“The only way to be successful for the long haul is by doing business in a way that considers the needs of all our partpners – our customers, our squad, our communities and, of course, our environment” (Butternut Box).
Butternut Box is a subscription service that produces and delivers nutritious human-grade food for pet dogs. It is not only the European leader in fresh dog food but is B-Corp certified. It was founded in 2016 by two Goldman Sachs employees, Kevin Glynn, a Business and Law graduate of University College Dublin, and David Nolan, a University of Surrey Economics graduate. They came up with the idea when the health of David’s rescue dog, Rudie, began to improve once he started feeding him fresh home-cooked meals, rather than commercial dog food. According to Kevin their mission is to “get more dogs eating the food they deserve”. To this end they only use high-quality, human grade food ingredients that they cook at low temperatures to preserve the nutrients and flavour. They have some 10 recipes, and the meal plans for each dog are tailored to its age, weight, activity level and dietary needs. The meals are frozen and delivered to the customer’s address.
Initially the meals were prepared in David’s family kitchen but in the Spring of 2021, they opened their first dedicated facility, Rudie’s Kitchen, in the Nottinghamshire village of Blyth. The facility now produces over 8 million meals annually and with offices in Amsterdam, Berlin and London, the company serves hundreds of thousands of dogs in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland and the UK. Such growth has been made possible by some £380 million of investment and in May 2025 they attracted £75 million of debt financing, enabling them to build a second 40,000 square metre production facility in Poland, after having taken over Poland’s leading fresh dog food company in 2023. Not content with territorial expansion, however, in August 2024 Kevin and David entered the $12 billion global cat food market using the successful Butternut Box formula under the Marro brand.
Their team now comprises 750 people across six markets and includes an in-house vet and veterinary nurses, canine nutritionists, recipe formulators and animal behaviourists. In addition, they partner with the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Surrey to undertake research and prove that feeding fresh leads to healthier animals as they claim.
While being a highly successful commercial venture with a valuation in the order of £500 million, Butternut Box is a sustainability-oriented triple bottom line enterprise in which profit, planet and people are in harmony with each other. In September 2022 the company obtained B-Corp certification with an impact score of 82.6 and through its commitment to continuous improvement this increased to 100.3 in 2024. Apart from its concern for the environment and the company’s desire to reduce its carbon footprint and reduce waste, Butternut Box also contributes to the local community. Its employees volunteer some 1000 hours a year in the community, and the company donates to charity, including donating one free meal to dogs in shelters for every new customer recruited. However, the company is noted particularly for its attention to employee wellbeing and reduced inequalities (SDG 10). As the Chief Financial Officer, Edward Carey, has observed, “Our goal is to ensure that everyone at Butternut Box feels valued and equal, no matter their background or circumstances”.
Butternut box reminds us, therefore, that Sustainability is not just about climate change (SDG 13) and global warming, or, even, about the natural and man-made environments, but about people and, particularly, all the inhabitants of the planet we call earth (SDGs 14 and 15).
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