Chewy Scored 17 out of 100 on AI Agent Readiness. Here’s How 25 Pet Care Brands Stack Up.
Pet care ranked second out of 10 industries in our State of Agent Readiness 2026 report, with an average score of 40.0 out of 100.
Here's the stat that surprised us most: Chewy scored 17 out of 100. The company that essentially defined online pet shopping, that built its entire business on making it easy to buy pet products on the internet, is nearly invisible to AI shopping agents. If that doesn't signal how different the agent-readiness game is from traditional e-commerce, nothing will.
We used the Pacestack Agent Readiness Scanner to audit the top 25 pet care websites across 20+ signals, from Schema.org markup to MCP server readiness.
The Numbers
- Average score: 40.0/100 (Grade C)
- Highest scorer: Lemonade at 68/100
- Lowest scorer: Tryfi at 0/100
- 40% of brands scored below 50, meaning AI agents will struggle to recommend their products
Grade Distribution
| Grade | Count | % of Brands |
|---|---|---|
| A (80-100) | 0 | 0% |
| B (60-79) | 3 | 12% |
| C (40-59) | 12 | 48% |
| D (20-39) | 6 | 24% |
| F (0-19) | 4 | 16% |
Pet care is one of only two industries (along with Baby & Kids) where any brands reached B tier. Three made it: Lemonade, Fetch, and Prettyplease. But nobody cracked an A.
The Top 5
| Brand | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| Lemonade | 68/100 | B |
| Fetch | 66/100 | B |
| Prettyplease | 62/100 | B |
| Stella & Chewy’s | 56/100 | C |
| The Farmer’s Dog | 55/100 | C |
Lemonade and Fetch are pet insurance companies, not product retailers. Their strong scores likely reflect the fact that insurance and service companies tend to have cleaner, more structured content (plan comparisons, FAQ pages, clear pricing). That's a pattern worth noting: the businesses with the most structured information are winning, regardless of what they sell.
The Bottom 5
| Brand | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| Embark | 20/100 | D |
| Chewy | 17/100 | F |
| Rover | 17/100 | F |
| Fi | 0/100 | F |
| Tryfi | 0/100 | F |
Chewy and Rover scoring in the F range is remarkable. These are massive, well-funded companies with sophisticated e-commerce operations. But their sites were built for human browsers, not AI agents. Heavy JavaScript rendering, limited structured data, and no machine-readable product feeds mean agents can't effectively parse their catalogs.
What's Going Wrong
The three most common failures across pet care brands:
- Product Schema Completeness (84% failed): Most brands that have some Schema.org markup are missing critical fields like availability, price currency, review ratings, or product identifiers. Agents get a partial picture and can't make confident recommendations.
- Breadcrumb Navigation (84% failed): Without breadcrumb markup, agents can't understand your category hierarchy. They can't navigate from "dog food" to "grain-free dog food" to "grain-free dog food for sensitive stomachs" the way a human would.
- FAQ Schema (84% failed): Pet care is a category where shoppers have tons of questions (Is this food right for my breed? What age is this toy safe for?). FAQ markup lets agents surface those answers directly.
Category Breakdown
Structured Data (avg: 10.3/30). Second-best among all industries, but still well below where it needs to be. Most brands are missing the Product markup that would let agents identify specific items, prices, and availability.
Agent Accessibility (avg: 19.1/25). Strong scores here. Most pet care brands allow AI crawlers access. The bottleneck isn't access, it's what agents find when they get there.
MCP Readiness (avg: 1.2/20). Nearly zero. No brands have MCP servers or agent-accessible API endpoints. This is the biggest untapped opportunity in the category. As Google's UCP standard rolls out, brands with real-time, machine-readable product access will have a massive advantage.
What This Means
Pet care is a $150+ billion global market and one of the most subscription-friendly categories in e-commerce. That makes it a perfect fit for AI agents, which excel at recurring purchase decisions ("keep my dog's food stocked") and comparison shopping ("best flea treatment for a 40-pound lab mix").
McKinsey's automation curve specifically calls out consumable replenishment as one of the first categories where agents will operate autonomously. Pet food, treats, and supplies fit that profile perfectly. The brands that make their products easy for agents to discover and reorder will capture a disproportionate share of this shift.
The fixes are not complex. Schema.org markup, product feeds, and crawler configuration are straightforward implementations. The window for early advantage is open right now.
How Does Your Brand Compare?
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← Back to the full State of Agent Readiness 2026 report
Methodology: All scans were performed on 2026-02-12 using the Pacestack Agent Readiness Scanner, which evaluates 20+ signals across Structured Data, Agent Accessibility, MCP Readiness, and AI Perception. Learn more about our methodology.