Pet food packaging recognized for innovation

The Honest Kitchen, an all-natural dog and cat food brand, has received an Innovation Award from Petfood 2.0 for its new and improved sustainable packaging which is recyclable and made from post-consumer material.

The company partnered with the team at Bulldog Drummond, as well as with the artist Natalya Zahn, to create its new look.

The new packaging design for the human grade pet food depicts hand-painted artwork of the company's whole-food ingredients and shadowed versions of actual employees' pets.

The Petfood 2.0 Innovation Awards is a year-long program designed to celebrate companies demonstrating innovative, disruptive thinking across the formulation, distribution and packaging segments of the pet food market.

Packaging Digest got exclusive details on the packaging design from Lucy Postins, founder & CEO, The Honest Kitchen.

What is the motivation behind The Honest Kitchen’s packaging revamp?

Postins: We wanted to re-design our packaging to make it more intuitive for customers. Following some insights work, we wanted to make the protein in the recipe the main headline, so we minimized the product names and brought the protein in the recipe, front and center. This makes it much easier for shoppers to select a recipe from within our expanding product line. We also used color coding to group recipes into families by protein, and used a white box for grain-free diets and a cream background box for whole-grain diets. We also wanted to help consumers understand how easy it is to make the food, so we added the icon ‘Just add water’ on the front of the box as a visual cue.

What sort of trends did you consider when developing your new packaging?

Postins: We take our inspiration from human food packaging trends and our box is loosely based on the format for breakfast cereal packaging. Our packaging is also eco-friendly.

What changes did you make to the packaging that makes it more visually appealing?

Postins: We wanted a design that was very approachable, elegant and that also felt ‘foodie’. The hand-painted ingredients on the front evoke a culinary feel and the paintings of our office dogs makes it feel friendly and welcoming.

What were the key goals and requirements from a marketing and packaging view?

Postins: We wanted the packaging to feel approachable and to be easy to shop for a newcomer to our brand who may be unsure which recipe is right for their pet. We didn’t want to stray from the box itself, but a refresh that had a very clear architecture and hierarchy of messaging was crucial. We wanted it to feel fresh, modern and above all, different from everything else in our industry.