Final 12 months, cat meals model Fancy Feast hosted a restaurant pop-up known as Gatto Bianco, the place individuals may eat like their feline companions. After garnering buzz amongst cat lovers, the model’s advertising staff confronted a frightening problem. “How are we gonna high that for 2023,” recalled senior model supervisor Amanda Zaydman.
Its reply: in celebration of Worldwide Cat Day on Aug. 8, the Nestlé Purina model hosted “Fête du Feline,” a two-day “feastival” in New York’s Madison Sq. Park. The occasion comprised a non-public tasting expertise in addition to a vacation celebration that was open to the general public.
Throughout each days, Fancy Feast invited feline-friendly visitors to nibble on dishes and sip libations impressed by its vary of cat meals choices. Diners loved dishes resembling “silky-saffron bisque with honey-peppered salmon” and “Tuscan panzanella with braised beef,” whereas consuming lemonade (with or with out Prosecco) adorned with “the whole lot shrimp” crusted in sesame seeds.
Following an introduction to the occasion’s meals and flavors by Fancy Feast’s in-house chef, Amanda Hassner, visitors dined on a number of patés created by Babish Culinary Universe YouTube channel founder, Andrew Rea. A dessert choice embellished with the model’s brand in cocoa was additionally out there.
“We had been very impressed by what occurred at Gatto Bianco,” Zaydman informed Adweek. “One thing we hadn’t anticipated was simply the inspiration of getting to satisfy face-to-face with cat lovers—with cat individuals—and spend hours with them.”
Zaydman and her staff spent these hours studying extra in regards to the model’s followers, a few of whom had been both celebrating a birthday or a marriage anniversary. Fancy Feast already has an energetic subscriber group “a number of hundred thousand” robust, lots of whom await updates resembling the discharge of the model’s annual vacation decoration, she added.
For this 12 months’s occasion, “we needed to deliver again sure components, however we needed to do it in a approach … that might be skilled by extra individuals,” Zaydman defined.
In contrast to final 12 months’s two-day trattoria, whose eight tables had been solely out there to a fortunate few who snapped up reservations by means of OpenTable inside minutes, this 12 months’s celebration was open to the general public and—as a result of it was outdoor—their cats.
