What's your why?

Why did you start your business? And why are you still running it? The why behind your food or hospitality enterprise is its purpose. You might also think of it as mission, or values. But whatever you call it, it matters. I, along with my partner, run a bakery/cafe with two locations. The purpose of our business is around incredible baked goods, joy, belonging, skill and provenance. They are our guiding principles. We think of our bakery as sanctuary for the belly and mind and we strive to do the simple things right. You should be able to summarise the purpose of your business in a similar way.

The other side of purpose is what is the purpose of your business in your life? Are you getting what you want from your it on a personal level? Are you working in the way that you want, on the types of activities that you want and for the amount of time that you want? If you started out with the idea that your business would support a certain type of lifestyle, have you achieved that? To put it simply, is your business working for you or are you working for your business?

You might be thinking that that’s all well and good, but your dishwasher is broken, your barista didn’t turn up to work today and you don’t have enough money in your account to pay the rent and frankly, you don’t have the time or energy for anything as lofty as purpose. I get that, it can feel a bit self-indulgent and unnecessary to be thinking about purpose when you have so many things to deal with in the day to day. It can be particularly hard to focus on the more strategic side of things when you are overworked and underpaid. The problem with ignoring this stuff though is that it often leads to poor decision making. Assuming you would like your business to grow and evolve in some way, then you will need to make some changes. If you aren’t entirely happy with where you are now, then you will need to be proactive and make decisions about what needs to happen differently. You won’t get a different outcome by doing the same thing. You won’t make good decisions about what you should be doing differently if your focus is too narrow.

You are not in this game just to make money. You may very well want more money, you may very well need more money, that is entirely valid; you’re not running a charity, you’re running a business, and it needs to generate a decent income. However, if it were only about the money, you would probably be doing something else. It is entirely possible to make decent money running a food business but if money was, or is, your sole motivator then there are easier industries to be in. Money is one factor, your business’s purpose and its role in your life on a personal level are the other two. You need to make decisions with all these three factors in mind. Focusing on one to the exclusion of the others will not lead to the business or life that you want.

If you have no idea what your business’s purpose is, perhaps it feels like it got lost somewhere along the way, take some time to reflect. What matters to you? When you look at other businesses, which are the ones that you really admire? What is it you like about them? What products or experiences that you provide do you get excited about? If you overheard two people in the pub talking about your café, bakery, restaurant, food truck etc, what would you love them to be saying, what would it make your day to hear? How do you want your customers to feel about your business?

No part of this equation of the three things, purpose, the personal and the financial, is easy. It’s not easy but it is doable. It is doable and it doesn’t have to take years to achieve, even if a business successfully aligned between those three things feels a long way from where you are now. It will involve work though and a willingness to dig in and identify where you are now versus where you want to be. A plan to bridge that gap is possible but, and I know this is a cliché, you won’t get there if you don’t know where you’re going or why.