Interesting. I prefer "champagne" as it clarifies the goal: to make something curated, crafted, and desired. I've never interpreted the dogfood v. champagne difference as anti-empathy somehow.

> the goal: to make something curated, crafted, and desired.

None of these are the goal.

The goal is to deliver value. The saying just means to sample your own product, with the implication being that you should be doing some form of quality management. It could just as easily be “play with your own widgets”.

Bougie-fying it to champagne destroys much of the meaning because it literally doesn’t matter what the product is, you should be sampling it no matter how distasteful or irrelevant to your personal interests. You would not have a hard time getting people to sample champagne for their job.

The point is that you're testing something for which you aren't the target user. Champagne is a bad example because champagne manufacturers most certainly themselves imbibe in their own product, in fact they're probably connoisseurs. It's a very different development process to make a product for which you aren't a target customer.

People will drink poor quality champagne after they've had one or two good glasses, so the analogy may be appropriate to modern software development.

Dogfoodung usefully connotes getting off your high horse, getting dirty, getting your face in it. I think it's perfect.

Do dogs like champagne?