Stella & Chewy's Chicken Meal Mixers Honest Review: What We Like and What We Would Change

Biscuit walked away from her bowl in September 2025 and I took it personally. She is a Beagle mix, eight years old this past April, 27 pounds now and 30 at that checkup. For most of her life she ate the same chicken-and-rice kibble twice a day like it was a job she was proud of. Then she started nosing the pieces around, eating maybe half, and leaving the rest for me to find. Dr. Patel said at that September checkup that Biscuit was a few pounds heavier than she should be and suggested watching the treats. So I did the natural thing for a woman who spent 26 years in a school cafeteria. I went looking for something to put on top of the kibble. Stella & Chewy's Freeze Dried Raw Chicken Meal Mixers is the bag I brought home.

Before I go further I want to say what this is, because I read reviews the way I used to read the district's food spec sheets and I know what I want out of one. This is a topper. It is not a food that fixes anything and I am not going to sit here and tell you it did. You crumble it over the kibble your dog already eats. I have kept it in the rotation since October 2025, thirteen months of mornings and evenings, both meals, every day. What I have for you is mostly good, along with three plain complaints I would want to hear before I spent my own money.

How the Meal Mixers Fit Into Our Day

Biscuit eats at about seven in the morning and about five thirty in the evening, out of a stainless steel bowl on a rubber mat in the corner of the kitchen by the back door. Two scoops of kibble, measured with the same metal scoop I have used for years. None of that changed. What changed is that I take a small handful of kibble back out of the bowl first so I am not piling extra on top of a full meal, and then I crumble the Meal Mixers over what is left. The bag gives the amount for her weight if you are using it as a topper, and I use that amount, not a guess and not a heaping spoon.

The pieces are small, dry and a little hard, somewhere around the size of a nickel with some bigger and some broken. They break up easy between your fingers, which matters when you are doing it twice a day for thirteen months. Most mornings I add a splash of warm water and let it sit for a minute so it softens down into the kibble. She eats it either way. She just works at it longer when I skip the water, and by then I am usually in a hurry.

The bag has a zip across the top and I reseal it every single time, because dry pieces left open in a Texas kitchen go soft by the second week. It lives on the pantry shelf with the rest of her things. I wash my hands after I handle it, every time, before I touch the coffee pot or the refrigerator door. That is not a complaint about the product. It is raw chicken, and I treat it the same way I treat a package of chicken thighs for our own supper.

One thing I did not expect: the sound of the bag brings her into the kitchen. She hears that zip and she is up off the couch. For a dog who had stopped caring much about dinner, that told me something had changed.

What Is Actually in the Bag

The bag is 8 ounces, smaller than it sounds when you are holding it, and the pieces inside are dry and loose rather than packed. The listing on the Stella & Chewy's bag says the recipe is 95 percent cage-free chicken with organs and bone, grain free, with probiotics and added vitamins and minerals, and no artificial preservatives, colors or flavors. The allergen line reads grain free, pea free, potato free, soy free and wheat free. I read that line twice, because half the bags in that aisle now have pea protein somewhere in them and I have gotten careful about it.

It is a topper and not a complete meal, and I want to be plain about that, because meal mixers on the front of a bag will read as dinner to somebody. You are not supposed to feed this as the whole bowl. It goes on top of a complete food. For us that is the same kibble she has been on for years and I did not switch her food to accommodate it. I simply made room in the bowl. That is the whole trick.

The label also says raw, and it is, freeze dried raw chicken. That is the reason it keeps on a shelf instead of in the refrigerator, and the reason I wash my hands. I asked Dr. Patel about it before the first bag and she was fine with it at the amount on the bag for Biscuit's weight. I would want you to ask yours.

What I Used Before, and Why This Stuck

For a couple of years before this, when she turned her nose up, I would boil a chicken breast with no salt and no seasoning and spoon a little of that over the kibble. She loved it. I still do it some Sundays. But it was a production for a topper: buy it, boil it, cool it, shred it, portion it, keep it in the refrigerator, throw out what she did not finish in three days. I got tired of it, and I am retired, so it is not as if I lacked the time.

The Meal Mixers replaced that habit on ordinary weekdays. What I gave up was the cooking and the refrigerator space. What I gave up with it was the freshness of real chicken, because this comes out of a bag. She does not seem to notice and neither do I by the second morning. Sundays we still do the real thing, because I like doing it and she likes eating it.

I have never tried the other toppers people talk about, the powders and the pouches, so I cannot compare them and I will not pretend to. I compared this bag against my own boiled chicken and against plain kibble, and against plain kibble it wins going away, because plain kibble is what she was walking away from in the first place.

Three Things the Listing Does Not Spell Out

The first is that it goes fast. Eight ounces is not a lot when you are crumbling it over two meals a day. Of everything on Biscuit's shelf, this is the item that runs out first, and it is the priciest of the lot for what is actually in the bag. I am not going to quote you a figure because prices move around and it depends where you buy. I will say that if you keep a big dog, do the arithmetic before you commit, because at 27 pounds Biscuit gets a good many meals out of a bag and a 70 pound dog would not.

The second is the bottom of the bag. For the last two or three days of every bag, what is left is crumbs and dust. It is still good food and it still goes over the kibble, but it does not look like much, and it clings to the inside of the bag so you end up scraping it out with a butter knife to get your money's worth. I would rather the pieces held together better, or the bag were shaped so the last of it poured.

The third is the handling, and this is the one I would want a first-time buyer to read twice. Freeze dried does not mean you can treat it like a biscuit. I wash my hands before I touch anything else. I do not set a piece down on the counter to answer the phone. I run the bowl under hot water before I fill it in the evening. Dale handed her one straight out of the bag once, like a treat, and I saw him do it, and we had a short conversation about raw chicken.

None of those three are reasons to skip the bag. They are reasons to know what you are buying. The dust and the small bag are the two things I would change if somebody handed me a pencil and asked. The handling is just information.

Thirteen months of mornings and evenings, and the only thing I can honestly prove is that a dog who used to walk away from her bowl now licks it clean.

What It Did and Did Not Do for Biscuit

Here is what I saw. She finishes her meals now, both of them, most days. She meets me at the counter when she hears the zip. Her coat looks shinier to me in the light by the back door, though I am 61 and my eyes are not a laboratory instrument. Her stools have been regular and boring, which is what you want and not something I ever expected to write down. I cannot prove that any of it came from this bag. She is on four other things besides her kibble, all of them started after Dr. Patel read the labels, and I would be lying if I told you I could sort out which one does what.

The weight question comes up, so here it is, plainly. She was 30 pounds at the September 2025 checkup and she was 27 pounds by June 2026. I credit the metal scoop, cutting back the extra treats Dr. Patel raised an eyebrow about, and taking kibble out of the bowl to make room for a topper. I do not credit this product alone, or any single product. That is the truth of it and I am not going to dress it up.

And here is what it did not do. It did not turn her into a dog who eats anything you set down. She still refuses the same things she always refused. It did not make her young again, and at eight she still sleeps most of the afternoon and still has a beagle's opinion about the squirrels in the backyard. If your dog has stopped eating entirely, or is losing weight, that is a call to your veterinarian, not a bag of topper off the internet. I mean that.

Who This Is For

This is for the owner of a dog who has started pushing kibble around the bowl. Or who eats half and walks off. Or who is simply bored with the same dinner, night after night, and lets you know it. It suits someone who wants to keep feeding the food their dog already does well on and add something to the top of it, rather than switching foods and starting over. It also suits a household that does not mind a two minute step at each meal, because crumbling, adding water and washing your hands is a step, and it comes around twice a day.

And it is for the person who reads the back of the bag. The listing on this one is unusually plain about what is inside, which I appreciate more than any of the words they print on the front.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you have a big dog and a tight grocery list, because 8 ounces does not stretch and you will be reordering constantly. Skip it if you are not going to wash your hands and the bowl every time, because this is raw food and that is not a corner worth cutting in a kitchen where you also feed people. Skip it if your dog is on a prescription food or has a diagnosed condition. Ask your vet first, the way I asked Dr. Patel, and take her answer over mine. I am a retired school cafeteria cook. I am not a veterinarian, a vet tech or a canine nutritionist and I have never once said I was.

And skip it if what you actually want is a different food. This is a topper. If the whole bowl needs to change, that is a conversation with your vet and a slow transition, not a bag of chicken crumbles.