Eating Your Own Dog Food: Why It Matters (And How to Actually Do It)
If you’re selling something, you should be using it. Sounds obvious, right? Yet you’d be surprised how many businesses forget this basic rule.
“Dogfooding” — yes, that’s the term — means putting your own products to work inside your own company. Not just to say, “Look, we believe in it,” but to prove it actually holds up under real-world pressure. Here’s why that matters, and how to make it happen without turning it into a half-baked side project.
Why Bother?
Quality control, straight from the source
Using your own tools forces you to face any rough edges. You spot the bugs, the friction, the “why is this so clunky” moments before your customers do. Fix them, and suddenly your product isn’t just good — it’s better than it was yesterday.
It gives the team a reason to care
When employees see leadership using the same software, the same workflows, the same clunky beta version they’ve been grinding on? That’s validating. It boosts morale. It makes the work feel real, not theoretical.
Real use equals real marketing
Forget glossy sales pitches. Want to convince customers your product works? Use it. Document it. Show it solving actual problems. That’s marketing that hits different.
How Do You Start?
Build a cross-functional team that actually uses the product
Not just devs. Get product managers, support staff, maybe even a few brave souls from sales. Different roles, different insights. That’s where the gold is.
Decide what “success” looks like
Are you stress-testing infrastructure? Hunting for UX snags? Collecting internal feedback? Pick your goals and be honest about them. This isn’t a vanity exercise.
Make it part of daily life
Dogfooding isn’t a one-off project. It should be baked into the workflow. Use the product. Break it. Complain. Iterate. Repeat.
Dogfooding in Web Design and Development
At Subtle Difference, we use what we build. Before anything gets near a client, we run it internally. That’s helped us stay ahead in a world where tech changes faster than you can say “another browser update.”
We took it so far, we ended up creating our own CMS — RealOnline. It wasn’t built in a vacuum. It was born out of constant use, stress-tested by sites pulling millions of visits a year, as well as niche ones with just a few thousand. It had to be flexible, fast, and functional. So we made it that way. By using it ourselves. Every day.
The Bottom Line
If you’re not using your own product, why should anyone else? Dogfooding is messy, inconvenient, and occasionally humbling. But it’s also one of the fastest ways to improve what you’re building — and the way you build it.
Eat up.