# What does a "Dog Food Rep" Do?



## jeffitup (Feb 20, 2009)

I've only been working at PetsMart a couple of months, a few times I've noticed in the store people who they tell me are reps for dog food companies. The ones I've seen are for science diet, nutro, blue buffalo, there may be others. I didn't get the chance to talk to any of them, they aren't there very often I don't think & I'm usually there mostly when the store is closed for stocking.
Just curiuos-does anyone know what exactly do these reps do? Is it a part time or full time job, how do they get paid, is it based on sales or is it a salaried job, do they just go around to different pet stores or do they go around to sell or distribute dog food? What are the qualifications for this?
It sounded interesting, any reps or ex-reps, hope it's ok to ask.
Thanks.:smile:


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## rannmiller (Jun 27, 2008)

The rep thing is definitely a part time job, usually they work in 4 hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays, sometimes on Fridays too, but that also depends on how much the company lets them work too. I know Nutro doesn't let their reps work more than 20 hours a week at the absolute most. The trick is, they get paid pretty decently doing it. Nutro gets $12/hr no raises, no bonuses and they're the lowest paid reps, I think SD gets $16/hour, the price you pay for your conscience I suppose.

Aside from the three you listed, sometimes I've seen or heard of Bil-Jac, Royal Canin, Avoderm, Natural Balance, Halo, and Wellness reps too. Go into a PetCo on a Saturday and you may see several of these reps there. 

Their main goal is get people to "convert" to their food, so they approach customers, talk to them about their pet, tell them about their food, usually show them the food, and hope that they'll buy something. Some of them are more versatile than others, and will help customers with other things as well and help the trainers sell classes too. Some of them do very little outside their job description. 

They're paid hourly, and don't get commission or anything, but some of the companies will use their performance record to determine if they should get raises or if they do really great and boost sales they can get bonuses (this is only some companies). 

Some companies like SD require their reps to do an inventory of all the garbage err- I mean SD products in the store and report it back to the company (which sounds like a huge pain in the butt to me). 

Depending on the different company, some of them have their reps bounce around to different stores and some of them have them just work one store so they can track their performance easier (if they care about performance, I know Nutro doesn't). 

The only qualifications for the job are being good with people and having some sort of interest in animals (and they're pretty lenient on that one). Oh and you have to be able to stand for 4 hours and lift up to 30 - 40 lbs. From there, they train the reps themselves and it's up to the reps how they apply that training and if they want to actually research nutrition independently or just take what the companies tell them to tell us, hook, line, and sinker. Obviously, most reps take this route, especially the SD and Nutro reps since their food is so awful, if they were doing other research they probably wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing the garbage they're pushing on people.


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## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

Yes to what rannmiller said. She covered it all and I agree with every word.


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## jeffitup (Feb 20, 2009)

Thanks-interesting.:smile:


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