Feeding cats wet food in an automatic, health conscious way

A cat meowing or scratching at the door ready to be fed in the wee hours of the morning is a wakeup call many cat owners have experienced. That exact situation led Grant Barnekow to create an automatic wet cat food feeder that puts cat health at the forefront, while prioritizing quality of food, convenience for pet owners, and environmental impact. 

Typical smart feeders have an app, variable feeding, and programmability, but only work with dry food. We sat down with Grant, co-founder and CEO of Sphinx, to hear how he’s built the first automated wet cat feeder, why oxygenation leads to food waste, and how data can improve pet health.

Wet food is better than dry food—there’s no convincing necessary there. How did you find a solution to the inconvenience of wet food?

Wet food, or canned food, is the healthiest choice for cats, but it’s also the most inconvenient option for pet parents. Sphinx is the first device of its kind, so developing the product required a healthy amount of trial and error. Ultimately, we didn’t want to just automate the two-can-a-day feeding model, we wanted to introduce a higher standard for feeding that would allow for custom portions to optimally support each individual cat’s health needs. This required designing not only the food delivery device but also custom packaging for the wet food itself.

Ultimately, we were able to create a product that marries convenience for owners with what’s healthiest for their beloved pets.

Why can’t automatic feeders dispense wet food?

The industry standard for wet cat food is an aluminum can, and once you open it, you pray your cat eats it all, otherwise there’s a sharp decline in palatability. Oxygenation, bacteria growth, and desiccation can all affect palatability and food safety. Cats are less likely to eat the remainder of the can after a pet owner puts a lid on it, leaves it in the open air, or puts it in the fridge. If the cat doesn’t want to eat it, it goes to waste.

Cats haven’t evolved to eat such large portions twice a day, which leads to a lot of that food going to waste. Not to mention from a recyclability standpoint, the food residue left in the can even after people rinse it out results in more than 50% of cans ending up in the landfill, even though it’s completely recyclable.

We’ve designed our packaging and device to distribute small portions specific to your cat’s caloric needs and keep the remainder of that food fresh and fully palatable. We’ve also added a heating element under the bowl to increase palatability by up to 40%. This method eliminates food waste and feeds cats the way they’re meant to be fed; in a natural setting, cats will eat anywhere from 10 to 22 meals in a 24-hour cycle. That’s something humans can’t regulate without the right tools.

In addition to portion control, we’re focused on the quality of food. There’s a huge movement around feeding pets human-grade food. Smalls offers incredibly high-quality food, but it’s also something you have to keep in your freezer or refrigerator and dole out manually. With Sphinx, we can work with both shelf-stable and fresh food because we want to give cats and owners that optionality.

One of Sphinx’s key differentiators is that we have a scale under the bowl and a camera with facial recognition, so we can log every calorie that is dispensed and consumed to the specific cat. This data tells us that my cat Mor’du, for example, eats 200 calories per day of wet food, his preferred texture is paté, and his favorite protein is turkey.

Pet ownership is shifting based on a more apartment-dwelling population with cats. How does this affect how people feed their cats?

In North America, 37% of households are cat-owning. What’s interesting to me is the shifts that we’re seeing from Millennials to Gen Z as cat owners. This is in large part because of the Internet virality of cats and other macroeconomic challenges. People’s cat preference is on track to outpace dogs. Looking to the next 50 years, we’re going to see more people living in an apartment and having a couple of cats.

Cat obesity is a big issue for pet health, and cats are being overfed. Tell me more about how you’re helping to solve cat obesity.

Believe it or not, 61% of cats are overweight or obese. My kittens weren’t fat—I just wanted to feed them the best thing and it’s proven that wet food is the best in terms of caloric density and the ability to make the cat feel full to help them manage their weight. Obesity is the root cause of other health conditions from urinary tract infection to chronic heart disease to dehydration.

When people feed their cats and dogs, they typically use an estimation for the volume of food, say the number of handfuls or a scoop that may be under or overfull. Automation feeders make the portions more precise and are proven to help cats maintain a healthy weight. With Sphinx, we’re shifting the market to not compromise on the food we give our pets.