Dog Food Fight! Purina Says Blue Buffalo Is 'Built on Lies'

At the executive offices of Blue Buffalo, in Wilton, Conn., Labradors and golden retrievers wander the halls, nosing around for lunch leftovers, and members of William Bishop’s 300-person workforce all call the 75-year-old founder and chairman Bill. A basketball and lacrosse player at Ohio-Wesleyan University in the late 1950s, Bishop, 6-foot-5, walks with a slight slouch but retains the loping gait of a college jock. His white hair thinning, he wears an open purple shirt over a black tee, blue jeans, a cloth belt decorated with skulls and crossbones, and running shoes the size of rowboats. He notes proudly that his sons, Billy and Chris, have senior executive jobs, making “the Buff,” as he calls the company, “a real family operation.”

Started in 2002 and propelled by advertising techniques the elder Bishop honed hawking Kool-Aid, Tang, and later SoBe, a beverage company he co-founded in the 1990s, Blue Buffalo last year tallied $1 billion in sales, making it America’s fastest-growing major purveyor of dog and cat food and the largest specializing in the all-natural kibble niche. He named his latest company in memory of Blue, a beloved family Airedale. The Buffalo part reflects his affection for cowboys, Indians, and Western kitsch. “Also it’s good to have a strong icon that people will remember,” he explains. “SoBe had the lizard. The Buff has the American buffalo.” Undercutting the Great Plains motif, orange-labeled bottles of Veuve Clicquot Champagne line shelves outside Bishop’s corner office. “You have to like to drink to work here,” he jokes. “We’ve had a lot to celebrate.”