In the explosion of meal-delivery services, Sakara Life has come out on top. The reason? Definitely not affordability—if you do the math, some meals come out to $30 a muffin. By branding itself as a chic and holistic wellness and lifestyle company, Sakara Life sells not just delicious salads, but the promise of buying a whole new identity. Order the meal service, and you, too, can live your best, classiest, healthiest, sexiest and most wholesome Sakara Life.
Take a scroll through their social, and you’ll see how they pull this off. Peppered in between gorgeous shots of colorful salads against white countertops, you’ll find inspirational quotes that speak to mind, body and soul. In a luxury market where customers are increasingly choosing their brands for their mission and values, Sakara Life has expertly leveraged its own story to appeal to customers.
Leading with mission and values
As soon as you start engaging with Sakara Life, you’ll notice that the founders are much more visible in their marketing communications than those of most companies. Pictures and quotes from co-founders Whitney Tingle and Danielle Duboise pop up across social, and lots of the website is written in first person. This is a tricky tactic—done poorly, it could backfire, coming off as annoying or self-involved. Unless the founder is already famous, like in the case of Goop, there typically aren’t too many reasons to build the brand around her.
In Sakara Life’s case, it works because the founders’ stories set up the company’s broader values: inspiring healthy, happy lives through high-quality food. Whitney Tingle and Danielle Duboise have publicly spoken about their struggles with food, health and body image earlier in life, which lends credibility to the brand’s message pivoting from food as diet to lifestyle, and from scarcity to abundance. Plus, they’re the perfect brand ambassadors for their own product. Successful, gorgeous and radiant, they’d definitely inspire me to sign up for a week or two of $30 salads.
More importantly, Sakara Life’s social is all about the aspirational lifestyle, from Instagram posts promoting feeding your soul with the occasional slice of pizza, to blog posts profiling women working in health, wellness and spirituality, and even Spotify playlists with names like “Liberation Season.”
Along with the empowerment and abundance comes a subtle “treat yo’ self” message. With 67% of affluent consumers age 18–34 feeling guilty for spending on luxury, this kind of messaging, when done right, can give customers the little push they need to splurge on the service.