Grow Your Kitchen Series: Defining Your Purpose
Grow Your Kitchen Series: Defining Your Purpose
How defining your purpose will help your food business define its values, create momentum, and become the ultimate touchstone for longevity.
Defining your brand’s purpose is an essential starting point for creating your brand story. While everyone’s story will be different, and the way you tell your story can take on various forms, your unique brand story should be anchored in your company’s purpose. Check out Grow Your Kitchen Series: 5 Steps To Creating Your Brand Story for more on how to build a compelling brand story.
A purpose statement will inform your brand story. It is a succinct description of why you exist beyond financial gain. Are you making your community healthier? Are you introducing authentic international flavors to an otherwise bland food desert?
The Harvard Business Review reports that companies with a defined sense of purpose can foster better employee satisfaction, facilitate business growth and transformation, and boost customer loyalty. Your Purpose Statement will provide a guiding compass to your business internally and a representation of your values and mission to the public externally.
What Is The Difference Between A Purpose Statement and A Mission Statement
When you are starting a business, you are inundated with different terms that are needed to create pitch decks, internal guidelines, and marketing copy. Your mission, vision, and purpose are all separate parts of creating a focused foundation and roadmap for your food business.
Many people confuse Mission, Vision, and Purpose Statements. Here are the key differences:
Mission Statement: This statement is about what you do and for whom.
Vision Statement: This is where your food business is going is goals and intentions are accomplished.
Purpose Statement: The intent of a Purpose Statement is to define the reason or reasons you exist as a business.
Your Mission and Vision Statements will be the tangible goals and people that you serve. Your Purpose Statement will tie this all together to show your resolve and determination is seeing your mission and vision through.
How To Create A Purpose Statement
Deep diving into your company’s morals, ethics, and beliefs will help you define your purpose. You will often find your purpose organically by asking yourself and your employees:
“Why are we here?”
“What problem do we solve?”
“What movement are we championing?
In the food world, this could be that you are championing the slow food movement where everything is prepared fresh from local farms.
Maybe you are solving a gap in the market where your community has no authentic Asian cuisine.
The problem + your solution = your purpose.
The Five Steps To Creating a Purpose Statement
When crafting such an essential piece of your company’s foundation, it might seem hard to hone in the perfect concise purpose statement. It takes time to create a purpose that perfectly captures your food business’s essence. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Consider Forming A Committee
This doesn’t have to be a formal group, but of course, it can and should include stakeholders when suitable. A committee can be a group of close friends and like-minded business people who know you and your goals and can help you define your purpose.
2. Figure Out Your Why First
You can refer to Finding Your Why to inform your purpose. Your “why” is the reason you decided to open up your food business in the first place. It is the excitement that keeps a foodpreneur up late at night dreaming, and it is essential to be able to describe the motivation behind your purpose.
3. Identify Your Legacy
Identifying your legacy is a good exercise to put you in a purposeful frame of mind. The description of your purpose should be informed by what your future impact looks like. Knowing what you want your legacy to be and working backward will help you develop your core purpose.
4. List Your Values
In listing your values, you will find some of the most critical vocabulary that will become the words you use for your purpose statement. Your values will help you align with your purpose.
5. Create A Draft and Leave Room To Grow
Once you have collected feedback from a trusted group, listed your values, determined your ‘why’, and identified your future legacy, it’s time to create a draft. Try to keep your Purpose Statement between 1-2 concise sentences. Also, aim for easy-to-understand vocabulary and a tone that matches your audience.
Remember that your business will evolve, and your Purpose Statement might as well. Leave room for growth.
Examples Of Purpose Statements
Here are a few examples to fire up your creativity in creating your own Purpose Statement.
Campbell Soup: Real food that matters for life’s moments.
Coca-Cola: Refresh the world. Make a difference.
General Mills: To make food the world loves.
Kellogg: Nourishing families so they can flourish and thrive.
Molson Coors Beverages: Uniting people to celebrate all life’s moments.
J.M. Smucker: Feeding connections that help us thrive – life tastes better together.
Starbucks: As it has been from the beginning, our purpose goes far beyond profit. We believe in the pursuit of doing good.
Tyson Foods: Raising the world’s expectations for how much good food can do.
Walgreens Boots Alliance: We help people across the world lead healthier and happier lives.
Your purpose ultimately should:
- Give consumers a way to connect with your brand and values.
- Let customers get to know your product and understand how it will add value to their life.
- Create a human connection between the company and the consumer.
- Target customers who share the same purpose-driven values.