Eat one's own dog food

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To say that a company "eats its own dog food" means that it uses the products that it makes. For example, Microsoft emphasizes the use of its own software products inside the company. If a company were to use a competitor's products for its own day-to-day business, it could be disparaged for "not eating its own dog food"; this would seem to show a lack of confidence in its own wares, and would send a negative message to its customers.

The term is a variation of the marketing slang term "...but will the dog eat the dog food?" which is a shorthand way of saying that the product may look good and have many positive qualities, but the most fundamental point is whether the consumer actually likes it. The slogan refers to the early days of television, when programming and commercials were live, and things did not always go as planned, particularly if one of the actors was a dog. Dog food commercials frequently ended with a dog actually not enjoying the product, but no matter how good the food looks on camera, or how good its story sounds, the commercial is not a success until the dog actually eats the dog food. This term became popular in the technology industry during the dot-com craze as many services seemed to be developed because they could be developed, rather than because consumers wanted them.

The metaphor of a company "eating its own dog food" takes this idea one step further to say that the company has not merely considered the value of the product for consumers (that is, whether the dog will eat the dog food), but actually is a consumer of the product. When properly executed, this can add a new level of sincerity to advertising and customer relations, as well as helping to shape the product.

Using one's own products has four primary benefits:

The product's developers are familiar with using the products they develop.
The company's members have direct knowledge and experience with its products.
Users see that the company has confidence in its own products.
Technically savvy users in the company, with perhaps a very wide set of business requirements and deployments, are able to discover and report bugs in the products before they are released to the general public.

If taken to an extreme, a company's desire to eat its own dog food can turn into Not Invented Here syndrome, in which the company refuses to use any product which was not developed in-house.

In January 2006, the manager of Ford Motor Company's Dearborn, Michigan plant announced only Ford- or subsidiary-built vehicles are allowed to park in the plant lots in an effort to encourage auto workers to drive the vehicles they manufacture.

In the development process at Mozilla, fine details needing extra polish for an imminent Netscape release would be tagged catfood, to indicate a dish fit for a fussier creature.

In many development environments, to "eat [one's] own dog food" refers to a point at which a product under development is delivered, even in its rough state, to all on the project for use. Particularly in software development, early versions of the product may contain many bugs, crash, lose data or otherwise be unusable, and the people on the project team do not fully rely on it for its intended purpose. As the product matures, members of the team are reluctant to try it, having been burned by a faulty "not ready for prime time" version. In extreme cases, management may issue a dictate that everyone in the organization is to "eat their own dog food" (meaning, for example, "use the latest version of our in-house email program"), as a way of verifying that the product works under real-world conditions. It is often the source of comic chagrin (such as popularized in the Dilbert cartoon) among workers when such a dictate comes earlier than is practical (if, for example, the in-house email program can not yet send email).

Thomas Siebel of Siebel Systems refined the term "eating your own dog food" to "sipping your own champagne" as a more pleasant way to describe the process of corporate self-testing.