All retailers had some kind of mission that they wanted to accomplish. Their passion associated with this mission drove their daily activities. Although the specific mission varied among retailers, most retailers mentioned their desire to invest in the physical and emotional health of their community (including the individuals and environment within it). Some retailers truly wished to facilitate community creation through their business, others concentrated on what they considered to be the healthful impacts of food (buying organic, from known small scale producers with less environmental impact), and still others focused on buying locally in order to support their neighbors' livelihoods.

 R14 notes, “Anyone in small artisan foods is doing this from a place of passion and wants to make a living. My whole goal to see if it can work – see if we’re still around in 5 or 10 years, and is providing families with healthy food and supporting local farms and helping to rebuild the local food economy.”

R5 stated she practiced “conscious purveying,” and summed up her mission: "[I] hope more people eat here because they eat fresh local food and experience the vitality in their body. Restaurant X is about bringing forth the best of our local fields, Restaurant X is a place where healthy and wholesome produce mean community, [and that] community has a place they can come for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and have food they can count on.”

R13, a distributor, was emphatic about the need for the industry to support families whom he considered ethical and hardworking: "We focus on the individual that is doing the work”…there are people that have been doing things the right way for generations and we really feel that for us to abandon them we would not only be abandoning the entire industry to those mega [entities]...it would be so hypocritical of us to turn our backs on these people. I want to see them have a good life.” His devotion to this ideal was strengthened by his long-term relationship with these purveyors.