We sat down with Matthew Grisafe, owner of Purrfect Serving, a new company dedicated improving the lives of cats and their owners. Matt just launched his first product, a canned cat food cutter that ensures cats get a perfectly sized portion of pate cat food at every mealtime.
While his first product is a relatively simple one, Matt and his wife Kristie have big plans for their company.
What prompted you to start a cat brand?
My wife and I are cat lovers. Since we’ve been married, we’ve always had cats in lives. Over the years, we’ve taken advantage of many of the clever products on the market geared toward cats—from cat toys to more practical tools and gadgets. Years ago, we started wondering if there was an easier way to portion out pate cat food, other than just by using a butter knife to divide the can up. While a butter knife works fine for the most part, it was difficult to get perfectly equal portions or clean cuts. When we came to the last serving in the can, it seemed like it was always either too little or too much for a serving.
We thought there must be a tool that would perfectly portion out a can of pate cat food, but after scouring the web and doing searches for “pate cat food cutter”, “canned cat food cutter”, and “moist cat food cutter”, we came up with nothing. That’s when Kristie and I decided to invent one.
Having been in business for myself for almost two decades, I know how to start and run a successful business, so we decided to launch a cat brand, starting with our first product: the canned cat food cutter.
How has the public received the product so far?
It has only been a few weeks, but the response has been overwhelmingly positive! We launched a website and started promoting it through social media. We’ve had a large volume of visitors to our website and a rapidly growing number of likes on Facebook. Our marketing team tells me the Facebook ad campaign they’ve been running for us has been one of the most successful campaigns they’ve ever been involved with!
What’s been the biggest challenge since starting your company?
At times, it’s been hard to maintain confidence in what we’re doing. Getting our name out there in a crowded industry like the pet market can be a challenge. Also, we’re marketing to a national audience, which is new for me. With my other business, I was able to start by building a local following and grow from there. That strategy won’t work for this type of business. We need to use our limited marketing dollars wisely, and not expect huge results overnight.
I know you put a lot of thought into the design of your canned cat food cutter. What are some of the elements built into the product that most people wouldn’t notice at first glance?
One of the more subtle parts of the design is the tick marks on the top of the tool that show you exactly where the cuts will be made. There are also holes on the top to allow for air displacement as you push the cutting tool down into the can of cat food. It’s also dishwasher safe.
What does the future hold for Purrfect Serving?
We have several other cat products in mind for the future, but we are currently focused on building a solid foundation for the company. We are building our following on social media, optimizing our website, and working with Amazon to sell our product on their platform as well. We’re also streamlining our processes and strengthening our partnerships with product designers and manufacturers. We’re taking things slow by starting with one product, but we plan to roll out new products as the timing makes sense.
