Meanings
present singular third person eats one's own dog food · participle present eating one's own dog food · past ate one's own dog food · participle past eaten one's own dog food
- slangcomputingTo use products or services one is selling internally, in order to understand their limitations.
As with most Microsoft product teams, we eat our own dog food.
2012, Dorothy Graham, Mark Fewster, Experiences of Test Automation: Case Studies of Software Test Automation, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 531 more example
AOL was signing up members at a furious rate, in part because it provided a better user experience than Juno, and we didn't understand that, because we didn't eat our own dog food.
2004, Avram Joel Spolsky, Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity, Apress, →ISBN, page 223Synonyms: dogfood
- idiomaticTo use or consume the economic goods or services that one is producing; to be part of a closed household economy.
Synonyms & antonyms
verbTo use products or services one is selling internally, in order to understand their limitations.
Origin
From dog food (“beta software”).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
eat one's own dog food. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eat%20one's%20own%20dog%20food
“eat one's own dog food.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eat%20one's%20own%20dog%20food. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “eat one's own dog food,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eat%20one's%20own%20dog%20food.
Source: eat one's own dog food on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.