Tacos & Tequila
Creating Employee Buy-In To Scale
Like many business owners, Luis and Juan Carlos have big dreams and the will to do whatever it takes to achieve them.
When they approached us about a rebrand designed to scale, we were ecstatic. (I mean who doesn’t love the opportunity to work with purpose-driven leaders on a family-owned brand?)
On a fundamental level the brothers and owners of Tacos & Tequila have understood the intersection & importance of people, connection, and hospitality. Since childhood, service and hospitality have been deep values instilled by their mother.
However, also like many business owners, their intuitive understanding of what hospitality is and why it matters was not shared across their team. Being so close to something and knowing it on such a deep level, it was proving burdensome to find the words to describe what they believed about their brand. And without being able to define this, they weren’t able to translate this to their team.
Ready for a national-level brand, Luis and Juan Carlos knew how integral their team would be in reaching the next level. Not only did we have to define what’s at the core of the Tacos & Tequila brand, we had to leverage it both with their external audience and their internal audience.
Before we got started on our brand development process, our set of challenges were clear:
We needed to get to the heart of the Tacos & Tequila brand, so we could create messaging that inspired employees to take action.
We needed to leverage the heart of the brand in the brand’s identity, so we could create a brand personality that inspired guests to take action.
We needed to design an employee experience that would build and maintain employee alignment.
#1 Messaging designed to scale
We started with Brand Heart, partnering with our strategic partners who are formally trained in psychology and experienced management consultants. In this foundational work, we defined 1) why they do what they do, 2) how they do it, and 3) what they’re doing it all for.
Through clearly identifying what it was at the core of their brand (or, not unsurprisingly, at the core of them as people), we extracted the true heart of the brand. From here, we were able to craft a rallying cry for employees so they understood and felt connected to the brand.
#2 An authentic brand identity
When we moved into our Brand Identity process, we intentionally tied the heart of their brand through their identity.
We provided Luis and Juan Carlos with two personality concepts based on deliberate positioning work we had completed. In positioning, we clarified who the brand serves, what challenges their target consumer is facing, and how Tacos & Tequila provides solutions to overcome these challenges.
We knew to resonate with their audience, we had to communicate what was at the heart of their brand through visuals and voice.
#3 Designing employee buy-in
With our strategic partners formally trained in psychology and experienced in management consulting, we moved into our Brand Culture offerings. In this phase, we took the heart of the brand and infused it into the culture of Tacos & Tequila.
We accomplished this by making their brand heart actionable, so that both the employer and employees have clear culture scaffolding to support on-brand behavior.
By outlining what their brand stands for and what sort of culture embodies it, employees now understand what’s being expected of them. This empowerment and accountability through clear expectations builds resilient employees – which is what we’re coming to find builds a resilient brand.