Table of Contents
About Butternut Box
Itchy skin, obesity, and poor digestion are just a few conditions that can arise in your pup because of an improper diet. Butternut Box aims to change that with its natural, gently-cooked pet meals that use human-grade ingredients and balanced nutrition.
The brand’s ingredient labels are really simple, and you’ll quickly recognize everything listed like green lentils, sweet potatoes, and chicken liver. Gluten-free and developed by animal nutritionists, Butternut Box meals are specially formulated for fussy eaters.
Just as human health is complex and unique, animals also have individual dietary needs. This study argues that lightly cooked and raw diets were not only highly digestible but that they reduced the amount of lipids (a.k.a fat) in the blood and promoted the gut health of adult animals.
Butternut Box has been featured in noteworthy publications like TechCrunch, Pet Gazette, and The Irish Times. Today, it boasts a hefty community of 90k followers across its social media accounts.
What will you find in this Butternut Box review? All the must-know details about the brand and how its subscription works. We’ll also cover FAQs, feedback, promotions, and more, so stay tuned for all the good stuff!
Overview of Butternut Box
The story behind Butternut Box is sure to give you a little chuckle. It all starts with a dog named Rudie, who had the pesky issue of constant flatulence. Now, though farting is a normal function of any body, excessive gas can be a sign of intestinal problems—plus, it can be super uncomfortable for your pup (and for you).
Rudie’s owner, Dave, then set out to create the perfect diet for his pup, who they found out, after rescuing her, had several other health issues as well. Gently cooking simple ingredients, they found a recipe that worked, and Rudie’s farts became a thing of the past.
A lack of research and unconventional feeding practices can cause an increased risk of nutrient deficiency. That’s why vets are hypervigilant about pet feeding trends and educate their clients about their fur babies’ nutritional needs.
In 2015, Dave Nolan shared the story with Kevin Glynn, and Butternut Box was born. Based in London, it serves the UK, the Netherlands, and Ireland.
Ready to find out what these fresh, tasty dishes are all about? We’re to heat things up in this Butternut Box review—gently, that is. Before we get into it, have a peek at the brand’s highlights to get a feel for what’s in store.
Highlights
- Fresh, gently cooked meals
- Uses sustainable & local ingredients when possible
- Customized to your pet
- Flexible subscription
- Delivered for free
The next section of this Butternut Box review will get into the nitty-gritty of the brand and how its subscription works. You’ll discover details on flavors, ingredients, and more. So sit tight, let’s get this thing going.
Butternut Box Review
Fresh is becoming the future of dog food, with owners around the globe either cooking up their pets’ meals or ordering tasty dishes made by those who’ve put in the work. Loving pet owners developed this innovative company alongside animal nutritionists to create nutritionally-balanced meals.
The brand works by subscription only, but don’t worry, it’s totally flexible, and you can change it whenever you need to. Delivering meals weekly up to every 8 weeks, you can order as much or as little as you like. It’s a commitment with flexibility—and that’s something we can get behind.
The whole subscription process is super easy and works like this:
- Tell Butternut Box about your pup
- Fresh, delicious meals will be delivered to your home
- You can tailor your plan as you wish
When your pup’s meals arrive, they’ll be in pre-portioned pouches: one pouch = one day’s meals. If you have a large dog, this may mean that they’ll need two pouches for proper fuel and nutrition.
On the other hand, if you’d rather use Butternut as a topper, just let them know in your questionnaire, and they’ll tailor your plan.
Your first delivery is 14 days (or 7 days for large dogs) of food. Keep 7 days worth in the fridge and 7 in the freezer to ensure freshness. These meals include real food, so it will perish faster than shelf-stable wet food. You know, as real food should.
Consider the first 14 days a trial period, and though you’ll be automatically scheduled for your next shipment, you can cancel or postpone your next order if you or your dog has a change of heart or stomach. You’ll continue receiving your boxes at the schedule you set, and they will charge your payment method the day before your package is to be delivered.
So what’s in Butternut Boxes anyway? It depends on your pup’s needs. You’ll receive one or an assortment of fresh recipes made from high-quality ingredients cooked at 90 degrees to retain nutrients.
After they’re cooked, the meals are frozen right away to eliminate the need for preservatives. They’re everything dog food should be and everything conventional dog food isn’t.
Your pup will get to pick from a range of tasty flavors, including:
- Wham Bam Lamb
- Beef it Up
- Chicken You Out
- Gobble Gobble Turkey
- Swish Fish Dish
- Pork This Way
- Duo of Duck & Chicken
- You’ve Got Game (special edition)
- Ready Steady Veggie (coming soon)
Each dish has impressively simple ingredients. For example, Chicken You Out includes 60% freshly prepared chicken (from minced chicken and chicken liver), in addition to carrots, sweet potatoes, green lentils, and other nutritious vegetables.
Sourced from trusted farmers, the brand prioritizes sustainable and local ingredients when possible, and the entire meal is human grade. After selecting your dog’s meals, you can add on Tasty Treats, Baked Biscuits, and even helpful extras like compostable poop bags.
Who Is Butternut Box For?
First and foremost, Butternut Box is for dogs—even though it uses human-grade ingredients. Designed to deliver the right amounts of nutrition for your fluffy pal, the brand’s gently cooked meals are developed with the help of animal nutritionists to be the perfect dish for any kind of pup.
The study above suggests that among the foods they tested, all foods performed very well when introduced into pets’ diets according to theorized levels and changes in nutritional intake.
You can give Butternut Box a try no matter what you feed your dog. It’s ideal for those already on a home-cooked diet since there seems to be a transition period, but even most pups fed traditional wet or dry dog food eat this brand’s meals right up!
How Does Butternut Box Work?
While writing this Butternut Box review, we found that the subscription service works in three easy steps. First, you’ll take a short quiz about your dog. You’ll answer questions like how active they are, what they like to eat, their age, and weights, and from there, you’ll receive a plan recommendation.
After confirming your recommendation and flavor choices, you’ll enter your zip code, choose your preferred delivery date, and order your meals. From there, you’ll sit back and wait to receive your box, then start dishing out meals to your pup.
Right now, the brand isn’t accepting new customers. When you land on Butternut Box’s site, you’ll be prompted to join the waitlist. Its team will let you know when there’s a spot for you.
Butternut Box Reviews: What Do Customers Think?
People are catching on to the fact that fresh dog food is the way to go for healthy pups. But even though nutritious ingredients are definitely a step up from dry kibble, not all formulas are created the same.
Think of it like you would potato chips. They’re potatoes, oil, and salt, right? Yet there are so many different brands with differing textures and tastes. The same applies here, and it’s important for this Butternut Box review that we look into what the brand’s fresh dog food is really like.
To do this, we’ve combed the web for helpful feedback about the taste and value the brand dishes out and what its customer service is like. Since its website displays a very high Trustpilot score, we decided to head to the online review site first.
Butternut Box has a 4.9/5 star score on Trustpilot from 9,393 customers. Want to see how many people awarded it which rating? You’ll find the snapshot below:
- 5 stars: 94%
- 4 stars: 4%
- 3 stars: <1%
- 2 stars: <1%
- 1 star: <1%
This score is probably one of the most impressive ones we’ve come across on Trustpilot, so it’s no surprise that every comment consists of some kind of praise or thanks for the brand’s service or meals. There were a ton of Butternut Box reviews about excellent customer service—and pet owners seem to really value this brand.
One comment that mentioned the effects of the fresh dog food and service read, “Our dog Codi has been having butternut for a year now and loves it!…Good food, value and easy to store and serve. (Much better poos too)…[customer service was] incredibly helpful and sorted out [an issue] for me straight away.”
For our next stop, we wanted to find out how the brand’s nutrition compares to other fresh dog food on the market. To check in on that, we headed to a Butternut Box review on Pet Food Reviewer. Here’s what its team had to say about it:
“The nutrition profile offered by Butternut Box dog food recipes is above-average when compared to other similar dog food brands. This above-average nutritional profile includes sizeable proportions of protein and fat, most of which is from animal-based sources, which is ideal.”
Since it’s dog food, the more animal protein, the better. We also love that the brand’s meals include vitamins, minerals, and healthy carbs in its meals to help with digestion and energy.
Our last Butternut Box review comes from the brand’s Facebook page. It reads, “Brilliant company and excellent quality food our 4 dogs are all different sizes and breeds and have never looked better. We are in box 3 now and they look forward to every mealtime now whereas other brands they went off quickly.”
The fact that this brand even satisfies picky eaters puts our hearts at ease. There’s nothing worse than getting excited about a new eating plan and spending the money only for your pup to turn their nose up at it. Reading so many comments about dogs loving these fresh meals is a great comfort for dog parents trying something new.
Overall, reviews for Butternut Box are extremely positive, and pet owners appreciate the brand’s quality meals and attentive customer service.
Is Butternut Box Worth It?
Whether your pet has a health condition or they’re a puppy, choosing a fresh diet has benefits. Owners report that their dogs have shinier coats, more energy, and just look healthier when eating Butternut Box foods, and that alone makes us believe this brand is worth it.
Depending on the size of your dog, its fresh, gently-cooked meals can be really affordable. Small dogs start at under $3 a day, which is just slightly higher than what you’d pay for a can of wet dog food.
At the end of the day, the peace that food with balanced nutrition can bring is worth a few extra bucks, especially when you see how it can positively affect your pup.
Butternut Box Promotions & Discounts
There’s a reason that traditional dog food is cheap: it’s made with cheap ingredients. Corn and soy aren’t good for your dog, but they are suitable for the bank accounts of giant dog food companies that use them to save a few bucks.
We’ll give it to you straight—the Butternut Box fresh dog food will most likely cost you more than your regular bag of dry food. But honestly, the way it nourishes your dog is totally worth it. Don’t you think?
This brand gets that, and they’ve put deals into place to help you save a few bucks here and there. Why? Because they care about their customers as much as they do dogs. Here’s what we found after a bit of digging during this Butternut Box review:
- Get 15% off your first box (2 weeks of food)
- Refer a Friend: Give them a discount, you’ll get one too
- Free shipping (to most locations)
Where to Buy Butternut Box
This brand is taking the market by storm but still operates as a direct-to-consumer business. For that reason, the only place you can get its human-grade dog food from is ButternutBox.com. Delivering right to your door weekly, you won’t need to worry about rushing to the store to buy more food.
FAQ
Who owns Butternut Box?
Kevin Glynn and Davin Nolan own Butternut Box. The two created the brand after realizing the need for fresh dog food on the market in London.
How do I store Butternut Box meals?
The first box you receive will have enough food for 14 days packaged in frozen pouches. Each one is portioned for one day and can last thawed for up to 7 days in the fridge. Keep 7 in the refrigerator and the other 7 in the freezer. As you use up one pouch in the fridge, replace it with one from the freezer.
Once you open a pouch, though, you have about 2 days to use it up. If you don’t use the entire thing in one day, pack it in an airtight container and put it back in the fridge. Meals last for about 12 months in the freezer.
Is Butternut Box suitable for puppies?
Butternut Box is suitable for dogs of all ages, developed with a nutritionist to ensure your pup will have everything it needs no matter what stage it’s at. Of course, as your dog grows, the amount of food you’ll need to feed it will change, so just be sure to follow the recommended portion amount for its weight.
Does Butternut Box ship internationally?
The brand ships to the UK, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. The brand ships out its doggie meals frozen in London, so its delivery locations need to be relatively nearby. This Butternut Box review will get into the fine details of its shipping policy up next.
What is Butternut Box’s Shipping Policy?
Once you sign up for your pup’s box, you’ll enter your delivery address, and the brand will let you know what days it ships to your area. Folks in London choose to receive their boxes any day of the week, while others will only have a choice of 2-3 days.
The day you order is when your box will arrive, and plans vary from delivery every 7 days to every 56 days—it depends on what you pick at checkout. Your first box will come with 14 days’ worth of food, and you’ll automatically be signed up to get your next delivery in time.
Butternut Box shipping is free for the most part, but some locations do have a small surcharge that you’ll see at checkout. Using DPD and Yodel as the courier, you can download the app or head to the website for either company to check in on the status of your order and leave instructions for the driver if needed.
What is Butternut Box’s Return Policy?
There is somewhat of a transition period for certain dogs, and you very well may find your pooch is a picky eater. If so, the brand has lots of tips, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have a refund policy.
Your first-ever order from Butternut Box will have an assortment of flavors and 2 weeks’ worth of food. This is usually enough time to see whether or not your dog will like the brand’s meals, and if not, you can simply cancel your following order if you find that it doesn’t.
Going forward, should you ever need to cancel your Butternut Box subscription, you can totally do so by following these steps:
- Log in to your account
- Go to ‘My Plan’
- Scroll down to ‘Stop my deliveries’
- Select ‘I still want to stop’ on the pop-up
- Choose the reason
- Click ‘No Thank You’
- Enter any feedback you have for the brand
As long as you do this before the next billing period, you will not receive your next order, and you will not be charged for it. If you should ever want to start up your subscription again, pop back on and reactivate it.
How to Contact Butternut Box
Have any questions we didn’t answer in this Butternut Box review? The brand makes it really easy to get in touch with its team. Simply use one of these methods:
- Head to the ‘Contact Us’ page and hit ‘Send us a message.’
- Email: [email protected]
- Phone: 0203 936 4888
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