Original subtitles

It's the early 1900's

and a New York City bakery owner grapples

with an uncertain future.

F.H. Bennett was a baker on the lower East side

of Manhattan who had a lot of skill, a lot of experience.

The one thing he didn't have was a lot of customers.

Radical changes in the way Americans shop

threaten the survival of small business.

Supermarkets are now adding bakeries within them

so people can do one stop shopping

and don't need to go to a bakery.

They can see the writing on the wall.

The day of the independent baker is ending.

To ensure his bakery's survival,

Bennett needs to come up with a product

that people can't get at the grocery store.

F.H. Bennett, he realized there was a gap in the market.

What he lands on will one day give rise

to a $3 billion a year market,

giving Americans a product they'd

never thought they needed.

Bennett's invention will bring joy to millions of Americans

for generations to come, even though

they won't be the ones eating it.

The United States is home

to 77 million dogs and 58 million cats,

and each year Americans spend roughly 40 billion dollars

to feed them with over 22,000 different kinds

of pet foods and treats.

We see our pets as an extension of ourselves

and we want to give them the best.

Feeding our pets it's an important part

of the bond we share.

But up until the late 19th century,

pet food doesn't exist.

Prior to mid-century, dogs are really about utility,

so they're used as instruments to help people hunt

and they live behind the house.

Cats were seen as pest control.

Dogs ate table scraps.

Why would you spend your hard earned money

on food for scavengers and pest control?

It doesn't make sense for the American public to buy it.

Until a handful of visionaries

see an opportunity no one else sees.

People don't care about cats.

They don't keep 'em as pets.

I do.

I've got three.

These innovators recognize

that people are moving closer to their pets

and seeing their pets as more than just utility animals.

They're part of the family.

They ultimately wanted to create a product

in a market that didn't exist.

But we're the cereal division.

Now you're the dog food division.

So this new role of dogs really gives birth

to this whole market of kind of dog related items.

Foremost among them, food.

These are the iconic pet food brands

that changed the food landscape in America.

This is gonna put Purina on the map.

The idea of creating specialty food for animals went

from laughable to a thriving industry.

It's the industry we didn't know we needed,

but now we can't live without.

Revolutionizing the way our pets eat

and the way they live.

This food made cats and dogs part of our family.

It's 1908

and bakery owner, F.H. Bennett,

has been desperately searching for a new product

to secure the future of his bakery.

So being that F.H. Bennett has more inventory

than he does customers,

he takes the biscuits that he's made for human beings

and he feeds them to his dogs.

At least you like my tea biscuits.

As people begin to come closer to their pets,

as they see their pets as an extension of themselves

and of their family,

they wanna treat them with the same kind of love

and cherish them in a specific kind of way.

So it's hard to believe,

but there was a time in America before there were dog treats.

For most Americans,

there isn't even dog food.

For as long as dogs have been connected to man,

they've been eating human food.

The fact is the evolution of how wolves became dogs,

it's a little fuzzy, right?

They probably developed somewhere between 40

and 20,000 years ago.

And the going theory is that these wolves started trailing

around groups of hunter gatherers.

And humans recognized the opportunity

to build a relationship with the species

by breeding them for specific purposes

like hunting or retrieving or guarding.

During the Colonial Era,

the bond intensified as wealthy families with food and room

to spare begin welcoming them into their homes as pets.

But for the rest

of the country, the idea of keeping a dog solely

as an indoor companion mostly starts

with the Industrial Revolution.

The rise of the middle class

brought more disposable income into people's homes.

As middle class started to boom,

so did the dog becoming that family member.

So dogs slowly moved from the barn into maybe a mudroom

or into the shed and eventually into our homes.

But there's a problem.

We fell in love

with dogs decades before

there were commercially available dog foods.

So essentially, people would leave their dogs

to scavenge or would give them the remainder

of whatever they were eating, for better or for worse.

But F.H. Bennett's idea is the birth

of what will become known as dog treats.

F.H. Bennett comes from the bakery background,

and so he had been used to, you know,

making pastries and breads and all

of these delicious treats for humans.

He starts to play around

with the idea of creating a biscuit for dogs

using this dehydrated milk.

The milk was this nutrient that was wholesome,

it was healthy and it was also convenient.

He ultimately wanted to create a product

in a market that didn't exist.

Bennett wisely recognizes

that even though there's no market for this,

it's not like dogs are demanding treats,

there's potential to develop that market

out of humans' love and appreciation for their dogs.

He makes them look like a cartoon bone,

'cause he really wants that kind of adorability

of this really cute little dog cookie.

And to tout the high milk content,

he calls it the Milk Bone.

With his recipe set,

Bennett now faces another challenge.

You wanna sell cookies for dogs?

This is a family business.

He's got mouths to feed.

Today, it makes perfect sense.

People have dog psychologists and buy dog clothing

and go to, you know,

special dog babysitting centers when they go to travel.

In the early 20th century,

consumers had to be convinced

that dog food was worth spending money on.

So it was really an uphill battle.

You have to understand it doesn't make sense

for the American public to buy it

and it's kind of laughable.

It's like buying sneakers for a snake, right?

People just didn't see pets

the way we see them now.

Now they're humanized, they are members of our family.

We treat them the same way we treat our children,

essentially, and that just wasn't the mindset back then.

Bennett's creation

will one day give rise

to a $3 billion a year dog treat industry

and usher in a new era in the way Americans see their pets.

But before any of that can happen,

Bennett's got to find somewhere to sell it.

To put pet food beside human food

was absolutely appalling.

I'd like to talk to you about a new product that we have.

Actually, it's made just for dogs.

No, not a prank.

I assure you.

Hello?

Hello?

And no way was anybody gonna do this.

It's the early 1900's.

A New York City baker, F.H. Bennett,

hopes to save his struggling bakery

with a product no one else is selling, dog treats.

He recognizes that people indulge the things

that they love.

They indulge themselves, they indulge their children,

and ultimately they might even want to indulge their pets.

But at the time,

most people still can't imagine spending money on dog food.

It's one thing to say, "Hey look,

we have this nutritious food for your dog that you need,"

which is already a hard sell,

but at least it seems like a necessity versus,

"Oh, here's this extra treat for your dog."

At its launch, Milk Bone is only carried

at the one place willing to sell food for animals.

So Milk Bone sold at animal feed stores,

the same place where a farmer might get feed

for his livestock.

Initially sold alongside cow, pig, and chicken feed.

Milk Bone fails to take off.

Bennett understands that

if it's mom who's doing a majority of shopping,

then you've gotta make it accessible in a place

that's gonna be part of her daily chores, her daily routine.

If you had to go to a feed store,

it takes you out of your way.

But if you could make this available

where you already shop,

he's bringing convenience and access

and that's gonna be a huge boom for Milk Bone.

The biggest problem was,

how do we get into grocery stores?

Yes. Hello.

I'm calling from the Bennett Bakery Company.

I'd like to talk to you about a new product that we have.

I think you may want to carry.

He's wise enough to think

as supermarkets are expanding

and sort of redefining what a supermarket can sell,

maybe that includes animal and pet care products.

Actually, it's made just for dogs.

Hello?

People are hanging up on him.

No, not a prank.

I assure you, I-

Because at this point in American history,

the idea of selling animal food alongside the place you go

for people food-

Hello?

Is nuts.

Bennett next tries a bolder approach.

He invites a Nabisco representative

to one of their exhibitions in hopes

of interesting them in all things, in a dog biscuit.

It's new.

Are they nutritious?

They are.

They're made from milk.

It could be a hit with children.

They're made for dogs.

We're Nabisco.

We don't make products for feed stores.

I don't wanna sell them in feed stores.

So Nabisco has always done consumer research

so that they can have an eagle eye

on what people do at home.

And in homes across America,

there are more dogs than ever before.

You might be onto something.

Nabisco recognizes the opportunity here as well.

This is a stroke of genius.

It's a huge opportunity for both manufacturers,

for both companies.

In 1931, F.H. Bennett sold Milk Bone Dog Foods

to the National Biscuit Company or Nabisco,

and this was the very first time that a human food company

was taking on

a dog food.

Nabisco makes food history with Milk Bone.

They took 3,000 salesmen

and put them out into grocery stores all over the nation

to convince the grocer to take Milk Bone

and to put it on human food shelves.

This was a monumental shift

that actually opened up the doors to allowing dog foods

to go into human food supply chains.

Today, grocery stores bring in

roughly 30 billion dollars from pet food,

with one third of that coming from treat sales.

The Milk Bone is bar none, not only the most iconic,

but take all the dog treats in America,

Milk Bone is 60% of dog food sales annually every year.

They are massive.

What Milk Bone provided

to the world was a focus

on something pet owners didn't have before.

You could show your pet you love them

and you knew you were giving them something healthy.

Following Milk Bone's success,

other manufacturers rushed

to grab a piece of the pet market,

expanding it beyond treats to canned wet dog food

as an onslaught of options hit store shelves,

but they're a far cry from the food we know today.

No one's interested in what's going into pet food.

There are no labels that document ingredients

and so it's some pretty gnarly ingredients

that are going into pet food.

It wasn't just the parts of the animal the people didn't

like to eat like lungs, guts, and bone tissues.

It was also meats that came from more dubious sources,

like sick animals and poultry.

Sometimes dead zoo animals, even roadkill.

Many popular brands such as Ken-L-Ration

contain one readily available key ingredient.

It was horse meat.

In the 1920s, people were going from horse riding

to get to a location to buying cars,

so there was a surplus of horses everywhere.

Not only remaining unwanted horses were slaughtered

for their meat, but slaughterhouse leftovers

and byproducts were all combined to create dozens

and dozens and dozens of competing canned

dog food products, which dominated the market.

But American sentiment

toward dogs is evolving.

As people become more accustomed

to seeing their pets as an extension of their family,

they don't want Rover or Fido to get sick.

They want the same guarantee of ingredients

in their pet food that they want in their own food.

That void will soon ignite a race

to capture a booming market.

Why would anyone feed their dog anything else?

This is gonna put Purina on the map.

Pushing the boundaries of a market

that previously didn't exist.

So you wanna make cat food?

So it's a talking cat and he's rude?

Not rude.

Morris is finicky.

Which will one day catapult

into a $100 billion industry.

This would've been absolutely bonkers in the 19th century.

We accept it, we say yes,

we'll buy that for these animals.

By the early 1930s,

to stock dog food,

but the only options available would be considered barbaric

by today's standards.

It's a little bit like fast food.

You can get your kids to eat those foods no problem.

But just because they're consuming them and love them

doesn't mean that they're meeting any type

of nutritional requirement.

The pet food industry knew they needed something.

E.A. Stuart is grappling

with the state of the family business he's just inherited,

the Carnation Evaporated Milk Company.

His father had left the company in profound debt.

Business is not so good in the condensed milk world.

Henry Earnest, who is an executive at Carnation,

is pouring over the company financials,

also trying to figure out a way

to navigate this incredible debt.

Stuart's dad had actually purchased

not only an animal feed company, but a nutrition center.

And he begins to wonder, well,

the condensed milk business isn't really working so well.

However, now people are spending money

on food for their domesticated dog.

He sees the success that Milk Bone is having.

He figures that this business that his dad purchased

might be the way out of this financial hole.

I've got an idea.

Dogs.

He wants to help dogs through better research

and ultimately better food offerings.

And hopes to save his business doing it.

He decides he's gonna figure out what dogs really need,

the nutritional levels,

how to give them the best quality he can,

and that's what's gonna guide his business going forward.

But it's a risky investment when people

and dogs seem content with what's already out there.

Do you want to sink more money?

He could have just taken some scraps

and slapped a label on it

and called it dog food.

But Stuart invests heavily

in dog nutrition research.

So in 1931, Stuart founded his research kennel

and it became one of the largest kennels

in America with 300 dogs.

So he started doing feed and nutrition research,

all of the things that eventually became

the complex research we have today with in-home studies

and kennel studies and multi-bowl studies.

They're trying to create a whole new kind

of dog food.

So the only dry food

that people have access to are biscuits, but now,

E.A. Stuart is ushering in this age of dry food.

After several years

of research

in which Stuart's investment ballooned

to over a million dollars or 22 million today,

Carnation is ready to introduce

the world's first dry dog food, which they call Friskies.

Why would anyone feed their dog anything else?

It's a huge breakthrough,

but now E.A. Stuart has to figure out

if he can recoup that investment.

Stuart's investment will pave the way

for a new 34 billion dollar industry,

but while he doesn't know it yet,

it will first need one pivotal change.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis,

a successful animal feed company has a new leader

named Donald Danforth.

Danforth, he's a go-getter.

He inherits his family business

where he's selling horse feed and mule feed

and it's a good business,

but at a certain point he wants to diversify.

Now Danforth sees a chance

to expand beyond farm animal feeds.

This is gonna put Purina on the map.

Purina will one day

create a game-changing new kind

of dog food that reinvents how dogs eat

and builds the small business

into a global brand that is now number one

in the $82 billion dog food market.

But for now, Danforth is not trying

to make food for animals.

He's trying to break into breakfast cereal.

In the mid 1930s,

Carnation president, E.H. Stuart is preparing

to launch his groundbreaking new dry boxed dog food,

Friskies, nationwide.

America has now grown accustomed to the convenience

of canned wet dog food.

How do you now make small individual pellets

of dry food appealing?

So the research component gave Carnation a leg up

in terms of what they could say about their pet food.

They were able to say that it had all the proteins

and vitamins and minerals that this animal needed.

Modern veterinary medicine really didn't exist

until about the turn of the century.

In 1933, an organization known

as the American Animal Hospital Association

known colloquially as AHA was formed.

So now there really was a formally recognized,

publicly known entity in the realm of animal medicine.

During this time, many people are beginning to recognize

the nutritional needs of animals.

This opens the door

to veterinarian medicine all around the country,

which is really a reflection of this new relationship

that Americans have with dogs in the household.

Now the people are spending their money

to take their domestic companion animals to doctors.

Then they will also spend money on a doctor endorsed food

to keep their animal healthy.

Stuart realizes, "If I can get AHA to give me the okay

on my dog food, I'm easily going to be number one."

We got the endorsement,

put it on every box and double production!

In 1934, Friskies hit stores across America.

It's the country's first dry boxed dog food.

Friskies came in with this dry dog food

that had nutrition research behind it,

but it was marketed also as a convenience product.

Small boxes, easy to put in your grocery cart,

easy to put in your grocery bag,

take home and put in your cupboard.

They set it up against wet food and went, "Look,

you can pour this kibble out and leave it out all day.

If you do that with wet food,

the wet food's gonna get sticky, it's gonna get dry,

it's gonna be gross to clean.

This is way easier."

By the early 1940s,

Friskies dominates the dog food market by a landslide

and may land a death blow to any kind of wet dog food.

So when World War II breaks out,

all non-essential canning has to stop

because the metal needs to be used for the war effort.

The other issue is American sentiment

towards feeding horse meat to your dogs.

Well, it's changed.

Articles are written in strong opposition to it.

Americans don't like the idea of feeding horse meat to dogs.

Maybe they turned a blind eye to it a decade earlier.

All American industries notice

this seismic shift in the food world,

including the owner of the feed company Purina,

who has been focused on breaking into cereal until now.

You see this?

We need to do better than this

But we're the cereal division.

Well now you're the dog food division.

The dawn of the 1950's ushers

in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity in America

as the country emerges from war.

There's a new American ideal that grows out

of the Second World War.

That new ideal is the suburb, the house in the suburbs,

2.5 kids and an automobile.

And there's this idea relatively recent,

that a dog is the perfect accessory for suburban life.

The number of dogs in American homes balloons

to 22 million, triple what it was a decade earlier,

skyrocketing dog food sales to 200 million dollars

with Friskies far in the lead, for now.

Purina president, Donald Danforth has been trying

to expand his animal feed company

into the growing cereal market.

He was selling poultry feeds,

feeds for cows and horses, pigs.

But now Danforth sees a market

with more opportunity.

Danforth realizes there's a gold mine to be had

in specialized dog food.

So Purina really steps into that marketplace.

Danforth realizes that Purina's investment

in cereal could actually give them a leg up

on launching into the pet food market.

In 1950, Purina invested

in a brand new piece of cooking technology.

They bought an extruder and this piece

of equipment allowed them to make breakfast cereal

that did not get soggy when it was sitting in milk.

In essence, you mix all your ingredients together

and you force it through a tube under high pressure,

high temperature, with steam and heat,

and the end result is an expanded food that's light

and crunchy and highly palatable.

Here's where Purina had the genius idea.

Their scientists, because Purina was already

into the cereal industry,

borrowed one of the cereal machines

and tinkered with it for three years.

So they decide that they're going to use

this extrusion process for dog food.

You make a mineral, vitamin, nutrient rich paste,

extrude it and they make these crunchy,

lighter, vitamin rich pellets for dogs.

New Purina Dog Chow,

made by an exclusive process

that changes the usual hard, tough pellets

into light, easily digested chunks,

literally saturated with a new flavor.

When the kibble came out

the other side, Purina also sprayed the food

with fat or a top coating.

So this rendered fat sprayed on the outside

made the food not just enjoyable,

but actually addictive.

In 1958,

Purina launches their Dog Chow

in grocery stores across the country.

Purina, with the invention

of their new foods,

were able to get the same weight of food,

but in like triple size the bag.

The pet owner would come into the grocery store,

it was a no-brainer on what they would pick.

And it went gangbusters.

Within months, Dog Chow overtakes Friskies

as America's number one dog food.

Stuart obviously sees that they have to compete,

so they make their Friskies into smaller size kibble

and they call it Little Friskies for puppies.

Here's the focus group feedback for the puppy food.

And?

And I think it will work.

One guy even said he'd feed it to his cat.

You know it's not a bad idea.

What's not?

Making food for cats?

People don't care about cats,

they don't keep 'em as pets.

I do. I've got three.

Prior to refrigeration,

preserving food was generally done in storehouses.

You needed a cat there to kill any rodent

that might be trying to eat your food.

So cats were not seen as warm and cute and cuddly.

And it's not really until about the 1920s

that we start seeing a slow move

towards domestication of cats.

One of the major obstacles is

how do you let them go to the bathroom?

Cats use urine to mark their territory.

You don't want that smell in your house.

At the time, kitty litter doesn't yet exist.

So people have begun making bins filled

with everything from newspapers

to ashes, to sand, to dirt,

but it does nothing to trap odor.

It's incredibly difficult to clean.

But in 1954,

a game-changing product made of clay granules

solves the problem.

This juggernaut of a brand still available today

known as Tidy Cat ushers in a new wave

of pet ownership in the United States.

That was pretty much the end

of the strictly outdoor cat

and the advent of people being able to have indoor cats.

Once you've taken this outdoor predatory creature inside,

the owner of this cat

now has to provide this food they used to be hunting for.

There is dog food in the marketplace,

but there's no cat food.

So there's obviously a hole

in that market waiting to be filled.

Henry Arnest realizes

that this massive American cat population

is an untapped gold mine.

If you look at the research,

about 50% of all American pets are cats now.

Desperate to regain market share

from Purina,

in 1955, Stuart agrees

to release Little Friskies, marketed

for both puppies and cats, but sales are dismal.

Little Friskies was actually a formula for puppies.

This product did not go over well with cats.

Cats wanted nothing to do with it.

Stuart says, "You know what?

Forget about them, take cats off the box.

Little Friskies is for puppies."

Friskies is losing a market share,

but Henry Arnest is also a cat lover and he realizes

that there's nothing for them in the marketplace

and he wants to develop something for America's cats

for his own cats, quite frankly.

Arnest says, "Let's formulate something specially for cats."

So you wanna make cat food?

Well, yes.

But there's one problem.

Nobody knew how the heck to feed a cat.

It's the mid 1950's

the first dry dog food ever to hit the market

has been toppled by upstart Purina

and their revolutionary Dog Chow brand.

Now, Friskies executive Henry Arnest hopes

to convince his boss to shift

into a new uncharted territory.

He went, "Look,

why don't we just come up with a specialty formula

that's specifically for cats."

Cats don't eat like dogs do, dogs will eat anything,

you know, you throw down for them.

But cats are very picky.

What exactly goes into cat food?

Birds, mice, scraps from the dumpster?

Well, we'll need to study them.

Learn about their nutritional needs.

Any cat owner will tell you

that a cat is perfectly capable of going

on a hunger strike until you change their food

and give them something that they really enjoy.

So if you fund the research,

we will be at the forefront of a new market.

Carnation Farm's Research Cattery

would focus on nutrition,

how the cats reacted to the food they were being given,

so they were at the beginning

of all of the nutrition research,

which was not something that anybody was thinking

about at the time.

While dogs are adaptable to most foods,

including grains,

cats have a higher need for protein and fats.

So Arnest looks for an affordable shelf-stable meat

that cats all like.

Cats are scent-driven creatures.

Every cat will walk up and smell the bowl

before they eat it, and it has to be alluring to the cat.

If a cat's nose is telling it things it doesn't like,

all the high-end formulation in the world

is not going to get

that cat anywhere near that food.

After several years of searching

for a nutritious formula that cats love, Arnest decides

to try a new source of protein.

Historically,

cats have not hunted for fish in the wild,

yet over centuries of living alongside humans,

their sense of smell and taste are evolved

to recognize high-quality protein.

So when Carnation experimented

with putting mackerel into their cat food,

this was something that was a big hit with cats.

With fish at the core,

Arnest finally lands on a formula

for the country's first dry cat food.

In 1958, they relaunch Little Friskies,

but this time they targeted just for cats.

Cats loved it,

people loved it for their cats

and after that initial failure of just throwing cats

on a box of food that was formulated for dogs,

this launched dry cat food in the pet food world,

because it didn't exist before then.

Within a year,

it pushes the company to almost $10 million in profits.

I have to believe that Arnest felt pretty vindicated

when it was a success.

Somebody has to pave the way.

With the success

of Little Friskies ushering in a new market for cat food,

a slew of new cat food brands both wet and dry

like Kit-E-Kat and Whiskas

and Purina's Cat Chow begin to pop up.

And the competition to become number one cat food

in America is fierce.

And now a new brand of cat food is about

to forever change the status of cats across America.

It's the mid 1960's

and Joseph Bogdanovich has an idea

for how to make his new cat food brand,

9Lives stand out.

So this is a time

when a tried and trusted technique

to help build a brand is to use a spokesperson.

Elizabeth Taylor was selling Whitman's Chocolates

along with Humphrey Bogart.

Ronald Reagan I think was selling shirts.

Bogdanovich enlists one

of the country's top advertising agencies

to market his new product line.

Hi, Bob Martwick,

your talent scout from Leo Burnett.

What is this?

This is your new spokesman.

Yeah, I was expecting more of maybe a Clark Gable.

As the story goes, for $5,

he gets a seven-year-old tabby cat

whose personality and looks he likes.

I don't mean to tell you how to do your job,

but mascots supposed to be fun, energetic.

Tony the tiger, your Toucan Sam types.

Cats didn't have the warm,

exuberant joyfulness of a dog, you know?

Despite Bogdanovich's reservations,

Martwick believes he'll see the genius in the campaign.

"Why does she call me Sweetie?

With food like this, you can call me anything!"

"I'll eat when I'm ready."

So it's a talking cat and he's rude.

Not rude.

Morris is

finicky.

Morris really appealed

to the cat owners who knew that cats could be aloof,

temperamental, a little rude.

Today we still have that kind of lovable image

of the difficult cat, right?

We have all these cat memes and videos

and the whole deal is that cats are not dogs.

This isn't like man's best friend.

This is this kind of like, finicky,

maybe a little bit suspicious, picky friend who you love,

but it might not be your dog.

The plot's improving.

Not only does it bring 9Lives,

the cat food to be number one by 1970,

but actually turns Morris into a pop culture phenomenon.

He's receiving fan mail.

He just all over the place.

Kids loved him, adults love him.

Morris was a star,

and that's beyond like your wildest hopes

when you develop a spokesman.

By the time you get to the seventies and eighties,

this kind of ubiquitous symbol of the feline, you know,

you get it in Garfield the cat, which comes out in 1978.

I mean, it's the celebration of the feline

as kind of this discriminating and independent,

almost human entity.

And we owe that in large part to Morris the Cat.

Jim Davis actually credits Morris the Cat

for inspiring some of the inner voice of Garfield,

you know, the sarcastic cat.

Between 1970 and 1980,

the estimated number

of pet cats in America climbs

from 30 million to over 46 million.

The original trailblazers of the cat food market are working

on one more game-changing innovation.

Carnation realizes, "Okay,

Friskies is our flagship cat food.

Let's continue that, but now let's eat away at 9Lives

with something elevated."

This was a bonkers idea and they had to be convinced

to even look into the idea,

but in 1982, Fancy Feast came out

as the first gourmet cat food.

The finest food,

Fancy Feast, gourmet cat food.

Bear in mind,

a few decades before,

cat food didn't exist and now they want

to create an elite gourmet cat food, gourmet cat food!

This would've been absolutely bonkers in the 19th century.

Well, we accept it, we say, "Yes,

we'll buy that for these animals."

Fancy Feast quickly becomes one

of the top selling cat foods in America

and drives a surging demand for a whole new sector

of specialized pet food.

Now there's specialty dog food, specialty cat food,

specialty puppy food, specialty kitten food,

and the industry has so grown,

so diversified people are so willing to spend money

on their animals to the degree

that the market will not only bear a luxury cat food,

but that luxury cat food will sell like wildfire.

Without this sort of movement

towards a specialty crafted pet food marketplace,

you would never have massive stores like Chewy and Petco.

In 1984, food juggernaut Nestle buys Carnation

and their Friskies brand for 3 billion dollars.

Then in 2001, Nestle buys Purina

for $10 billion and becomes the largest conglomerate

in the pet food game.

Feeding our pets has an effect

on the bond we have with them,

and so the availability

of convenient food has made us enjoy pets

that much more so therefore people get more pets.

At the end of the day, people like Bennett,

people like Stuart and Danforth made pet food

not just a mega billion dollar industry,

but made cats and dogs part of our family

and we love our family.