Every year The Grocer releases a bumper 'Top Products Survey' issue reviewing the big developments across all categories in 2019. The issue tends to be dominated by big corporate brands, however this year, Pooch & Mutt, as part of their ongoing mission to ‘Lead the Pack’ in the pet food industry, has taken top spot as the Pet Food Launch of the Year for its new cat brand, Purr & Miaow.

Pooch & Mutt is proud to be representing the pet food industry and smaller brands against monolithic corporations like Unilever, Modelez, Mars and Nestle. Pooch & Mutt is in good company with other challenger brands in the report including the ethical condiments company Rubies in the Rubble and sustainable baby wipes from The Cheeky Panda, although the majority of products still come from the big corporates.

Pooch & Mutt’s Purr & Miaow has broken new ground in the pet food world, firstly by offering a pouched food with gravy that doesn’t contain any sugar. As founder, Guy Blaskey explains: “Most Big Pet Food companies add sugar to cat food, mainly in the form of caramel to make the gravy look browner. The cat can’t see the difference and can’t taste the difference, but they can suffer the same problems as us from excess sugar including tooth decay and obesity.

"We couldn’t in good conscience launch a product with sugar, just to make it more appealing to people, we believe the pet’s health is the highest priority.”

Purr & Miaow’s second big development was the launch of the Purr-Cycle pouch recycling scheme.

Guy continues, “With the launch of our dog food TetraPaks last year we led the way in helping customers make the right choice for the pets and the planet.

"When launching cat food we knew that customers wanted wet food in pouches, and that although pouches are reasonably environmentally friendly in some aspects, such as transport, disposal was an issue.

"Pouches have a reputation of being unrecyclable, this is not strictly true. They are just hard to recycle and not recycled at home. We worked with a recycling partner to develop the not-for-profit Purr-Cycle scheme where customers can purchase pre-paid postage bags, fill them with their empty pouches and drop them in the post box. We take care of the rest.

"Even the postage bag is recycled. The scheme is available for all pouches from all brands, not just Purr & Miaow ones. We are actually recycling more Felix pouches than Purr & Miaow ones, and losing money doing it, but that doesn’t bother me.

"We have to do the right thing for the planet, and unlike the Big Pet Food companies, we don’t believe that there should be exclusivity on doing the right thing. We actively removed exclusivity from our contract.” 

Purr & Miaow has only been on the market a few months and not close to the scale of bigger sister brand Pooch & Mutt. However huge growth in expected going into 2020 as more and more cat owners look to chose food that both tastes good and does good.

To find out more about Purr & Miaow and the Purr-Cycle scheme visit https://purrandmiaow.com/