Stand for More Than Selling Burgers & Beer

A company needs to believe in more than money. What does that mean in food service and hospitality? I’ll get there, but first want to root the conversation in something larger: how a company’s values can serve as a blueprint to build its future.

This month, multiple brands have celebrated LGBTQ Pride with advertisements, memes, posts, and team engagements in local events. Participation/celebration had not been limited to companies centralized in major cities, but includes brands whose operations travel every road in every state: Visa, Google, Nike. The marketer in me knows that these companies have strong sense of their own values to direct their messaging even when the message might alienate a segment of their consumers. A value framework directs their work even when it may not always correlate to numbers on a ledger.

I remember when Marriage Equality was decided on June 26, 2015. Nabisco, Target, and American Airlines canvassed their social media in celebration to name just a few. Their memes and posts were then folded into larger stories about their brands deserving of LGBTQ and their supporters’ business. My company posted something that night, after the celebrations had quieted and after the opportunity for viral inclusion passed. The timing was odd as if there was a day-long debate between the creative team and our company’s executives weighing its posting with a potential backlash. The delay was indicative of the company’s absence of an ideological framework to guide decisions.

I led an innovation team as a brand marketer for a restaurant company. Multiple initiatives never found their way to our restaurants because it’s often impossible to establish a direct correlation between <insert the future of the industry here> and immediate profits. Vision is part of the equation. Values become the map.

Brands have built themselves on sets of values, even within the foodservice industry. Panera, Chipotle and Starbucks started conversations that led to their leadership in their segments. Smaller concepts, at-home meal kits, and take-out have all trended to meet the growing consumer needs that no one in casual dining and few in quick casual have prioritized. It has required more than seeing what Millennials believe in and catering some messaging to entice their trial. “Fresh” and “all-natural” are so ubiquitous across foodservice that they have become meaningless. The next generations sense opportunism in their sleep, so it’s no surprise then that they’re dismissing the big chains as out of touch, corporate and uncool. Their vision of a better future doesn’t see money as a higher value nor our profitability as their problem to solve. There is no easy answer. The reality is that some current operating models simply can’t be sustained in a new world order.

Let’s not concede our loss just yet. The weighing questions of our industry – clean labels, ethical sourcing, sustainable materials, access to information – are becoming or have become society’s values, so there is a path forward. The last year has seen CEO turnover at Fridays, Dine Equity, Ruby Tuesday, Red Robin, Papa Murphys, Noodles & Company, and Fiesta Restaurant Group with Buffalo Wild Wings following at the end of 2017. Which leader with forego the short-term weighing of financials to instead identify and champion longer term values as a strategy? Corporate social responsibility, technology (establishing an innovation culture), quality of execution (culinary and service excellence), and – yes – even social issues can build foundations for a brand. Values aren’t opportunistic, they’re become rooted in a company’s DNA to provide a clear path forward.

A quote came to mind as I was writing this article: If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. Companies have been chasing short term fixes like cost cutting and discounts to stay alive rather than building a new brand founded on new values. I recalled the quote as a variation from Hamilton - An American Musical, but found an attribution to Dr. Gordon A. Eadie, a doctor addressing the needs of WWII veterans in 1945, that broadened its application to our current state:

“We are trying to show him not only what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for… About all they see is ‘going back to the good old days.’ This is a dangerous state. If they don’t stand for something, they will fall for anything. They need to realize that we are fighting two wars—the war of arms and the war of ideas…”

Obviously, our veterans faced greater challenges than an evolving consumer landscape and served a far greater good than burgers and beer, but there’s a correlation to letting go of the past to create a new future. The glory days of our industry were fought with different weapons. Values will fill the new arsenal.