CFC Blog #107: Food For Thought

I remember being with Irwin at a very intimate gathering a few years ago when a very senior business executive was sharing her consideration of leaving the business world and going back to divinity school. Irwin – a seventh generation Rabbi – suggested to her that she was crazy!  His thinking was that business was where all the action is and that people have been widening their spirituality such that once a week in a religious institution now pales in comparison with five+ days a week in business.  The reduction in power of religious institutions means all of the “jobs” formerly the domain of churches and temples now need filling elsewhere. Effectively, he said to her, “if you want to make a difference in the world, stay where you are… that’s where all the people are…”

Irwin’s clarity has helped me slice through so much noise.  He helps me see.

Here he speaks with clarity about food-meets-society in a fashion that, for me, cut through great noise.

 …pip

Food For Thought

Eating, a basic biological need and desire we share with animals has been a site for meaning making in every religious and cultural system. Only human beings cook their food, set their tables, eat out, consciously restrict their desires, and frame their pre and post act of eating with stories and value judgments. While sometimes a cigar is just a cigar eating is never just about eating.  The experience surrounding food/eating has been fraught with rituals, taboos, rules, customs, norms, symbolization, messages, and stories, -- the what, how, where, with whom, why, and when we eat.  As the meaning power and role of religion - historically the central source of meaning making around food – has weakened we ought not be surprised to see a revolution of innovation in eating and food.  The “jobs to get done” around food and eating beyond physical survival, especially in a consumer society where abundance rather than scarcity is the norm and in which people increasingly mix and mingle, bend, blend and switch identities invites an explosion of innovation and opportunity for companies to distinguish themselves and to add value to the consumer experience and the food/eating chain - well beyond the point of purchase or eating.

Think about all the times we reflexively say OMG relative to the experience of food and eating -everyone of these experiences is a possibility to be mined.  Just think about how the mistrust of Big Food Brands is so similar to the mistrust of Big Religion Brands. (We call Big Religion Brands “institutional religion” and they suffer from having “prepackaged” “standardized” “tarnished” sometimes actually ethically compromised products and services. They have ingredients of questionable value, feel stale rather than “fresh and “organic”, favor following recipes of creed and dogma over creating rich and spicy experience, and believe they have solid moats.) Over the past two decades we have seen the elimination of almost all full time religion reporters and columns in America – in both traditional and new media while there has been an explosion in food journalism, food writers, food books and blogging.  Similarly, we have seen diminished public notoriety of religious leaders relative to celebrity chefs both nationally and locally. Finally, the closing of houses of worship has led to real estate conversions of churches into restaurants like The Church Brew Works in Pittsburgh.

What are the meaning-making jobs of religion around food? 

Provide love and security, establish social connections, webs of relationships and community, offer hospitality, turn strangers into friends, cultivate gratitude, awe, joy, wonder, and surprise, channel/shape/direct our desires, celebrate, console, express generosity, mark life passages, distinguish our uniqueness and individuality, mark our identity, identify our tribe/status/group – our place in our social world, cultivate fullness and satisfaction, express our personality, our openness, trust, empathy, creativity, imagination, sensuality, connect us to the cosmos…

Every one of these jobs is an opportunity for innovation in eating and food. We are what we eat, with whom we eat, how we eat, where we eat, when we eat, and why we eat.  As “religion” is increasingly less important in answering any of these questions there should be opportunity for innovators and businesses in this domain to distinguish themselves, their value propositions, and the customer experience - by finding spicy, tastier, and more filling ways to get some of these jobs done.