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Comment by wonder_bread | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how long it's going to be until we hear about a direct-to-consumer online pet food store that gives a bag of food to a dog in need for every bag purchased

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Why not? It seems like a pretty solid option for a subscription model and they already ask you for money donations when you pay at Petsmart and Petco...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8HVWAOTEk

More poking fun at it than saying it's not viable

I've been using the Amazon "subscribe and save" to get Blue Buffalo dog and cat food for a while. A subscription model seems solid, especially as I can't get Blue Buffalo in the grocery store so I have to make a special trip for it. But, maybe with this deal it'll get into more grocery stores?

A lot of those amazon reviews make it look like counterfeit Blue Buffalo is being commingled with the real stuff. Pretty fascinating reviews.

Yeah, given my experience with Amazon purchases over the past year or so, I'm really hesitant to buy any food or dietary products from them, for me or for my dog.

Many food companies will have their own "store" on Amazon and you can purchase from them as a supplier. I assume they have quality control to ensure the food they ship to Amazon is from their warehouses, and I assume that Amazon only ships you that food. I guess it's a lot of assumptions.

My understanding is that Amazon tags similar products with the same SKU despite their source. This allows someone to ship fake inventory in, have amazon fulfill it, and then those products make their way to customers purchasing direct from Amazon. There are cases of this reported by authors and other products

You might be right. I was just looking at some listings to see if I could find any disclaimer but didn't see any. I did find some various suppliers, all similar names but not exact.

If you search for Van Houtte coffees, you get products supplied by "Van Houtte Coffees", "Van Houtte" and "VAN HOUTTE". Clicking on the supplier link two bring you to the same page, the 3rd to a different supplier page. They all look legitimate but there's no way to tell. I'd actually like to see a "Verified" listing by Amazon. I'd much rather buy from a verified supplier to make sure I'm not getting some "off the back of the truck" coffee pods or whatever.

I got counterfeit Hill's Science Diet cat food from Amazon. Their customer service reps refunded me but seemingly did not care whatsoever about the counterfeiting issue. Amazon's value as a marketplace dwindles to me day by day as they don't seem to want to deal with any problems (like counterfeiting) that would require skilled human resources without automation leverage in the short-term. I see where they're going from a strategic standpoint but it makes me do a lot less business than I otherwise would with them.

Our neighborhood supermarket has recently started carrying it, and I've seen it in Target, too. This is good, since the neighborhood Petco closed recently. But yeah, I can't imagine GF paying $8B for a product they weren't going to do mass-market distribution for.

Probably you could nominate your local shelter via smile.amazon.com?

I've seen it in at least one grocery store (I believe HEB, a Texas grocer)

Target started carrying Blue Buffalo this month.

Ollie (https://www.myollie.com/) gives 1% of their revenue to shelters and rescues.

Given how underserved animal shelters seem to be, and how passionate many pet owners are about animal welfare, this wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

Heck... you could probably even feed a person in a lot of parts of the world. Feed your dog well and end hunger!

Not when the local warlord sells the shipment to feed cattle. Most famine is caused by politics. All the food in the world won't solve that.

Sounds like you have a business idea.

Virtue signaling in marketing and as a business is a hot trend right now.

PetSmart sort of does this

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