Our Story

It was 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, and NYC’s Tribeca neighborhood was a ghost town. Only a few neighborhood diehards remained amidst the smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center. Miya, a neighborhood artist and dog-walker/boarder, and her Afghan Hound Luke were among the holdouts. Not long afterward, Luke was diagnosed with cancer and given a six-month prognosis. Convinced that his system had been poisoned by 9/11, Miya believed that he needed a gentle, detoxifying diet to support his immune system and started cooking for him. To everyone’s amazement, Luke ended up living for another six years. 

During this time, Miya continued to refine his diet, consult with experts, and even interned with a well-respected holistic veterinarian. As Luke’s health improved, Miya also began cooking for dogs in Tribeca and soon had a thriving customer base. In 2008, she moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn, where she continued to sell food to her Tribeca customers and two Manhattan retailers.

With dog food not quite paying the bills, Miya continued boarding dogs in her apartment across the bridge. She would only live in Red Hook for a month before she crossed paths with another neighborhood artist and dog-walker/boarder, future Evermore co-founder Hanna…

It was 2008. I was riding my bike down Van Brunt Street when two pedestrians flagged me down. They wanted my phone number for a sick friend who needed a dog walker over the holidays. I remember our first phone call, her voice straining against infection. I will never forget our first meeting. Miya was striking, with chiseled features, clear blue eyes and glasses that reminded me of fashion icon Iris Apfel. She was a fellow dog walker, but a bout of pneumonia had rendered her unable to care for her own dog Bux and her holiday boarding charges. After our first meeting, I returned to her home three times a day for two months, sometimes to walk as many as five dogs. 

As Miya recovered, we struck up a friendship. She continued to hire me long after it was necessary, and I suspected that she was as interested in the companionship for herself as for Bux. Over time I learned tidbits of her life, like how she had traveled across Canada in her 1989 Land Cruiser, started an eco-fashion line long before eco was fashion, and had been a painter with a massive loft in Tribeca. 

I learned about the dog food in much the same way I learned about other aspects of Miya, in snippets over time. She worked with an incubator co-pack upstate and stored the food in large chest freezers at a garage around the corner. Once a week, a driver picked up her orders and made deliveries in Manhattan. Every few weeks she would make custom batches of food in two enormous lobster pots for a few private clients. She sometimes expressed interest in having me help sell the food, but it always seemed purely hypothetical. Outside of dog walking, I was busy with painting, my newfound love of trapeze, and being 27 in Brooklyn.

Everything changed one morning in October. My phone rang and Miya’s halting voice on the other end struggled to slur out the words, “I think I am having a stroke.” I immediately called 911 and rushed to her apartment, where she sat in bed dazed and partially paralyzed. The paramedics came shortly thereafter. At the time no one could have predicted what would happen, and that she would never again be outside of a medical institutional setting. What I did know was that I felt an obligation to help.

The day became a blur of hospital visits, phone calls, and emails. The initial prognosis was good. She needed a month of intensive rehab and would then be able to return to life as usual. With no relatives or close friends to step in, I found myself in the role of surrogate daughter, managing the mundane aspects of her life like rent and bills, taking care of Bux, and running her business. At first others from the neighborhood were helping out, and her Tribeca friends and clients came to visit her in the hospital. Still, I was in over my head until my friend Ammon suggested that another dog-walking client, Alison aka Connor’s mom, might be interested in subletting Miya’s apartment during her recovery phase and using her training as a health-supportive chef to help with the business.

When Alison came to see Miya’s apartment and we sat down to discuss the arrangements, it was the longest conversation we’d ever had. We agreed that Alison would sublet for one month and help make the food while Miya was in intensive rehab. Everything felt settled, until I received a call from the hospital. After suffering two more “neurological events,” Miya was now completely paralyzed on her right side, mostly paralyzed on her left side, and unable to speak or swallow. The only way she and I could now communicate was by using a placard with the alphabet printed on it. She used her left hand to point at letters, spell out instructions, dog food recipes, and her preferences for nursing homes (which I was tasked with finding.)

The bleeding in Miya’s brain was a riptide that had dragged her miles away from the life that she knew and swept me up in the current. My life became indefinitely consumed with taking care of hers.

It was August 2009. I had just finished working as a sous-chef at a summer camp, where after 30 years in business, they were shifting from processed, pre-packaged food to fresh, locally sourced, from scratch meals. When I returned to Brooklyn, my landlord informed me that he had sold my apartment, and I had to be out by the end of the month. 

I decided to keep my options open and began subletting from friends. One day, I ran into my friend Ammon and asked if he had any leads. A few hours later, I was in a huge, loft-like apartment in Red Hook sitting across from Hanna, our mutual dog walker, who I barely knew. Strewn throughout the apartment were copious books on dog health and nutrition, along with piles of hand-written index cards and computer printouts on the subject. Hanna explained that the woman who lived there, Miya, had just had a stroke. While she was recovering in the hospital, some neighbors were helping out with her small dog food business in various ways, but no one had any culinary experience. Perhaps I could stay there at a reduced rent while I helped make custom dog food batches?

As unusual as this situation was, how could I say no to an opportunity that combined my lifelong passions for healthy food, dogs, and helping people? I was sad about the situation but excited to be in a position to add real value to someone who needed support. Plus, to me, good food was good food, and it didn’t matter whether the mouths belonged to fine diners, kids, or dogs. In the meantime, I’d have a few weeks to find a permanent place, and Miya’s business would not suffer in her absence. Once she was back on her feet, I would go on my merry way. It all seemed straightforward. 

Then, just before moving in, Hanna called. Miya had suffered two more strokes and would not be leaving the hospital anytime soon, though there was still hope she would recover. Now that I was here, living amid her belongings indefinitely, perhaps I could help with the next production run, too? 

It quickly became clear to me that the food was transformative. Within a month, my dog Connor (who hasn’t had a bad meal in his life) had more energy, a shiner coat, a slimmer waist, and perfect poop. In my heart, I knew that this food had to keep being made, a sentiment echoed by a small but dedicated group of Tribeca customers. I visited Miya often and kept her engaged by regularly discussing recipes, sourcing and cooking practices, and nutritional analyses.

Come November, it was obvious that Miya would not be leaving the nursing home anytime soon, if ever. At this point, Hanna and I were spending most of our time together, trying to get a handle on her business. We soon realized it was not as fleshed out as we had thought, and it was time for a state of the union. We were running ourselves ragged working for free in the most expensive city in the country, but we truly believed that home-cooked diets needed to be accessible to more dogs. If we were going to continue investing our time, money, and expertise, we needed to start fresh and have ownership. Further, to responsibly formulate and sell commercial dog food to the public, we still had a lot of research, consulting, and laboratory testing to do.

In early December, we met with Miya. As difficult as it was for her to acknowledge the reality of her situation, she also cared deeply that dogs would be able to have access to a gently cooked, detoxifying diet. With her blessing, Evermore was born, and with it, a very steep learning curve into the realities of running a pet food company.

The early days were a whirlwind of epiphanies, small triumphs, and minor fumbles. First on our agenda was to formulate a food we could responsibly sell to the public, ensuring that it contained everything a dog needed to thrive. This took a few months and a lot of back and forth with qualified experts. By the time we were done, we were confident in our food.

Next, it was time to pound the pavement. Our success rate was astonishingly high, especially with a brand-new type of food. We cold-called or simply walked into stores, and the overwhelming majority ordered on the spot. We spent weekends doing demos in front of our new retailers, scooping food and beckoning canine passersby to try a free sample. Almost every dog we encountered, including the pickiest and most skittish, devoured the food.

By late spring, Evermore was in 32 stores throughout NYC and the Hudson Valley, and we thought we had arrived. Our optimism was matched only by our naïvete. Just a few months after putting our life’s savings into the business, we were solicited by a payroll company and signed up immediately. We took a grand total of one paycheck before realizing that meager salaries would be in the distant future, one that only arrived a decade later.  

The buoyancy, of course, was counterweighted by Miya’s situation. We visited frequently, sharing stories of Evermore’s wins. She seemed genuinely pleased with our progress and celebrated our successes with us. Then in May, she was diagnosed with pneumonia, chose to refuse treatment, and became a hospice patient. Hanna brought her beloved dog, Bux, down to the care facility for a final visit. After Miya said her goodbyes, she had Hanna take him down to the beach in view of her window, so she could watch him frolic in the sand. A week later, she passed away.  

We are both so grateful to be on this journey together. We have also had to grapple emotionally and spiritually with how the company came to be. Sometimes it feels nothing short of divine intervention, and honestly, it’s really hard to imagine arriving on this path any other way.