Crafting your concept's Identity and the power of a mission statement
How will your new restaurant business identify itself and be introduced to the public? What exactly is your new restaurant going to offer and what might someone expect to experience when they walk through the doors? Not only that, how would you like to be remembered as?
Defining your concepts mission and/or vision statement by stating who you are and what you stand for will inaugurate a titanic influence and impact on your business. It will guide and support decisions made from the launch while also set standards to attract the right team, and ensure they ‘Get It’ from the beginning.
Celebrity Chef Brian Duffy mentions the following in regards to the importance of "visioning" for your new restaurant.
Write down a mission statement of what to expect and the core values you expect the business to uphold. Define the 10 things that you will not allow any exception for at your business.
Parts of a mission statement could be: Team Work ... Every position is equally important to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty. We are a team, a united front- we all look good together, we all look bad together. We will take ownership of every guest issue. We will never tell a guest “that’s not my department.” It takes all of us working together to make this a success.
Commitment to Excellence ... We will continue to offer a memorable experience. Excellence is a habit and an on-going process that will allow us to be better than our best competitor.
Once these standards have been established, don’t allow for any exceptions or failure to adhere to them.
Some restaurants will post these mission statements in plain sight of their customers and employees. The very successful Panera Bread Brand is known to post their mission statement near their entrances and exits. It reads:
"At Panera Bread, we believe in raising, serving and eating food that is good, and good for you. To us, that means food should be clean, honest and made just the way you like it."
Others use their tagline to clearly define their mission for customers to instantly understand what they stand for. By way of example, newly launched Phood Farmacy has a tagline “Harm Free Food’ thus stating that its food is as clean as it gets, and its name clearly relates to the Food is Medicine.
By way of summarizing the 3 elements – we simply say;
Be Different, Promote your difference, and Execute your difference flawlessly, every day!