Why We Do What We Do

By Kevin Glynn, Co-Founder

Every time I go back home to Dublin and see my dog Ace, a 12-year-old golden Labrador who is obsessed with food and full of personality, I flash back to what we used to feed him and often question how we got there. Ultimately, we knew no better when it came to dog food and naively thought, like many other pet parents, that if it’s on the shelves and is a popular brand then it must be OK for Ace to eat. We know now that we couldn’t have been more wrong. These days, I stash my case with Butternut food whenever I go to visit Ace and when he runs out my mum will cook for him using our recipes!

There’s so much that can be changed for the better in the pet food industry, which is why Butternut exists. We are a dog-crazy company that is full of fun but we are serious when it comes to your dog's food and how you interact with us. We believe that eating fresh and healthy isn’t just for humans. We can also see that the customer experience in this sector has never been shown the love it deserves which is something we’ve always been adamant to put right.

Knowing what goes into food shouldn’t just be important if a human is eating it. Sadly, there are various studies about how pet food labels can be misleading, like this one, proving that in many cases, pet parents are kept in the dark about what their dogs are really eating. What’s more, it seems like every few weeks we’re hearing more news about pet food recalls from supermarket shelves. Pets have already suffered by the time those stories make it into the newspapers. What they highlight is the desperate need for the transparency that myself and Dave put among our priorities. At a time when we couldn’t care more about what goes into our own meals, why shouldn’t we want the same for our dogs? Why shouldn’t companies in the pet food space adhere to the same level of transparency that is demanded of food manufacturers in the consumer space?

By switching over to home-cooked food for Ace we’ve seen a substantial change in his health - there’s no flatulence now, he’s lost weight and is a much happier dog. My entire family has benefited from these improvements particularly dad, who picks up Ace’s poo when he’s out for walks! Rudy (Dave’s famous farting dog!) may have been the catalyst for starting Butternut but the feedback we receive from our customers daily is what keeps our mission of helping pets live longer, happier and healthier lives, very much at the forefront of everything we do. We love hearing about the positive impact Butternut has had on households and we’ll keep working tirelessly to keep standards high and keep you and your dogs happy and healthy.

Dave and I always laugh about the fact that if someone had told us seven years ago, on day one of our new jobs out of university, that we would leave to set up a home-cooked dog food company, we would have said they were crazy. However, when we look at where things are now there is literally nothing else in the world that we would rather be doing.

We do what we do for the love of dogs (naturally), and that very much comes down to making sure we're doing everything right for all our pet parents too. As such, we closely monitor our customer satisfaction (or CSAT) score to make sure we remain true to this. Our current score for 2022 is 4.82/5.