Pup'n Stuff

Texas startup delivers top-quality dog food directly to your door

Put down the Pedigree, Fido, you're getting the good stuff.

Photo courtesy of Grocery Pup

Houstonians love their dogs. We bring them to the office, accompany them to the dog park, and take them shopping with us. We iron their bandanas, make sure their beds are comfy, and sometimes create elaborate songs that we sing to them when no one else is home. At local restaurants with patios, our canine companions are more likely to get a bowl of fresh water before our waiter has even stopped by to say hello.

With this kind of devotion, it makes sense that Grocery Pup, a new Austin-based subscription dog food delivery service, would offer its services in Houston as well. The brainchild of Ruth Stedman, Grocery Pup offers 100 percent human-grade meals delivered directly to your door.

The idea for Grocery Pup came while Stedman was in graduate school at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. When she and her fiance decided to add a puppy to their family, Stedman began researching dog food brands to find the best one. What she found instead were labels filled with indecipherable ingredients. "I realized that dog food hadn't really changed in the past few decades," says Stedman. And so, the enterprising MBA student decided to change it on her own.

She began by developing a business plan for Grocery Pup and entering it into the Texas Venture Labs Scholarship Competition, an accelerator program at UT that helps bring ideas to market. Grocery Pup won second place out of 50 projects, and Stedman was able to use the prize money hire a veterinary nutritionist to help create the food's formula. "Working with a nutritionist [was] important because if [a dog's food] isn't nutritionally balanced, you're doing more damage than any kind of dog food that's currently on the market," she says.

In August 2017, Stedman quit her corporate gig in order to focus on Grocery Pup full time. For the entrepreneur, launching the company in Austin was the perfect cultural fit. "We decided to launch here because one, I live here, but two, it's a huge dog town." (Though exact statistics on dog ownership are hard to come by, most recent U.S. census data says nearly 50 percent of all Austin households have pets, and the majority of those are dogs. The same data shows Houston not far behind.)

Today, Grocery Pup offers three fantastically named meal plans: Bitchin' Beef Stew, Turkey Pawella, and Porky's Luau. Delivery options are available monthly and include half plans (28 meals per month) or full plans (56 meals per month.) Prices range from $73-$298 per month depending on your dog's size. In addition to delivery in Austin and Houston, the service is available in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and other Texas cities.

And if your dog is picky, don't fret about a month long commitment. Grocery Pup offers tester packs through their website and run a weekly booth at SFC Farmers' Market Downtown in Austin, where locals can check out the goods in person.

pets

Cost-of-living news

Houston offers a lower cost of living than these 2 major Texas cities

Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

The daily cost of living is not as high in Houston as it is in two other Texas cities.

A new cost-of-living index yields a result that many Houstonians will find surprising: Houston is not the most expensive place to live in Texas. Dallas and Austin are costlier.

Numbeo’s cost-of-living index for 2025 shows Dallas ranks first in Texas and 24th in North America, landing at 65.8. The cost-of-living index compares the cost of living in New York City (which sits at 100) with the cost of living in another city. Austin is at 61.7, Houston at 60.6, and San Antonio at 58.8.

Houston ranks 40th overall in North America, out of 52 cities in the index.

Numbeo’s cost-of-living index takes into account the cost of items like groceries, restaurant meals, transportation, and utilities. The index excludes rent.

When rent is added to the cost-of-living index, Houston is still third among Texas cities. Dallas grabs the No. 21 spot in North America (57.1), one notch above Austin (56.6). Houston ranks 35th (51.4) and San Antonio ranks 42nd (34.6).

Rent index
While Dallas holds the top Texas spot on Numbeo’s overall cost-of-living index, Austin faces the highest rent prices. Numbeo's rent index for Austin sits at 50.1, putting it in 12th place among major cities in North America and highest in Texas, above the indexes for Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Houston lands at 27th.

The rent index in New York City, which tops the list, is 100. As Numbeo explains, the rent index estimates the cost of renting an apartment in a city compared with New York City. If the rent index is 50, for example, this suggests the average rent in that city is 50 percent below the average rent in New York City.

Around Texas, the rent index is:

46.2 in Dallas
39.8 in Houston
34.6 in San Antonio

Restaurant index
In contrast to its showing on the rent and cost-of-living indexes, Houston outranks Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio on Numbeo’s restaurant index. This index compares the prices of meals and drinks at restaurants and bars to those in New York City.

Houston sits at No. 25 on the restaurant index, at 68.9. Dallas comes in at No. 32 (67.1), Austin at No. 34 (66.6), and San Antonio at No. 36 (65.2).

The National Restaurant Association reported in December that menu prices in the U.S. had risen 3.6 percent in the past 12 months, outpacing gains in grocery prices and the federal government’s overall Consumer Price Index. Fortunately for diners, that was the smallest 12-month increase in menu prices since August 2020, according to the association.

Toast, which provides a cloud-based restaurant management system, says the higher menu prices reflect higher food prices.

“Food prices have been increasing due to inflation, labor expenses, fuel costs, and supply chain disruptions, all of which impact restaurant profitability, Toast says. “While raising menu prices is one option to combat rising food costs, some restaurants have introduced service charges and simplified menus to avoid passing all costs onto customers.”

cost living reports