Just Food for Dogs’ CEO and his wife build a Laguna Beach sanctuary

When the opportunity arose to take the top spot at Just Food for Dogs, it was an easy choice for private equity executive Julian Mack.

“It’s where my heart is,” Mack said last week of his interest in animal welfare, in one of his first interviews since the Laguna Beach local became CEO of the Irvine-based maker of healthy pet food. See our front-page story on the fast-growing firm for more.

JFFD is a family affair. His wife, Amy, was among the company’s first investors, Mack said. PE giant L Catterton, where he serves as a senior adviser, would later become one of the company’s main investors.

The Mack family has ties to the area’s pet community beyond JFFD.

In 2018, he and his wife brought plans to Laguna Beach’s planning commission for development of a sanctuary for senior and disabled dogs in need of homes.

Called Unconditional, the roughly 7,700-squarefoot facility will go up at a site along Laguna Canyon Road, next to the city’s Pacific Marine Mammal Institute, a rescue center for sea lions and seals.

While the spaying and neutering of younger pets is now common, taking care of older pets remains an unsolved issue, and often results in older but healthy pets being unnecessarily euthanized, he said. Unconditional, which expects to have between 20 and 30 dogs on-site most of the time, aims to connect these pets to new families.

One sign of Mack’s effectiveness at business matters: he got approval for the project in a city wellknown for being challenging for developers.

The couple bought the site for the Laguna Beach project and has largely self-funded its development. They expect to start seeking additional donors in the coming months; JFFD founder Shawn Buckley gave proceeds from his tell-all book on the problems with the pet-food industry, “Big Kibble,” to the cause, Mack said. The book, co-written with Dr. Oscar Chavez, was excerpted in the Business Journal last year.

Unconditional is expected to open next year. Mack hopes to use it as a template for similar sanctuaries he and his wife want to open in other cities. “We’re going to prove [the concept works] here,” he said.

July’s been a mixed bag for local medtech VC exec Bill Link.

See page 1 for more on the IPO plans for Aliso Viejo’s RxSight, which has developed a new method for improving the vision of patients after cataract surgery. A fund managed by Link is the firm’s largest investor, filings indicate.

Elsewhere in OC’s ophthalmology industry, San Clemente eye stent maker Glaukos Corp. (NYSE: GKOS) saw shares fall 21% last Wednesday, after The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its proposed physician fee schedule for next year; the changes it proposes could make it harder to get reimbursement for the company’s own cataract procedure.

Glaukos CEO Thomas Burns said the changes were “unwelcomed and unexpected news that we believe is unjustified.” Link serves as chairman of Glaukos, now valued around $2.7 billion.

The Medicare changes shouldn’t affect RxSight since most patients pay for its procedure out of pocket.