Startup Idea: Pet Nutrition Matching System

Startup idea to develop a system that can match the nutritional needs of pets with the appropriate pet food formulas. This software should allow users to type in a nutritional need (e.g. level of phosphorus or absence of allergens) and provide a list of matching pet foods from the company's catalog.

I work at a pet supply company, it is our job to find dog and cat nutritional supplies that fit the veterinary and lifestyle needs of our customers' pets. Some have very specific dietary needs, such as the level of phosphorus in specific formulas of specific cat food. We have access to a veterinary nutritionist on call for questions about appropriate foods, but there has to be a better way to match the nutritional needs of the animals to the composition of the foods.

I started working on a spreadsheet that can be sorted by fat, calories, protein, niacin, etc. However that is only a part of the nutritional info available from each company, and using it relies on each individual staff member having a thorough and complete understanding of what they are looking for in the nutritional info.

A system for simply typing in a need for a nutritional need and seeing a list of foods that we carry that would fit the customer's needs would prevent us having to make a phone call to a vet, or trying to fight with the excel file, or just running around looking at cans of dog food to see what contains rosemary because that's what our customer's dog is allergic to.