Process

Futurista’s role was to facilitate an internal discussion about the future to define a new purpose for A Padaria Portuguesa. We involved around 30 employees, from top managers to store employees, in strategic and creative workshops and did various in-depth individual interviews, to engage the organisation and facilitate adoption.

During the process, it was clear to us that Padaria’s growth presented some operational challenges, especially regarding product quality and freshness, as well as service quality.  Both disappointed and distanced some Portuguese customers who felt the gap between the brand experience and their own expectations about a Portuguese bakery (Figure 1).

A research on trends and competition highlighted the importance and openness to (1) intercultural dialogues in opposition to hermetic national identities, (2) experimentation — tasting new ingredients and mixes, (3) healthy lifestyles and (4) social and environmental sustainability.

We also found the rise of specialist concepts, and creative intercultural author concepts (mood board new concepts) that contrasted with (1) the stability of A Padaria Portuguesa nostalgic concept, (2) some proximity to the normalcy of the common portuguese street cafes, and (3) the coldness of the brand as it became a chain (moodboard Padaria nostalgia).

Solution

As strengths, A Padaria Portuguesa has a flexible energetic and ambitious team always willing to transform and improve: A Padaria’s back-office was always bubbling, making multiple tests of how to scale artisan processes without compromising quality; chasing trends and fastly implementing them. These characteristics were the key to the new purpose.  We also proposed a renewed concept of portugal-ness — more open and permeable to influences, cultures and trends. A more creative approach to being Portuguese.

A Padaria Portuguesa should add a layer to the meaning of “Portuguese tradition”: to create and recreate what it means to be a Portuguese bakery, blending trends and traditions and playfully mixing opposite cultures, converting foreign gastronomic phenomenon into portuguese or subverting portuguese tradition. A fried cuttle-fish hotdog — why not?

We defined the purpose as “to create new traditions” — an ambitions purpose because it contains creativity and also scale and repetition without which no tradition can be formed.

To create new traditions has other relevant meanings — it implies change, helping people gain better habits, or new ways of acting, being and thinking. It can be eating healthier, standing for sustainable consumption or end prejudice. This allowed us to explore social and environmental sustainability dimensions for the brand.