No. 7: The Moment is the Product
The moment is the product
No. 7 · June 10, 2026
A quick weekly read shaped by what we're seeing across lodging, wineries, and hospitality.
On October 27, 2010, I went to Game 1 of the World Series with my dad and my two brothers. Giants versus Rangers. The team I'd loved my whole life, back in the Series, in my hometown.
I sat down to write about that night and realized something. I don't remember the final score. I remember that we won, and I remember everything else. The pregame buzz outside the ballpark. The camaraderie with thousands of Giants fans I'd never met and somehow knew. The walk in. The noise. And then the opening: the sixty seconds right as the networks went live to a national audience, when the entire stadium went nuts with their orange Giants towels, celebrating the moment together. It was electric. I will never forget that feeling.
The product that night was a baseball game. Nine innings, same as any Tuesday in April. What I actually bought was something much bigger, and the game was woven through every minute of it.
You have a night like this too. Everyone does. And I'd bet the product at the center of yours, the game, the concert, the meal, is the part you remember least. That's the principle this issue is about: people don't remember products. They remember moments. Integrate your product into a moment, and it inherits everything that moment made them feel. Present your product as the subject, and it inherits almost nothing.
Lately, operators keep asking me for fewer diagnoses and more answers. This issue is one: the moment is the product. Build for it on purpose.
This Friday, I get to attend my first World Cup match, the US against Paraguay, with Carson, Julie, and her three boys. Ask me in sixteen years what the score was.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
The WineCountry Business Podcast
Episode 7: Kyle Altomare “I Will Put Bubbles in Anything”
Kyle Altomare had a plan: play baseball until 40, teach until 50, collect the pension, ride into the sunset. The plan collapsed by 23. Today, he's the winemaker at Gloria Ferrer, where some bottles wait nine years before anyone is allowed to drink them.
Andrew sits down with Kyle to talk about the patience that is required, why nervous winemakers make nervous wines, and his declared intention to put bubbles in anything. Then there's the Heritage Society, a club where the same guests keep flying back from Texas, Florida, and Idaho, four visits each, to leave with a wine money can't buy. What exactly are they doing in there? That's worth the 25 minutes.
As Kyle puts it, opening a bottle at home should feel connected to sitting on the terrace in Carneros. The wine, woven into the moment.
Listen on WineCountry Business, Apple Podcast, and Spotify.
What We’re Seeing & Hearing
The World Cup is a masterclass in integration
Run the math. A match is scheduled for 90 minutes, plus stoppage time, which the referee appears to calculate with a finger in the wind. There are stretches of the tournament with one game a day. Yet it's a month-long event that consumes the planet. The actual soccer is a tiny fraction of the World Cup. The rest is anthems, flags, face paint, office pools, strangers hugging, and grown adults crying over a group-stage draw.
FIFA didn't build a soccer broadcast. It built a global celebration with soccer as the organizing excuse. Half the people at any watch party couldn't explain offside, though that may just be those of us who insist on calling it soccer. They're not there for the product. The product is integrated into something bigger, and that's exactly why it's the most valuable sporting property on earth.
The best restaurant in the world once served a street hot dog.
When Will Guidara ran Eleven Madison Park, his team overheard tourists at a four-star tasting menu lamenting they'd never tried a New York hot dog. The kitchen bought one from a cart, plated it, and served it mid-meal. That table remembers nothing about the duck.
The story was so good that television retold it: in The Bear's "Forks" episode, the staff learns a table of guests never tried Chicago deep dish, sprints one in from across town, and blows them away. A real restaurant's moment became fiction, and the fiction is now what millions remember. The food was world-class in both rooms, and it was still the spine of the evening, not the subject. Good gets you considered. The moment gets you remembered.
Many wine tasting "experiences" are product demonstrations with chairs.
Clones, brix, barrel programs, soil composition, and a script that assumes the visitor came to study wine. Nobody drives, flies, or bikes to wine country to study wine (well, maybe a few); anyone who has ever pedaled the Silverado Trail knows they weren't doing it for the brix.
They came for an afternoon, with friends, people they love, in a place that doesn't look like their life. The wine should be woven into that afternoon, not the other way around. The operators who understand this are designing for the day someone is having. The rest are narrating their production process to a captive audience.
What We’re Learning
From where we sit, watching hundreds of hospitality businesses and millions of consumer decisions, attention has never been harder to earn. Organic reach keeps shrinking. AI is compressing how people discover places before they ever see a brand. The one channel still working at full strength is a guest telling a friend about a moment. Nobody retells a room rate, a tasting menu, or a pour. People retell how a stay, a dinner, or an afternoon made them feel, and your product travels inside that story for free.
So what does employing this look like? The operators getting it right share three habits, whatever they sell.
They design for the occasion, not the transaction: the anniversary, the reunion, the first trip without the kids. The room, the table, or the glass earns its place inside that occasion.
They listen for the one detail: the hot dog cost two dollars; what made it priceless was that someone was paying attention. A front desk, a server, a tasting host can all do this tomorrow, because most memorable moments are cheap and nearly all of them start with noticing.
They build reasons to return: Kyle's Heritage Society brings the same guest back four times and sends them home with wine they made themselves; the hotel equivalent is the stay that ends with a reason to come back already on the calendar.
None of this requires a renovation budget. It requires deciding which business you're in.
One Question Worth Asking
When a guest describes their visit to a friend at dinner tonight, what do they talk about? If it's your process, the product was the subject. If it's the afternoon, with your product running through every sentence of the story, the product was the spine. The second guest comes back.
A Thought to Leave With
Coffee is a more commoditized product than wine will ever be. Howard Schultz built an empire on it anyway, because he understood this:
“We are not in the coffee business serving people. We are in the people business serving coffee.”
- Howard Schultz
See you soon!
