While you are on the floor every day, your restaurant runs on your instinct. You know how a guest should be greeted, what is good enough to leave the pass and which supplier you would never use. The trouble starts when you are not there.
That is what mission, vision and values are for. Not a frame on the wall, but a short, shared answer to "why we exist, where we are going and how we behave", so the team can make the call you would have made.
The three, in plain words
- Mission: why the restaurant exists, beyond "selling food". One sentence about the purpose you serve.
- Vision: where you want to be in a few years. Specific enough that you would know if you got there.
- Values: three or four principles that guide how everyone behaves, especially when nobody is watching.
Together they give your team a direction and a way to choose between options.
Why they matter more as you grow
With five people, everyone learns your standards by watching you. With fifteen, two shifts and a second site, they learn from each other, and standards drift. Clear mission, vision and values help in four ways:
- Decisions without you. Staff can ask "does this fit who we are?" instead of calling you.
- Better hiring. You look for people who already share your values; skills can be trained.
- A consistent experience. Guests get the same restaurant on a Tuesday lunch and a Saturday night.
- Easier hard calls. When two options both look reasonable, your values break the tie.
A worked example
Say you run a family bistro in a residential area. A first draft could be:
- Mission: "We feed our neighbourhood honest, home-style food, cooked fresh every day."
- Vision: "In three years, the first place people in our area think of for a weeknight dinner, at our tables or at home."
- Values: warmth, freshness, reliability.
Now turn each value into behaviours anyone can see:
- Warmth: every guest is greeted within a minute of walking in; regulars are greeted by name.
- Freshness: sauces are made in-house daily; if something runs out, we say so rather than substitute.
- Reliability: the time we quote for a takeaway order is the time it is ready.
Then test it. A supplier offers a cheaper frozen sauce base. Margins are tight and it is tempting. But it clashes with "cooked fresh every day", so the answer is no, and your team could have reached that answer without you.
Bringing them into the digital age
If your restaurant has been around for years, your values may have been written for the dining room only. Today customers also meet you on your ordering site, in your posts and in your replies to reviews. Updating your values does not mean dropping your roots. It means asking what warmth, freshness or reliability look like online: an accurate menu, honest photos, delivery times you keep, replies to reviews in your own voice.
From paper to practice
- Write a first draft in one sitting. One sentence each for mission and vision, three or four values. It does not have to be perfect.
- Share it with your team and ask what each value would look like on a busy shift. Their answers become your behaviours.
- Use it when hiring. Ask candidates about situations that test your values, not just their experience.
- Use it in training for new starters, with real examples from your restaurant.
- Recognise it. When someone lives a value well, say so in front of the team.
The common mistake
Writing it all in an afternoon, printing it and never mentioning it again. Words on a wall do not change behaviour. What changes behaviour is talking about them, deciding with them and praising them, week after week.
Where GetFoodies fits
Values set the direction; tools help the team deliver them consistently. With GetFoodies, replies to your Google reviews are written by GetChef and approved by you, so they sound like your restaurant, and your ordering site shows the same menu and photos every time. When you are ready, you can create your free site.
Start with one sentence
If nothing is written yet, start with the mission: "We exist to…". Finish that sentence this week, share it with your team and see how the conversation changes.