The Silicon Valley tech community has a funny term: “dogfooding.” It’s a shortened version of the phrase, “eating your own dog food,” and no, it doesn’t refer to a trading out soup and salad for kibbles and bits. In a nutshell, it refers to practicing what you preach. For Silicon Valley software companies, this means using the software they create. For Mixte, it means a little more.
When the Gmail development team uses Gmail to communicate about Gmail improvements they’re “dogfooding.” The term may have originated from the President of Kal Kan Pet Food, who according to legend, used to literally eat a can of his own dog food at shareholder’s meetings to prove it was healthy.
At Mixte, we’re no strangers to dogfooding. When we earn media coverage for our favorite dog-friendly wine bar, The Wine Pub, we do it from a dog-friendly office with dogs asleep at our feet. When we advocate for transportation justice on behalf of the Environmental Health Coalition, we do it in between bicycle commutes. When we write about the problems of plastic overuse, we write about it next to a kitchen built to encourage reusables.
Dogfooding makes us better at our job. Because we dogfood, we’re completely immersed in the causes for which we advocate. The stories we tell are our own stories. Our passion, not our obligation, contributes to our communications decisions. We’re better at telling our clients’ stories because we’re a part of them.
The best part about dogfooding is that it just feels good. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony”. He was right, and that’s why he’s on our Mixte wall.
But to mitigate the risk of seeming self-righteous, I’ll admit that eating your own dog food is sort of like eating Chinese takeout; you only stay satisfied for an hour and a half before you’re hungry for more. The more dog food I eat, the more I notice how much my life is out of alignment with my work. For one, I’m one of the only Mixte-ers that doesn’t own a bike. So I’ll be trading in my gas money for some pedals soon. The third best part about eating dog food, it can save you a lot of money.
