Yet so often we confuse the two. Telling a guest the bourbon in front of them is typically aged between six and eight years, with a high rye mash bill, bottled at 46.5% abv and aged in Warehouse H, is a fantastic piece of product knowledge but it’s not a narrative that will capture anyone.   

At some point in the past, the global bartending community started fetishising the idea of the ‘bartender mastermind’, at the expense of more meaningful service. Reciting facts and dumping information will largely activate only two small areas of a guest’s brain: Broca’s and Wernicke’s area – processing centres for producing and understanding language.  

Insert the narrative 

According to scientist Paul Zak, when someone is told an interesting narrative, the brain triggers oxytocin, a hormone related to bonding, emotional wellbeing and social cognition. Also known as the ‘trust hormone’, in the world of hospitality let’s translate this easily to ‘brand loyalty’. Trusting a venue, a team, a bartender means return visits, recommendations and the wildfire of social media. Word-of-mouth is still king. 

Compelling narratives also create ‘neural coupling’. This is where the listener’s brain begins to mirror that of the storyteller’s. It is to describe in detail the smells of a traditional sherry bodega in Andalusia as old wood, wet floors, salt-spray, dry seaweed and an earthy nuttiness. The guest’s sensory cortex fires. You aren’t just giving them information, you are taking over their limbic system to create a shared emotional event, painting the picture and developing the scene for them to share with you. 

The fundamentals of storytelling are simple. The five Ws: who, what, why, when, where. But how does that relate to brands? Let’s say a guest at your bar might not care too much if your gin has 47 botanicals and is served at 47% abv. To them that’s just data. Instead hijack that limbic system. Fire up the sensory cortex. Tell the guest of the RAF Commander Montgomery Collins. The Black Forest. The Berlin Zoo and the Monkey Max. 

Conflict in a story 

Your cocktails, your bar, your local area are also great sources of storytelling. At Scarfes Bar we identify the conflict within a story,  something every great narrative needs and Gerald Scarfe’s artwork is full of it – not always to his muses’ liking, I am sure. Tony Blair is pictured as the Artful Dodger, Bill Clinton as Pinocchio – and these are brought to life within our Heroes & Villains cocktail menu. Margaret Thatcher is depicted as a heroine for her demeanour as an Iron Lady and as a villain in Divided Kingdom. These stories bring our cocktails – and the guest experience – to life. 

So how do you train storytelling? True storytelling is also about knowing how of much of the world of knowledge that is at our fingertips we should use – and knowing when to shut up. Your training should contain building blocks by which the server can selectively tell the stories to the guest and allow their personality to also take hold of a story. Think too about the length of the story. There’s the 15-second elevator pitch to the guest who might not be interested. Or the 90-second pitch, designed to convey concept. Finally, the five-minute, let’s get geeky, full blown, deep-dive into protagonist, antagonist and resolution. 

You have to anticipate the guest you have in front of you. You can also build stories incrementally – feeling for when to continue to embellish or abort. The Hook is a one-sentence “did you know?” that invites the guest to ask for more. The Development is a 30-second narrative arc shared while stirring the drink. The Resolution is to finish the story tableside, delivering the kicker. A server should never be silent here, this is your opportunity to fill the void and leave a guest with a smile. 

When you tell a story, you are giving guests a gift, a narrative they can take home and retell. Stop being a manual. Start being a narrator. Your guests’ brains, and your tip jar, will thank you.