WineCountry Brief: Care isn't a vibe
Care isn't a vibe. It's a skill.
No. 5 · May 7, 2026
A quick weekly read shaped by what we're seeing across lodging, wineries, and hospitality.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom. And to all the moms reading, to the women who anchor families, friends, communities, and businesses, happy Mother's Day.
I want to tell you about my mom, Kris. Most people's careers ease up over time. Hers kept getting harder. She started as a teacher. Stepped away to raise three boys in a house that was, in every other respect, sports-obsessed and very loud, a fact she has tolerated with remarkable grace. Once we were old enough, she went back for a master's in psychology. Built a practice as a psychotherapist. Then, while most people in her position would have called it a career, she went back AGAIN for a PhD, doing real work on Alzheimer's.
Each step asked her to learn something hard. She kept saying yes.
The story I think about often is her dissertation. My mom does not particularly like to write, which is funny, because she's a beautiful writer. She's also an Olympic-class procrastinator (probably where I got mine). And yet through that whole project, she kept coming back. Kept grinding. Kept pushing forward. Because she cared about the work. When she finally defended it in person, what she'd produced was a lovely combination of her intellect and her lived experience.
Watching her finish that dissertation taught me something I didn't have words for at the time. Care isn't a posture. It isn't a vibe. It's a skill you keep getting better at because the people and the work matter to you.
That's the bridge to this week's Brief. The hospitality businesses growing right now treat care the way my mom treated her dissertation: as something to actually get good at. Not a feeling on a wall. Not a brand value in the deck. A practice. Trained for, refined, kept honest.
Thanks, Mom. For all of it.
Michael
The WineCountry Business Podcast
Episode 5: Jose Rivas - Rethinking Cannabis Extracts
Jose joins Andrew this week with a story about reinvention under pressure. His company nearly went under before pivoting to become a global cannabis ingredients business. They get into how the industry is producing more and making less, why THC beverages are one of the most interesting bets on what younger drinkers actually want, and what operators are doing to escape the commodity trap. Useful listening for anyone running a business that has to keep evolving to compete.
Listen on WineCountry Business, Apple Podcast, and Spotify.
What We’re Seeing + Hearing + Learning
1) The "hospitality is a feeling" era is ending. The operators who bought into that line are losing to the ones who treated care as a trainable skill.
For a stretch, the industry got comfortable saying things like "we hire for personality, not skill" and "you can't teach hospitality." It was a convenient story; it absolved owners from building real training programs and let underperforming staff hide behind warmth. The operators winning right now have rejected that line entirely. They train. They coach. They run pre-shift huddles. They have written standards for things most properties improvise. It looks unglamorous from the outside. It is the work.
2) Training budgets are one of the cleanest signals of which operators will outperform over the next three years.
Most operators cut training first when margins tighten. It's the easiest line to defend because the cost is visible and the return is delayed. The properties getting better at care right now are doing the opposite; they've protected or grown training spend while their peers have cut it. Care isn't a static asset. It degrades without practice. In a market this competitive, the operators sharpening their skills while everyone else lets it dull are quietly building a lead that will be hard to close.
3) Read your own one-star reviews from the last six months. Yes, this advice has been around forever. It matters more now than it used to.
Five years ago, the harshest reviews were about the room, the wine, the price, the food. Today, two themes dominate. The first, and yes, I'm bringing up value again, because I cannot stop, is that guests don't feel they got their money's worth. The second is how the guest was treated. Felt rushed. Felt like a number. Server didn't seem to care. Those two complaints are more connected than they look. When the experience is generic, the price feels high. When the attention is real, the same price feels fair. The product is no longer the experience. The product is now the attention inside the experience, and that's what guests are pricing.
A Thought to Leave With
A reminder of what really stays with people:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
- Maya Angelou
See you next week.