Dogged determination
by Emily Cathcart
ALHAUS first spoke to Butternut Box’s co-founders, Kevin Glynn and David Nolan, in 2018. Here we renew our acquaintance with this rapidly growing start-up that’s changing dog food for good — and evolving from a pet project into a booming business in the process.
One of the Butternut Box team members examining ingredients. Photo courtesy of Butternut Box
It all began when Dave decided to start cooking fresh, healthy meals himself for his previously pungent pet; the high-quality, personalised diet worked wonders. When work mate Kev got wind of Dave’s success, a partnership with “a purpose to deliver health and happiness to dogs and their humans all over the world” was born.
Six years and 20 million meals later, the brand is going from strength to strength. Ever-increasing investment has fuelled rapid expansion — Butternut Box’s new 8,000+ sq ft London HQ at Huckletree West includes 2,000 sq ft of collaboration spaces, 11 meeting spaces, dog-friendly breakout areas, an on-site test kitchen and an entertaining area; while a recently occupied purpose-built facility in Doncaster provides a manufacturing and distribution hub.
ALHAUS magazine: We love how your social channels tell the stories of your company, its journey and your customers. How important is storytelling to your branding and marketing strategies?
Butternut Box: Our company started with the story of our own rescue Staffie, Rudie, and her struggle to end her chronic flatulence. When your company story starts with a farting dog, telling that story is never a chore and people almost always enjoy hearing it. We started doing what we do because of our own struggles to find a food that worked for our dogs, but these days we are proud to have thousands of customer stories as to how our food has delivered health and happiness to our customers' dogs. These stories naturally give confidence to those on that same journey, trying to find something that works, so telling those stories is incredibly important to us as we spread the word and continue to live out our purpose as a company.
Founders Dave and Kev with Rudie, the dog who started it all. Photo courtesy of Butternut Box
AM: What is the Butternut Box approach to storytelling?
BB: We just keep things authentic and centred around the dogs we feed. Generally when customers talk about us, they talk about two things: the impact that our food has made on their dog and our customer experience. We naturally try to shine a spotlight on the transformational effect our food has, and we try to leave the customer experience to speak for itself once a customer has signed up with us. Thankfully we have thousands of stories to choose from and we work hard to shout about them internally; even more so than we do externally. We are feeding tens of thousands of dogs every single day, and it's so important to us that we never lose sight of those dogs as individuals. They all have their own story, their own personality and their own quirks that make them special and unique. We celebrate all of those things and when a customer tells us that we have changed their dog's life for the better, that's a huge cherry on an already massive cake.
AM: As a dog mum based in Ireland, what are your plans here? Asking for a friend...
BB: Tell your friend that we are working hard behind the scenes to deliver our first boxes to the Republic soon and we are very excited to resume our service to the North as soon as we can! Co-founder Kev is a proud Dubliner and we have a really strong Irish contingent on the team, so we are all looking forward to serving our other 'home' market.
Duck, sweet potatoes, carrots and herbs, with none of the nasties. Photo courtesy of Butternut Box
AM: Finally, what's the next chapter in your story... what does the future hold for Butternut Box?
BB: For us, we are focused on three main objectives. Broadening our range by bettering our proposition to our customers, continuing to grow in the UK, and beginning our journey in international markets. We just launched our new kitchen (affectionately dubbed 'Rudie's' after the farting dog that started it all) and the ramp-up of that new and improved facility will give us the platform to deliver on these objectives. We are relentlessly focused on improving our offering and some big changes will be coming out of the kitchen soon!