Two textures in one bowl.

Kibbles ’n Bits is an American dry dog food whose name describes the product itself. English Wikipedia’s article on the brand says it was created in 1981 by Quaker Oats, which developed it as part of its Ken-L Ration line of dog foods. The idea, as Wikipedia describes it, was to put two kinds of pieces into one bag: hard, crunchy kibbles and soft, chewy bits. The name says exactly that, and the brand still leads with the same pairing today.

Quaker Oats was a cereal company based in Chicago, and pet food was one of several businesses it ran alongside its oats and breakfast foods. Ken-L Ration was its dog-food name, and Kibbles ’n Bits began life inside that family before standing on its own on the shelf.

The name was stretched almost as soon as it was established. Wikipedia records that in 1983 more of the soft pieces were added to the recipe and the brand was renamed “Kibbles ’n Bits ’n Bits ’n Bits.” The longer name worked as a joke and a product description at the same time: more bits in the bag, so more bits in the name. It also gave the brand a phrase that could be said, sung or repeated in advertising with very little extra explanation.

That approach — a name that tells the shopper what is inside — sets Kibbles ’n Bits apart from pet-food brands built on a breed, a mascot or an invented word. The product, the name and the selling line are close to the same thing, and much of the brand’s visual identity since has worked to show the two textures side by side.

Quaker, Heinz, Del Monte, Smucker, Post.

Kibbles ’n Bits has passed through a series of food groups in the decades since Quaker Oats created it. The first change came in 1995. Supermarket News, reporting on 24 April 1995, said that the previous month H. J. Heinz Co. of Pittsburgh had completed its acquisition of the pet food division of Quaker Oats, and placed the deal in a wider wave of consolidation in American pet food that year. Wikipedia’s article on the brand likewise dates Heinz’s ownership of Kibbles ’n Bits from 1995.

The second change came through a larger reorganisation at Heinz. English Wikipedia’s article on Del Monte Foods says that in 2002 Del Monte bought several brands from Heinz in an all-stock transaction, and the Kibbles ’n Bits article records that Heinz’s pet food division went to Del Monte. Del Monte went on to build up its pet business, buying Meow Mix in May 2006 and Milk-Bone from Kraft Foods in July 2006, according to the same Wikipedia article.

In February 2014 Del Monte sold its consumer food business to Del Monte Pacific. The pet food business that remained, Wikipedia says, was renamed Big Heart Pet Brands, and its brands included Meow Mix, Kibbles ’n Bits, Milk-Bone, 9Lives, Gravy Train and Nature’s Recipe. On 3 February 2015 The J. M. Smucker Co. announced that it would acquire Big Heart Pet Brands, and Kibbles ’n Bits passed to Smucker with it later that year.

The most recent change came in 2023. In a press release dated 28 April 2023, issued from Orrville, Ohio, Smucker announced it had closed the sale of several pet food brands to Post Holdings, naming Kibbles ’n Bits alongside Rachael Ray Nutrish, 9Lives, Nature’s Recipe and Gravy Train, together with its private-label pet food business. Post Holdings has owned Kibbles ’n Bits since 2023, and the brand is marketed by Post Consumer Brands, the cereal company within the group, which lists it among its pet food brands next to 9Lives and Gravy Train.

In February 2018, as Newsweek reported, Kibbles ’n Bits was among several brands included in a recall after the US Food and Drug Administration reported findings of pentobarbital.

Design and documentation.

The eight brands in this group are all dog and cat food or treat names. Pet-food brands sit at many different points in the trade, from companies that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger food or confectionery groups, and a single brand may be sold under more than one name in different countries.

A pet-food brand’s identity is carried mostly by its bag, can or pouch: the name set large, a photograph or drawing of an animal, a few strong colours that make a range easy to sort on a shelf, and sometimes a mascot or a jingle remembered from television. Because the company behind the name may have changed hands several times, the questions behind each name are worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and how its packs and advertising have changed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its origins, its owners over time and its advertising — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A name that is also the product.

The core of the Kibbles ’n Bits identity is the name, and the name is a description. Kibbles are the crunchy pieces and bits are the chewy ones, and the brand has kept that division at the centre of how it talks about the product. Its own website today opens with the line “Bits So Chewy, Kibbles So Crunchy,” which restates the 1981 idea in five words, and describes its main recipes as a “signature mix of crunchy kibbles and meaty bits.”

The brand’s site also carries a short statement of purpose: “Dogs promise us joy in every day, so we promise them joy in every bite.”

The way the brand varies its products follows the same logic. A recent addition described on the company website, a Triple Steak Flavor recipe, is built around three differently shaped bits, each with its own texture. The variety is expressed through the pieces themselves, so the product stays tied to the idea of kibbles and bits rather than drifting towards a new concept.

The 1983 renaming to “Kibbles ’n Bits ’n Bits ’n Bits” shows how far that idea can be pushed. A name that can be lengthened by repeating one of its own words is unusually flexible: it can grow when the recipe changes, shrink back when it does not, and remain recognisable either way.

Ownership changes have not changed the name. Quaker Oats, Heinz, Del Monte, Smucker and now Post have each held Kibbles ’n Bits, and through all of them the brand has kept the name, the two-texture premise and the apostrophe-and-n contraction that make it read like spoken English rather than a corporate label.

For a design guide, Kibbles ’n Bits shows how a brand name that simply describes the product can carry an identity through decades and several owners. Compare it with Meow Mix, which shared owners with it at Del Monte and Smucker, and Beneful, a supermarket dog food from Nestlé Purina. For this guide we use kibble red and bit gold on biscuit cream with a round sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kibbles ’n Bits’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.