Does what it says...
I was thinking it's lowest food setting (1/4 cup) was going to work for us. Turns out it's much more than I feed my cat at one feeding and I wouldn't want her to be fed that amount 3 times per day. She's already gained a little weight and I'm only doing one feeding with the Bistro and manually feeding her smaller portions other times during the day. Otherwise, this product is nice. It's reliable, easy to program, and hassle free. It's much cheaper through Amazon than any other pet store in LA that I could find.

Le Fat Kitty
The cat figured out withing 1/2 hour ( I kid you not) that he could swat the unit and pellets would come out. Might as well just leave food out.

Petmate Automatic Feeder
The programming is extremely counterintuitive. Once figured out it works great and is perfect for weekend getaways.

Be patient
This feeder is fantastic for cats that need diet control.
While the programming IS difficult, the company does provide a phone number and will walk you through it, very patiently, even waiting while you do it with them on the phone.
I am not much for writing reviews, but in light of some of the bad ones on this product, felt compelled to write my own.

Otherwise Good Product with One Major Flaw...
I have owned these cat feeders for several months, so this review is from a seasoned owner. My two cats, when left to their own devices, will overeat, and put on too much weight. So, I was hoping these pet feeders would provide good portion control without me having to be around all the time.

Setup: Several other reviews say that the setup is difficult and unintuitive; I completely agree. The secondary instruction "cheat sheet" linked to elsewhere was a big help, and once I had that, programming was not too hard.

Operation: The devices run for a long time on their D cell batteries. Operation was as advertised, and the devices dispensed the food reliably. One complaint; when you have to replace the batteries, the unit has to be reprogrammed from scratch. However this happens once every few months, so it's not that big of a deal.

This brings me to the Achilie's heel of these units: within one month, my cats had both learned how to defeat them.

The cats quickly figured out that if they stuck their paw all the way up the chute and poke around, that it would dislodge a pellet of food. Granted, just one pellet, but being cats, they have little else to do all day, and can repeat this as necessary.

Ultimately, the cats ended up getting to eat as much as they wanted anyway. Might as well have just left big bowls of food out for them.