Pet products at Sainsbury’s
Pet owners today expect supermarkets to stock a wide variety of products for their cats, dogs and other animals. But how did Sainsbury’s get to this point?
The first Sainsbury’s canned cat and dog foods went on sale in 1963. ‘The sale of tinned petfoods is on the increase,’ staff magazine ‘JS Journal’ reported a few years later, ‘for reasons similar to the rising sale of convenience foods for humans. It is very much easier to buy and carry a tin from a shop in which one does most of one's shopping, than to go specially to a fishmonger and buy food which is bulky and often smelly. It is easy to serve, it can be stored, it is clean and one can be sure that there is no risk of contaminating other foods in the kitchen.’
By the early 1970s Sainsbury’s already offered a wide choice of own-label pet foods.
In 1976 cans with labels by Sainsbury’s designer Richard Williams appeared in stores. Featuring silhouetted images of cats and dogs against bright monochromatic backgrounds, these iconic pieces of design are among the most popular items in the Archive’s collection today. You can see more of them on our website here.
Sainsbury’s sold its ‘first own-label pet care (as opposed to pet food) product’ in 1980, in the form of cat litter.
In response to high customer demand the company also introduced a food for budgies.
In 1983 a new range of cat and dog food arrived on shelves. Supreme, as it was known, came in numerous different flavours. Sainsbury’s confidently presented customers with an ‘introductory challenge’: if their pet did not like the food, the owner could peel off the label and take it back to any branch for a full refund.
A major advertising campaign aimed to raise awareness of Supreme. This included ‘Animal Cunning’, an award-winning television commercial in which cats and dogs tried various schemes to get inside a store and access the food.
Sainsbury’s continued to offer other own-label pet foods alongside Supreme, as well as a book of advice titled ‘Owning Dogs and Cats’.
By the 1990s Sainsbury’s own-label cat and dog food comprised 33 different products. A whole aisle in supermarkets was now often devoted to the needs of pets, because ‘four legged friends can be every bit as choosy as the two legged members of the household’. Two new ranges, Paws and Scouts, were promoted in another popular television commercial starring a cat and a dog who team up to catch burglars in their owner’s home.
Along with the increasing choice of products came even more detailed leaflets to guide customers.
In 1997 Sainsbury’s Pet Club was launched. It was free to all Reward Card customers and the ‘first supermarket club of its kind’. Members could ‘benefit from exclusive savings on pet care products at Sainsbury's, Savacentre and Homebase, as well as receiving a copy of the Sainsbury's Pet Club Magazine’.
If you have memories of working or shopping at Sainsbury’s that relate to pet products, please consider sharing them on our Memories page.
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