Interview with the CFO of Pet Valu

With a footprint of more than 860 stores, Pet Valu sits within 5km of over three-quarters of the country’s households. At the helm of its financial strategy is Linda Drysdale, an executive with over 25 years’ experience in strategic financial planning, audit and risk management across Canada’s financial services and retail sectors. Joining Pet Valu’s board in 2021, she stepped into the role of CFO in 2023.

In the past couple of years, Drysdale has weathered economic headwinds while overseeing omnichannel growth and a major supply chain transformation – including a recent investment that expanded the company’s SKU assortment by more than 30%. She shares her insights with PETS International on value-driven shoppers, the appeal of Canadian-made brands, the role of pet specialty in a fragmented retail market and why rural communities represent the next frontier for Pet Valu’s growth.

What challenges are Canadian retailers facing in today’s market?

Not too dissimilar to other geographies, Canadian households have seen their budgets pressured in recent years in response to the heightened inflation and rising interest rates that followed the pandemic.

As a result, consumers are increasingly seeking value in everything they buy, including pet care products, and retailers have had to adapt. While our core customers appreciate other elements of their retail experience with us, such as great products and personal customer service, price still factors in, and so we’ve further sharpened our promotional and loyalty  programs to meet this need.

How are recent trade and tariff changes impacting consumer behavior?

Changes in the trade environment have had a relatively immaterial impact on the products we sell, given the nature of the tariffs and our strong stable of locally sourced brands. But trade disruptions have likely increased economic uncertainty, which has weighed on consumer confidence and willingness to spend, particularly in discretionary categories.

Has this affected your day-to-day operations?

Given the immaterial effect of recent changes in the foreign trade environment on our industry, we haven’t made material changes to how we operate. We have taken the opportunity to ensure clear visibility of where our exposures may be and discussed continuity plans to adapt if necessary. We’ve always had a very strong local sourcing presence and will leverage that to continue to meet the evolving needs of our customers.

To what extent has the ‘Buy Canadian’ movement influenced pet supply?

We believe it has impacted, though it’s challenging to quantify. We’ve always had a strong lineup of Made in Canada brands, including some great additions over the last year, which positions us very well given the increased interest.

How much of your assortment is sourced locally?

We purchase the vast majority of our retail goods within Canada, with only roughly 15% coming directly from the US and an even smaller proportion coming from other geographies. Given our deep roots in the Canadian marketplace, we have a strong legacy of sourcing local emerging, innovative brands, many of which have grown into the prominent brands we carry today.

Omnichannel is at the heart of your business strategy…

We believe we have the strongest pet specialty omnichannel platform in Canada, offering pet owners unmatched convenience. So our most loyal customers shop with us through multiple channels, making in-store trips to make quick purchases, ask questions, use our self-serve dog wash or grooming services – or just to come and say hello. They also leverage our full suite of digital capabilities, including directto-home shipping, in-store pick-up and autoship subscription services.

What spending trends do you see in this channel?

Our omnichannel customers spend multiple times more than those who just use a single channel. Over 80% of our sales are in consumable products like food, litter and treats, which drive repeat store traffic on a weekly or monthly frequency.

Which categories are performing particularly well at Pet Valu, and which are seeing a downturn?

We’ve seen continued resilience in consumables categories like food and litter, as consumers have skewed their spending towards needs-based products.

Discretionary categories, particularly in hardlines (collars, leashes, toys), have come under some pressure, as devoted pet lovers seek value through substitutions or temporary delay in replacement. This trend has been seen for over two years, as households have recalibrated their budgets in the wake of high inflation and rising interest rates.

And what about e-commerce?

Third-party research estimates that roughly 15-20% of pet food and supplies are purchased online in Canada, from both pet specialty and grocery/mass retailers. While our online penetration under-indexes versus the industry average, it has been increasing.

How is Pet Valu leveraging q-commerce?

As part of our strategy to enhance customer convenience, we’ve recently brought in several marketplace providers – Instacart in 2024 plus Uber Eats and DoorDash in 2025. We have been pleased with the initial uptake of our marketplace offering, which complements our broader omnichannel offering.

You recently completed a CA$100 million ($73M/€62M) supply chain transformation with a new distribution center in Calgary…

Over the course of three years, we replaced an inefficient, aging network of more than nine warehouses and third-party storage facilities with three larger, modern and partially automated distribution centers (DCs) in the Greater Toronto Area, Vancouver and Calgary.

As expected, we’re benefiting from efficient new store expansion, a broader catalogue to better support the needs of our existing stores and franchisees, as well as modern technology and building layouts to generate greater operating efficiencies and productivity.

We also rolled out a warehouse management system across our supply chain, providing greater traceability and unlocking opportunities for technological enhancements like labor and transportation management processes.

How will this impact your product assortment?

With the significant capacity increase in our new DCs, we broadened our product catalogue from approximately 7,000 SKUs to over 10,000, allowing our corporate and franchised stores to order more.

At our largest DC in the Greater Toronto Area, we now have enough space to ship products to our Chico stores in Quebec, which had previously relied heavily on third-party distributors.

We also installed goods-to-picker automation equipment for smaller piece-pick items like treats, collars and toys, enabling significant improvements in picking productivity versus our prior, labor-intensive manual processes. Tying this all together, our modernized supply chain is scalable to efficiently support growth over the next decade.

What growth do you foresee for Pet Valu’s store network?

We believe there is significant opportunity to continue to grow our store base across Canada to 1,200+ over the long-term. The majority of our future expansion lies in rural markets across the country, which we believe are undeserved by pet specialty retailers.

We expect a minority of our future openings to be suburban or urban infill locations, as cities and neighborhoods grow over time. The flexibility of our small format store model allows us to tailor our locations to best serve the needs of their communities, while providing a compelling return to us and our franchisees.

Are you planning to expand beyond Canada?

We have not articulated any plans to expand beyond Canada. We believe we have ample opportunity to continue to grow our presence and market share domestically, particularly through store expansion, as we’re only roughly two-thirds of the way toward our long-term goal.