I didn’t set out to start a business, only to address a hitch in my routine. I wanted a lick mat (an essential tool for my anxious dog) that I could stand to have around. As with anything I use on the daily, I was determined to hunt down a design that was a positive addition to my apartment—or at least not a detraction. I never found one.
I couldn’t stand the thought of living another 15 years or so with the kindergarten colors and eyesore patterns that were available—nor could I imagine I was alone in feeling that way. So I decided I’d try to make something that fit the bill. How hard could it be? I figured I’d produce a small run, sell them on Etsy and solve my problem in the process.
I recently heard that entrepreneurs have no idea what they're getting themselves into—if they did, they'd probably never even try. Which made me laugh, because I've been saying a version of the exact same thing about my own little undertaking. It started during Covid, which was actually a very busy time for me work-wise, but having the world shut down freed up personal hours I never knew I had. Otherwise, this definitely wouldn’t have gone very far.
Choosing the Approach
I tapped my friend Martin for the design. We talked a lot about the value of just making a better version of something that already exists, deciding instead to explore ways of adding functionality to the equation. We’re both fans of modularity, and it seemed natural to combine more than one feeding scenario into a single design.
The first pass included nine options, all compelling enough that I won’t share the renderings (who knows, maybe I’ll make one down the road). The concept that interested me most was a two-sided bowl housing a slow feeder and a lick mat, which could also stand alone. This early sketch doesn’t look quite like where we landed, but the fundamentals are all there.
Material Matters
It was clear from the start that the slow feeder and lick mat would need to be silicone. I also knew I wanted the bowl to be ceramic. Making it in steel would have been technically easier, but I was drawn to the quality of porcelain—the same time-tested material so many of us prefer to eat our own meals from. It feels more dinner table than campground.
“If you’d chosen to make the bowl out of steel, it wouldn’t have had this warmth,” Martin says. And pairing ceramic with silicone created an interesting contrast. “Anytime you can pick materials that have a sense of the hand and of a machine, it’s magic.”
Right Sizing
The first step was determining the scale. Some of this was aesthetics—we 3D printed the design to see which proportions looked best in a range of sizes—and some involved timed tests with stand-in mats that I purchased and cut to fit the 3D-printed prototypes. Conventional lick mats tend to run larger than food bowls, so I wanted to be certain the surface was wide enough for the lick mat to serve its purpose. Fortunately, the testers who were experienced with lick mats said the duration was fine for them.
Pattern Making
The Slow Feeder is where the details began to take shape. “I was thinking about things we eat that force us to slow down, like a grapefruit,” Martin says. “That’s where the segmented pattern first came from.”
Once I saw the grapefruit-inspired design there was no going back. I loved its visual impact—graphic and a hint organic—and that the bowl becomes even more compelling with the Slow Feeder in place. Changing the palette adds interest too—it looks sophisticated in neutrals, like pop art with colors.
Landing the Lick Mat was next. Because my main concern was finding the right balance between diameter and density (it can’t be too easy to lick clean!), I had originally assumed lots of nubs was going to be best, nook and cranny-wise. But those time tests made me secure in trying a different approach.
Martin riffed on the slow feeder’s segments, translating them into slices of expanding arcs. “Radial patterns just work in an elegant way in a circular form,” he says. “So building off of the grapefruit, we pulled that aesthetic through to create a pattern that’s unique to this design.”
A Step Forward
As the samples came in, we saw that the elevated floor of the bowl made the outer wall less than perfectly straight—still beautiful but not as crisp as we wanted. The stepped design of the Dish offers more stability during the firing process. While it remains technically challenging to produce a form this complex with the precision we need in an organic material like porcelain, I have a very game and talented supplier. For me, one of the most enjoyable things about the design process is that the iterations along the way have changed the outcome for the better.
“Moving from a very minimal design to this stepped design gave the bowl a more unique identity, because each of the two sides is visual distinct,” Martin says. “In the end, I’m much happier with where it landed.”
Trial Run
Lastly, I needed to take the full set out for a test drive. At this point, I was fairly confident about the design we’d developed, so it felt more like confirmation than a test to watch dogs enjoying it. Even dogs who’d never used either a lick mat or a slow feeder took to the designs naturally. And Robert Haussmann (@dogboynyc) suggested his dog Josie seemed to take her time with the Lick Mat because its elevated position in the Dish meant she could lie down and enjoy it more.
A few people noted that it would be nice for the Lick Mat to stay fixed in place as you turn the bowl over. I agreed. Leaving the silicone in place creates extra traction when you’re using the opposite side, and turning the bowl shouldn’t feel fussy. The silicone supplier offered a remarkably elegant solution: making the back of the Lick Mat shiny gives it just enough tackiness to do the trick.
Diverse Users
There were still two user groups I hadn’t tested—flat-faced dogs, who often benefit from a slow feeder, and cats. Brachycephalic dogs are ever-present in NYC, but the only one (a gorgeous smooth-coated Brussels Griffon) that I managed to line up for a test refused to use the Slow Feeder. His owner suspected this was more about his personality than a design issue, but I was concerned that the grapefruit shape might be too deep for shorter snouts. I struck gold when I asked my stepmother to line up some candidates in her Florida neighborhood. By the end of my week-long visit, I’d seen a Boston Terrier, a French Bulldog and a Pekingnese all enjoy their meals from the design. When I got back home, a bi-coastal Pug named Hobbes sealed the deal.
I then lined up several cats in a single home, the highlight of which was watching the 14-year-old elder statesman of the group, Sully, alternate between eating from the Slow Feeder in the expected way and using his paw as a spoon to bring the food to his mouth. Actually, the real highlight was the news I received afterward. “We’d been away overnight, so they would normally eat too fast and throw up,” my friend Emily told me, “but no one did!”
What I Know Now
While I already had a healthy appreciation for all that goes into well-made products and how they can improve our experiences for the better, the enthusiastic initial response from those who’ve interacted with the final design has been truly gratifying. This was a real learning experience—one that’s made me even more aware of the inherent value of the things we surround ourselves with. It’s true that I originally had no idea what it would take to pull this off, but I am so glad I didn't know enough then to quit before I even began.
