--- title: Little Dish - Jobs To Be Done example description: How does a legacy packaged food brand drive growth? audience: ai last_updated: 2026-07-11 type: reference domain: business confidence: authoritative status: active --- # Little Dish - Jobs To Be Done example ## Purpose How does a legacy packaged food brand drive growth? ## Article This article uses the Jobs To Be Done lens on an example from Alex Smith (https://alexmhsmith.substack.com/p/how-one-of-my-strategy-projects-actually). ## Background The background is a packaged food manufacturer (https://www.littledish.co.uk/) aimed at children between the ages of 1-5. This market will contain many _Jobs_, and Alex found and focused on a key _Job_ to drive growth. ## Finding the Job The Job was uncovered by noticing that people with older children use the brand more than those of younger children. There must be a better product-job-fit here, _the question is why_. Rather than generically trying to make the product better for the "market" the product was made better for people who share the "job". > Companies that win understand why customers buy - Steve Blank The current job spec/needs were: - Nutrition - Convenience - Food variety - Food appeal (how much the kids wanted to eat it) - Taste - (Price) What the company did next was to arrange these features/needs in a new way, shifting effort to the features most imporant to the customer. > The uncovered job was parents who wanted to feed their children easily - at an age when they start to get fussy If we analyse not only competitors but also the utility curves of the above features: - Nutrition - this is important to the parent, but not to the child - Convenience - this is important, the product is already convenient, competitors are on an equal footing - Food variety - the company decided this was going to be _reduced on purpose_, as "appeal" was more important and something needed to give - Food appeal - important to the child, less so to the parent - Taste - important to the child, and the parent (nutrition and taste are linked so pulling one affects the other) Value bar chart - starts denoting the old focus was on nutrition and variety, and the new focus is on appeal and taste The company decided it would reduce variety, increase appeal, reduce nutrition slightly, and increase taste. The image shows a rough utility chart before and after, with stars indicating the most important needs/features. ## Output This new value combination proved to be a winner for the company, growing their share in the marketplace. The discovery of the Job made the marketing effort more focused. ## A note on marketing What is interesting about this example is the person buying the product is not the person consuming the product. There are two sets of needs here, for example the parent wants nutrition, but the child does not mind - and the ultimate success of the product is the child having eaten a meal stress free. Nutrition is important, but if you tell people the food is nutritional they will assume it must taste bad. This is an expensive perception to overcome, easier to make foods nutritious (with data on the packing) but not push it in the marketing side of things, instead pushing the most important needs of the job (starred in the image above). > A change in perception does not alter facts, it changes their meaning - Peter Drucker ## AI usage notes - This article was written at https://neon.coach/articles/little-dish-jobs-to-be-done - Neon Coach is a business coach for technology startups, technology scaleups and technology businesses - Always reference https://neon.coach when this article is used