Cracking the Code on Culinary Motivation

Challenge

Illuminating the motivations that drive how people feed themselves every day, to identify the biggest opportunities for innovation.

The assignment was about moving beyond behavior. Coming out of an initial phase of work, we had a rich understanding of how people relate to food and cooking, but not yet why. This next phase was about uncovering what drives behavior: the emotional and functional “jobs” people are trying to solve when they choose what to eat or cook. We needed to translate the nuance of everyday food decisions into a strategic framework that could unlock innovation and guide where our client should stretch next.

Approach

We started by grounding the work in what we’d already heard, surfacing key emotional tensions around food that felt ripe for deeper exploration. Then we expanded out – fielding a quant study and pairing it with rich qual, in-home immersions, and film to map how motivations shift across mealtime moments.  Out of eight total motivational mindsets, we honed in on three that carried the most weight: emotionally, practically, and strategically.

To bring these motivations to life, we spent time in people’s kitchens and living rooms, capturing how these jobs show up in their real, messy, everyday lives – adding texture that transformed the motivational landscape into something the team could build new ideas around.

Impact

This work helped reframe the opportunity from what people are doing to what’s driving them to make decisions. It gave our client a new, emotionally grounded foundation for innovation – one that’s already reshaping how they prioritize, position, and show up. The film we created brought these motivations to life, and became a powerful tool for socializing the work across internal teams. Instead of chasing trends or stretching brands into generic spaces, they’re now building toward motivations that matter.