We don't usually do full written reviews any more (as they are just too time consuming to write and keep up-to-date) but with the sheer amount of questions we're getting about Tails.com right now, we think this one is well warranted.

What is Tails.com?

Tails.com is the first and best known 'bespoke' pet food producer in the UK. Using your dog's details, they create a food that is "perfectly tailored to your dog's unique nutritional needs", deliver it to your door in just the right amounts each month and even put your dog's name on the bag!

The concept has proven extremely popular and, as a result, Tails.com has quickly established a huge presence in the industry.

In 2018 Nestlé Purina acquired a controlling share in the business.

Are Tails.com recipes really bespoke?

More or less. Tails has a selection of stock recipes with titles like 'Active Mobility', 'Calorie Management', 'Healthy Activity' and so on. The details a customer enters into the Tails.com website determine which stock formulas are blended together and in what ratios to provide over a million possible combinations. So while it's true that each dog's food is not prepared and cooked individually (which would frankly be impossible), the final mix of ingredients and nutrients is effectively bespoke.

How do I see my bespoke ingredients list?

At the very least you will have to register an account (including providing your email address and filling in a questionnaire) before you get access to any specifics like ingredients, typical analyses etc. and even then it's not guaranteed. Several times while we were creating test formulas on the Tails.com website, the ingredients lists and nutritional breakdowns were not provided at any stage in the process.

Of course, we understand it's impossible for Tails.com to declare the full ingredients lists before customers provide their dogs' details but for the sake of transparency, Tails should really remove the registration requirement, ensure the ingredient list is always provided and publish the ingredients lists of all of their stock recipes so that customers at least have some idea of what they are in store for before signing up.

Is Tails.com food any good?

The big question. Naturally, with so many different permutations available, some formulas are better than others. By our standards, the majority of the ingredients lists we were able to generate through the Tails.com website were scored between 45% and 65%. For some specific dogs with quite niche nutritional requirements, it was possible to generate formulas rating up to 71%.

At the higher end, Tails.com formulas generally contain relatively high proportions of meat (including fresh meat), some good quality whole grains and a decent array of nutritional supplements. Conversely, at the lower end, Tails formulas often contain large quantities of wheat and/or maize, numerous unclear ingredients and artificial additives.

Interestingly, what you pick as your dog's current diet has a sizeable impact on the formula Tails generate for you. Essentially, if you are currently spending a lot on dog food, they will aim to match that by generating a higher quality, more expensive formula and for those currently spending less, the bespoke formula will be lower grade and less expensive.

Is Tails.com food expensive?

From our findings, feeding a dog on Tails dry food is slightly more expensive than the market average. For example, for an average 14kg adult dog with no special dietary requirements you would be looking at around £1 per day (compared with the market average of 85p/day).

It's worth noting that this is also considerably higher than Tails themselves advertise (49p/day for an average small dog, 68p/day for an average medium dog).

As you might expect, the more special dietary requirements you add, the higher the price gets.

Conclusions

To sum up, Tails formulas are generally quite unremarkable in terms of quality and come in at a slightly above average price.

You can make specific requests on the website's questionnaire to improve the quality somewhat but that will also bump up the cost.

For some dogs with very specific dietary needs, Tails.com's customisability might be helpful but for the vast majority a quick search on our dog food directory will likely prove more productive with no shortage of higher quality, lower cost, more transparent options to fit almost any nutritional requirements.