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Last year, cat food brand Fancy Feast hosted a restaurant pop-up called Gatto Bianco, where people could eat like their feline companions. After garnering buzz among cat lovers, the brand’s marketing team faced a daunting challenge. “How are we gonna top that for 2023,” recalled senior brand manager Amanda Zaydman.
Its answer: in celebration of International Cat Day on Aug. 8, the Nestlé Purina brand hosted “Fête du Feline,” a two-day “feastival” in New York’s Madison Square Park. The event comprised a private tasting experience as well as a holiday celebration that was open to the public.
During both days, Fancy Feast invited feline-friendly guests to nibble on dishes and sip libations inspired by its range of cat food offerings. Diners enjoyed dishes such as “silky-saffron bisque with honey-peppered salmon” and “Tuscan panzanella with braised beef,” while drinking lemonade (with or without Prosecco) adorned with “everything shrimp” crusted in sesame seeds.
Following an introduction to the event’s foods and flavors by Fancy Feast’s in-house chef, Amanda Hassner, guests dined on a selection of patés created by Babish Culinary Universe YouTube channel founder, Andrew Rea. A dessert selection decorated with the brand’s logo in cocoa was also available.
“We were very inspired by what happened at Gatto Bianco,” Zaydman told Adweek. “Something we hadn’t expected was just the inspiration of getting to meet face-to-face with cat lovers—with cat people—and spend hours with them.”
Zaydman and her team spent those hours learning more about the brand’s fans, some of whom were either celebrating a birthday or a wedding anniversary. Fancy Feast already has an active subscriber community “several hundred thousand” strong, many of whom await updates such as the release of the brand’s annual holiday ornament, she added.
For this year’s event, “we wanted to bring back certain elements, but we wanted to do it in a way … that could be experienced by more people,” Zaydman explained.
Unlike last year’s two-day trattoria, whose eight tables were only available to a lucky few who snapped up reservations through OpenTable within minutes, this year’s celebration was open to the public and—because it was outdoors—their cats.
