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General Mills to buy pet food maker Blue Buffalo for $8B
- wonder_bread 9y agoI wonder how long it's going to be until we hear about a direct-to-consumer online pet food store that gives a bag of food to a dog in need for every bag purchased
- Nelson69 9y agoWhy not? It seems like a pretty solid option for a subscription model and they already ask you for money donations when you pay at Petsmart and Petco...
- wonder_bread 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8HVWAOTEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8HVWAOTEk More poking fun at it than saying it's not viable
- linsomniac 9y agoI've been using the Amazon "subscribe and save" to get Blue Buffalo dog and cat food for a while. A subscription model seems solid, especially as I can't get Blue Buffalo in the grocery store so I have to make a special trip for it. But, maybe with this deal it'll get into more grocery stores?
- Finnucane 9y agoOur neighborhood supermarket has recently started carrying it, and I've seen it in Target, too. This is good, since the neighborhood Petco closed recently. But yeah, I can't imagine GF paying $8B for a product they weren't going to do mass-market distribution for.
- wavefunction 9y agoProbably you could nominate your local shelter via smile.amazon.com?
- awakeasleep 9y agoA lot of those amazon reviews make it look like counterfeit Blue Buffalo is being commingled with the real stuff. Pretty fascinating reviews.
- el_benhameen 9y agoYeah, given my experience with Amazon purchases over the past year or so, I'm really hesitant to buy any food or dietary products from them, for me or for my dog.
- giarc 9y agoMany food companies will have their own "store" on Amazon and you can purchase from them as a supplier. I assume they have quality control to ensure the food they ship to Amazon is from their warehouses, and I assume that Amazon only ships you that food. I guess it's a lot of assumptions.
- crasco 9y agoMy understanding is that Amazon tags similar products with the same SKU despite their source. This allows someone to ship fake inventory in, have amazon fulfill it, and then those products make their way to customers purchasing direct from Amazon. There are cases of this reported by authors and other products
- giarc 9y agoYou might be right. I was just looking at some listings to see if I could find any disclaimer but didn't see any. I did find some various suppliers, all similar names but not exact. If you search for Van Houtte coffees, you get products supplied by "Van Houtte Coffees", "Van Houtte" and "VAN HOUTTE". Clicking on the supplier link two bring you to the same page, the 3rd to a different supplier page. They all look legitimate but there's no way to tell. I'd actually like to see a "Verified" listing by Amazon. I'd much rather buy from a verified supplier to make sure I'm not getting some "off the back of the truck" coffee pods or whatever.
- bdcravens 9y agoI've seen it in at least one grocery store (I believe HEB, a Texas grocer)
- wmeredith 9y agoTarget started carrying Blue Buffalo this month.
- malnourish 9y agoPetSmart sort of does this
- kurthr 9y agoHeck... you could probably even feed a person in a lot of parts of the world. Feed your dog well and end hunger!
- agotterer 9y agoOllie (https://www.myollie.com/ https://www.myollie.com/) gives 1% of their revenue to shelters and rescues.
- hkmurakami 9y agoGiven how underserved animal shelters seem to be, and how passionate many pet owners are about animal welfare, this wouldn't be a bad idea at all.
- notadoc 9y agoSounds like you have a business idea. Virtue signaling in marketing and as a business is a hot trend right now.
- hinkley 9y agoI still find it disturbing how much breakfast cereal is made by dog food companies.
- monocasa 9y agoI, for one, love Crackling Oat Bran.
- spthorn60 9y agoAs do we. True story - our kids always called C.O.B. "cat food".
- analogmemory 9y agoBachelor Chow, it's good for you, and your pets too!
- oldcynic 9y agoThe big food conglomerates have been buying up pet food makers for decades. Gives a convenient place to dump all the leftovers from their human food production. Best option is to find a maker that still only makes pet food, or take the old fashioned approach and feed the dog raw bones and leftovers.
- cobalt 9y ago(you generally should not feed your dog bones, they can splinter and lodge in the dog's throat)
- oldcynic 9y agoOnly if cooked first, as they become brittle. So cooked chicken bones would be especially risky. Raw bones are generally fine - they break into small pieces. Larger marrow bones they can only gnaw at of course.
- philfrasty 9y agocurious: if the bones aren't cooked, isn't the pet spreading bacteria with (possible) resistance to antibiotics throughout the entire house?
- barking 9y agoI never could understand how people have pets indoors anyway. Would you sit on chairs that other humans sat on bare-bottomed after going for a number 2?
- oldcynic 9y agoGenerally we encourage the dogs to keep the bones outside, or in the kitchen, and mop the floor after. Not that it needs much - they usually munch wherever it lands! The sound of a couple of German Shepherds crunching up their bones means you probably don't want them doing this right by the sofa during a movie. After an hour or so all that's left of a big marrow bone is entirely cleaned, and the smaller stuff is gone completely. So we've never found it an issue. I imagine we and the children, especially when they were younger, spread as much as any salmonella loaded paw prints. :)
- matt2000 9y ago"Hacker News" this is not. I hate to be the guy saying "why is this article on here" but I do miss the stuff that used to be on this site :(
- grzm 9y agoHN members—you included—help curate the content of this site. If you think a submission is inappropriate, flag it. Likewise, upvote and submit the types of articles you'd like to see. Help make HN the site you want it to be.
- danso 9y agoIt must be of some interest to the entrepreneurial-minded folks on HN. An East Coast company that started in 2012 [0] gets a $8B buyout -- and unless I'm missing something, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Reminds me of stories about all the tech startups started by non-teenagers/non-dropouts whose big exits (some near unicorn-level) don't get much attention because their origin stories or their business plan don't sound as sexy as the archetypical Silicon Valley startup myth. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=49372845 https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...
- matt2000 9y agoYeah I hear you, I’m just missing the stuff I used to find here - little cool libraries, new ways of doing things, stuff people made. So much of what’s upvoted now are just the contents of the business section of any major newspaper.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI can’t speak for everyone, but I find the business, political, and social posts far more valuable than any technical post about a library, framework, or new abstraction. Very few people change the world with code. It’s either soft skills or business acumen.
- refurb 9y ago
- judahjr88 9y agoMy dogs pooped blood when we tried giving them Blue Buffalo
- thephyber 9y agoThe "n of 1" is not very useful from a statistical standpoint. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_of_1_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_of_1_trial
- stronglikedan 9y agoThat typically means you gave them too much too fast. It's best for their digestive system to very slowly ease them into the new food. A few kibbles (or partial teaspoons if wet) mixed into their old food at first, and then gradually increase over two weeks, until the new food completely offsets the old food.
- neogodless 9y agoWe give our large breed dog Limited Ingredient (by Blue Buffalo) specifically because it doesn't contain grains and other irritants. Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I'm concerned that General Mills ownership will decrease the quality of the ingredients, and we'll have to find another brand, which has always proved to be a tricky, extended process of trial and error, where the "error" leads to your dog losing weight and having diarrhea.
- thephyber 9y ago(1) I had a similar long trial-and-error process with my dog (2) Blue Buffalo has been growing extremely quickly over the past decade. The company went IPO in 2015 IIRC. I highly suspect the cost cutting on ingredients has already begun. (3) Blue Buffalo already sells lines which contain "grains and other irritants". I tried giving my dog "Wilderness" (the highest protein content with the least grain/filler) but it was too rich for him. For a while, I settled on a Blue Buffalo Life Protection which was cut with oatmeal, a grain.
- Erik816 9y agoTry Taste of the Wild, may be what you are looking for.
- leesalminen 9y agoI’ve been feeding both of my dogs this for years. They love it! We rotate between the yellow, purple and red bags (forget the names). The dogs favorite seem to be yellow. We get it from Chewy.com. It’s the same price as my local dog kennel that carries it.
- Shivetya 9y agoVictor is another very good brand. The site https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/ https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/ does provide a good breakdown of what it is in many dog foods
- kprybol 9y agoNot sure how easy it is to find outside of boutique pets stores (just happen to live near a fantastic one that delivers for free) but I highly recommend the Orijen brand. Have tried numerous other “premium” brands with my dogs over the years but no matter which brand I was using, I always managed to run into at least one vet than had less than stellar things to say about brand x, y, or z. Maybe it’s just coincidence but in the 7+ years I’ve been feeding my dogs Orijen I’ve yet to encounter a vet that anything other than positive things to say about the brand.
- slantyyz 9y agoPeople interested in this topic might want to check out the Skept Vet's web site: http://skeptvet.com/Blog/ http://skeptvet.com/Blog/ The site is run by a veterinarian who "takes a skeptical and science-based look at veterinary medicine". There's a strong bias towards evidence based research over junk/pseudo-science (which should appeal to a lot of HN'ers), and I've learned a lot from reading his blog.
- sergers 9y agoI feed my purebred English bulldog: He started off on royal cabin puppy bulldog blend. Then I was a little smarter, and fed Origin. Origin I found was true protein rich. Switched to Acanna, which is actuallyade by same people as origin, just less protein. Tried fromms, taste of the wild. Then nutrience grain free with freeze dried meat. I have used this a few times inbetween, but now back on it. Zignature Kangaroo formula. https://www.zignature.com/?portfolio=kangaroo-formula-dry&lang=en https://www.zignature.com/?portfolio=kangaroo-formula-dry&la... With my dogs allergies and gastro issues, this has been the best. Hypoallergenic meat first recipe, with no Corn, grains, Wheat, Soy, Dairy, or Chicken, Chicken Eggs, or Chicken By-Products. My Dog is allergic to chicken, suprised how much chicken meal is in alot of dog foods. They pet store basically said: "has your dog ever had kangaroo? unlikely, and its only meat in it.) So I tried it, maybe not the absolute most favorite of my dog, but he still enjoys it and it's been the best for him. Never tried blue origin, likely won't now, my wife' heart always dropped watching the commercials telling the history of blue the dog and the resulting company in memory
- toomuchtodo 9y agoYou might try Nature's Select. My great dane is allergic to almost every traditional protein except fish, so he's on a diet of wild salmon and sweet potatoes. http://naturalpetfooddelivery.com/select-cold-water-recipe/ http://naturalpetfooddelivery.com/select-cold-water-recipe/
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoI don't wanna be the "why is this on HN" guy, and I certainly don't mind that it's here, but I really don't see any possible hacker angle here. I'm not complaining, I'm just puzzled.