieces when transferring it from the package to the bowl.

Transitioning Croc over to Ollie's food was relatively easy using the included pamphlet. It says you should slowly integrate the new food into the old in quarter increments over seven days. At that pace, Croc didn't have any digestive unease or discomfort.

In fact, she was overjoyed at the switch.

Croc has always been food-motivated and is generally a fan of her usual The Honest Kitchen Dehydrated meals — especially over kibble — but her reaction to Ollie's fresh food was next level. After just two transition meals with one-quarter Ollie Fresh, she was already more alert during food prep. Once she was fully switched over, she'd sit beside me as I opened the package (I let her lick the empty container one time and created a monster). Then she'd literally sprint to her feeding area as I carried the bowl. We're typically strict with her mealtime manners, and she waits on her bed until released, but Ollie had her sneaking back underfoot in case of dropped crumbs, then racing to wait obediently for her Ollie bowl.

She seemed to enjoy all the recipes equally: beef with sweet potatoes, lamb with cranberries, pork with apples, and turkey with blueberries. I liked that I could select specific proteins since she's intolerant to chicken (the fifth recipe option), and I especially appreciated having four distinct formulas to rotate through. With her usual dehydrated food, even though it has varied ingredients, I've always felt her gut would benefit from more diversity, just like ours. Ollie's rotating recipes gave her a wider mix of micronutrients and amino acids throughout the week without me needing to buy multiple flavors separately.

One thing worth noting: Croc was asking for her meals earlier than usual with Ollie. It's hard to know whether she wasn't staying full for as long or was just very, very excited for her next meal and trying to trick me into feeding her earlier. Considering Ollie tailors calories to your dog's weight and activity level — and knowing my dog's food-hound personality — I suspect it was the latter.

The Ollie app made it very easy to adjust my subscription cadence, change meal selections, and track when the next box would be delivered. A major feature of the app is its Health Screenings, where a vet assesses your dog's weight, digestion, skin and coat, and dental health based on photos you upload. The "veterinary scientist" who is a veterinary technician either gives a "Looking Good" thumbs-up or offers basic recommendations for improvement.

Personally, I didn't find this to be super helpful. For example, Croc's weight and stool were fine, as I already knew, but her skin and screening flagged some dryness and flakiness. The veterinary scientist suggested an oatmeal bath and omega-3 and -6 supplements, which makes sense, but left me with a lot of unanswered questions: What is the best fish oil for dogs? Could her regular food be the cause? Is there an oatmeal conditioner, or am I rubbing her down with breakfast oats? Although the advice came from a real vet, the app doesn't let you ask follow-up questions, which limits its usefulness. Ultimately, a photo analysis can only tell you so much, and your primary vet should always be the one to evaluate your dog's health and make recommendations

Cons to consider

Even with the minimum two-week delivery frequency, Ollie's frozen fresh food takes up a decent amount of freezer space — roughly a quarter of a standard top-door freezer (about 24 by 14 by 18 inches) for a medium-sized dog's meals. In a household like mine with an always-packed freezer, this can be hard to contend with long-term.

While it is nice that 95% of the shipping packaging is recyclable, the individual food packs are single-use plastic. Since my dog eats an entire pack per meal, I was throwing out two plastic containers per day. Day after day, this felt really wasteful and was a huge con for our low-plastic household.

A smaller issue is that the paddle was a letdown. It's decent for vertically chopping the food block into smaller pieces, but its spoon-like curved shape makes it nearly impossible to scrape remnants of the packaging into the bowl. I always needed a finger or a different utensil to get the last bits off. After a few days, I gave up and just used a regular spoon. It also would've made more sense if the paddle could attach to the Ollie container, either a groove on the lid or a space inside to store it with the food bricks. Instead, it lived separately in a drawer, making it feel like an afterthought I didn't actually need.

The biggest con, though, is that Ollie is downright expensive. The cost depends on your dog's specific caloric needs, and the full Fresh plan starts at $1.80 per meal for a small dog, which is pricier than some of the best fresh dog food out there.

But for my 60-pound active dog, a 28-day supply of Ollie's Fresh Food came out to $73.33 a week or $293.32 a month. The average person cannot spend nearly $300 a month on dog food. Ollie does offer a half-fresh plan for $41.30 a week for Croc's caloric needs, which I could then cut with a more affordable dog food, but that's still $165.20 a month for just half her calories.

The bottom line

Ollie offers a well-designed subscription service that delivers high-quality, stink-free, well-frozen fresh dog food delivered right to your door. Though the food bricks do take up a bit of freezer space, it's easy to store and serve, and my dog went wild for every recipe. I appreciated that I could choose up to four formulas to give her a range of nutrients and proteins. While Ollie, like all fresh dog foods, is a bit expensive for the average person, it is a very good value for dogs who are picky eaters or people who want to introduce more variety in their dog's diet.

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