If you already feed fresh cooked food, most of this switch is nothing. The subscription still arrives. The portions still come ready. There is already a drawer in the freezer that is not for your food.
Two things change about how your dog is fed: the food is not cooked, and it is handled like uncooked meat right through to the bowl. One number changes as a result. Everything else you have built carries over.
What carries over
People expect to lose most of this when they move to raw. With ours, you do not.
- Food still arrives on a schedule you set.
- Portions still come ready. No weighing, no scooping.
- You still store fresh food cold and serve a moist meal.
- There is still no meal planning, and nothing to add to the bowl.
One thing does not carry over. If your dog currently gets a rotation of recipes, that ends here, because we make one complete food rather than a range. That is a real change, and it is the only thing on this page you are giving up rather than keeping.
Storage does not change either. Trays arrive frozen, live in the freezer, and come down to the fridge the day before you need them.
The routine you already have does most of the work. Where the food is kept, how it is served, how long it lasts once opened, how often it arrives: that all stays roughly where it is.
What changes
The food is not heated
The nutritional reason for choosing raw over cooked is the absence of the cooking step. Heat changes food. It is why gently cooked food exists at all, since lower heat changes it less than the temperatures used to make dry food.
Raw takes that to its end point. Protocol Raw Complete is nineteen whole ingredients, minced and mixed cold, and nothing in the process applies heat to any of them.
How much that difference matters is a separate question with its own article. The evidence points one way without settling the matter, and we set out what it does and does not support in Raw vs Cooked Dog Food: What the Evidence Shows. If you want the honest version before you switch, read that one first.
Handled like the uncooked meat it is
Cooking does a job. With raw, that job moves. Some of it moves upstream, into sourcing, production controls and testing every batch in an independent lab before release, which is a longer subject and has its own page. Some of it moves into your kitchen, and that part is the genuinely new habit.
Handling the food is the same as handling raw chicken. Wash your hands, utensils and surfaces afterwards. Keep it separate from food for people. If you cook with raw meat, you already do all of this without thinking about it.
The difference is what happens next. You cook the chicken. Your dog does not.
So the bowl gets washed after the meal rather than at the end of the day, and your hands get washed after you handle it. That is the whole of it.
None of that is ceremony, and none of it needs special equipment. It is the same standard you would apply preparing raw chicken for the family, extended to cover the fact that the meal does not get cooked. Where your household includes a young child, someone over 65, or someone pregnant, that consistency matters more, and it is a hygiene standard rather than a reason not to feed raw. There is more detail in How to Store and Handle Raw Dog Food Safely.
The amount will not be the same
Raw can mean working the portion out yourself, and that is one of the reasons people who like the idea of it never quite get there. You are not being asked to do that here. Your current plan may already be calculated for your dog. Ours is too, and what changes is the number rather than the method.
Foods carry different amounts of energy per gram, so the same dog needs a different weight of food depending on what is in the bowl. We make one complete recipe, and the calculator works the amount out against it.
Carrying your current gram amount straight across is the easy mistake here, and it looks like the careful thing to do. Work out the amount for our recipe and use that figure instead. It lands as a whole tray or a half tray at each meal, so there is still nothing to weigh.
How to make the change
Introduce the new food gradually over seven days, replacing a little more of the old food each day until you are feeding ours alone. It is the same method we would give anyone, whatever they are coming from.
There is no reason to go faster. If your dog needs longer than a week, take longer.
Feed both foods in the same bowl at the same meals rather than on alternate days. Mixing is what lets you raise the proportion a little at a time, and alternating whole days gives you nothing to raise.
Keep everything else steady across the week, including walks, treats and routine. If something does change, you want to be able to see what caused it.
The full method, including what to do if your dog hesitates, is in Switching from Kibble to Raw: A Practical Guide. The method is the same. Only the food you are moving away from is different.
The food you already have
If your current food arrives on a subscription, pause or cancel it before you order rather than after, or you will be storing a delivery you no longer need.
Then finish what you have. The seven days is your overlap, and a week of mixed feeding uses up more of the old food than most people expect. Work out roughly how many days are left before you set our start date, so the overlap lands where you want it rather than needing correcting afterwards.
Storing and defrosting
Trays arrive frozen and go straight into the freezer. Your plan shows the freezer space estimate for your specific box, based on the trays actually in it.
To serve, defrost on the bottom shelf of the fridge for about 24 hours, then keep refrigerated and use within 48 hours. If your dog eats a half tray, defrost the whole tray and split it once it is soft. Splitting frozen food is harder than it sounds and there is no benefit to it.
The first week
If your dog’s stools change, that is often one of the first things you will notice. Some dogs have softer stools in the first few days; it's common and usually settles as they adjust. Our week-one guide covers what to expect and when.
Before you start, know where the line sits. Blood, persistent diarrhoea, or any change alongside lethargy or loss of appetite is a conversation with your vet. Diarrhoea lasting more than a day or two isn't part of a normal switch. For those signs, repeated vomiting, or your dog seeming unwell, go back a step, speak to your vet, and let us know.
What we can and cannot say
We can say that heat changes food, that the effect is well understood in food science, and that controlled studies in dogs consistently show better digestibility for less processed formats. The food science and the dog-specific evidence point in the same direction.
We cannot say that raw has been shown, across a lifetime, to produce better outcomes than gently cooked food. No format can say that. There is no long-term controlled outcome evidence for raw, for cooked or for dry food, because nobody has run the study.
So the evidence is directional rather than final. That is why we chose raw, and it is not a reason to think your current food is a poor one. You already decided that how a food is made matters. This is that same decision, carried one step further.
See your dog’s plan when you are ready.