So, why'd we rebrand anyway?
Written by Ashley Stanley, Spoonfuls’ Founder & CEO
Originally published on LinkedIn
When we announced our rebrand plans at Tailgate last fall, more people than I expected, seemed, well…disappointed. “But we love the name! It’s so cute! We love “Lovin’!” It says ‘charity.’” Each time I heard that, I knew the decision to and journey towards this rebrand was the right one.
Our company is only one of many in the social service space, and we’re all connected in our missions across food access, the climate crisis, health, social and racial equity and justice. The distance between those things continues to become shorter and shorter. While Covid was a turning point for the world, particularly in the U.S. with regard to a collective, widespread understanding of the inequities that influence and control much of our day-to-day life, we’re all still trying to do more with less. As the population grows, resource allocation becomes more complicated, and at times seems impossible. The charge for nonprofits to do more has challenged us as operational businesses – as employers, service providers, and thought and advocacy leaders. The less “help” that’s available through government safety net programs, the more it’s on organizations like Spoonfuls to reliably provide it.
In 2021, our Annual Report was titled with the words, “From charity to justice,” a mantra my team and I have embraced over the years – and one we echo throughout our Strategic Plan and on our new website. The core of who we are has not changed, but shifting the focus away from what might feel warm and fuzzy, the feel-goodness about charitable efforts – and focusing on what this work looks like in practice, what (and who) matters has been the north of this process. Because when attention is reserved for service providers, it overlooks the purpose and the “why” we’re doing it in the first place.
Over the last 14 years, I’ve been asked countless times how I came up with the “awesome name” of Lovin’ Spoonfuls, which is “a great representation of helping people, of showing love!” The thing is, over the years, whenever I’ve met someone, who, for whatever reason, whatever circumstance has brought them to a place where they had to ask a complete stranger for help, it became harder to hear how great our name was, how cute our branding was. The truth of it is, there’s nothing cute about vulnerability. It can all at once be courageous, brave, desperate, primal and uncertain. That’s what we in this work see out there.
At Spoonfuls we talk, and have always talked, about holistic purpose. I often say that we’re a logistics company working in the social service space. That remains true. Reliability, consistency, predictability – these are values that quietly drive the way we work, and in turn, create trust with each other, our partners and our community. Over the last almost 8 years, the idea of delivering food with purpose has been echoing in my head, louder and louder. And as we head into the next chapter of this work, at the very least, our partners and our community can continue to trust who we are, what we do, and – ever important – how we do it.