Every place has a Vianarra. Not every place knows how to tell it.
Guest experience audits and staff storytelling for wineries, boutique hotels, and restaurants.
A hospitality storytelling practice founded by Patrick R. Dunn for premium wineries, boutique hotels, and independent restaurants.
"What you captured so beautifully was something much larger: the care, intentionality, and genuine hospitality that our team strives to deliver every day."
Michele Smith, Director of Marketing, Edgewood Tahoe Resort
Who this is for
Wineries and tasting rooms
wine club conversion, tasting room culture, and staff who can carry the story through a Saturday rush.
Boutique hotels and inns
a front desk that tells the same story the brochure promises, return stays, and consistency across the season.
Independent restaurants
regulars, wine list storytelling, and a service team that holds the standard when the room is full.
Where this usually starts
Most wineries that reach out have the same number in front of them. Club conversion is down, the tasting room feels fine on a Saturday, and nobody can say exactly what changed.
It is rarely the tier structure. The story stopped reaching the guest at the bar, and no depletion report shows that.
Guest Experience Audit
A firsthand read of your guest journey, and whether your story is reaching the person at the bar.
I visit your property as a guest, with your permission, and walk the whole thing. The arrival, the tasting room culture, how the staff carry the story, the flow of the space, the wine list, and how it holds under a peak-hour rush.
You get a blunt findings report, the gaps ordered by what they are costing you, and a forty-five minute call to walk through it.
Staff Workshops
Training a team to carry the story in their own words, not a script.
I run customized workshops on your property for servers, bartenders, tasting room staff, and front desk teams. They learn to read a room before they speak to it, hold the welcome when a rush hits, and tell your property’s story naturally.
Recorded, so part-time and seasonal staff can take the training on their own time, and it does not walk out the door when someone leaves.
Brand Narrative Program
The story a property already has, written into the channels it already runs.
A twelve-month engagement that builds storytelling into the channels a property already runs. Wine club letters, newsletters, social, the copy on the tasting menu. It adds to existing marketing rather than replacing it.
For properties that have found the story and need it carried consistently, month after month, without hiring a writer.
From this week’s newsletter
Issue 11 · August 05, 2026 |
Collecting sunsets
Thirty months. That’s how long the average wine club member stays now.
In Maine, summer arrives like a rumor. You get mud season first, then black flies and no-see-ums so thick you can taste them, then a random morning of snow flurries in June just to remind you who’s in charge. Then summer, briefly, ferociously, and then September with its first frosts before anyone was ready. This was before climate change softened the edges. Back then Maine had two seasons, winter and the fourth of July
Vianarra Library
When crush arrives, the tasting room goes quiet
The second afternoon
You Can’t Read a Room You’re Running Through
How Vianarra works
Most engagements start with the audit. I visit as a guest, walk the whole journey, and give you a plain account of where your story is reaching people and where it isn’t. That grounds everything that follows in what your guests actually encounter rather than what anyone assumes.
Where the gap is in people, the workshops close it. A team that knows the wine but can’t reach the guest in front of them needs practice, not a script. Where the story is landing but isn’t being carried consistently, the brand narrative program builds it into the channels you already run.
The audit finds it. The workshop trains it. The narrative program keeps it going.
As seen in
Business Insider — Featured travel columnist. I should have followed Rick Steves’ packing advice
Edible Reno-Tahoe — Featured columnist on hospitality, wine, and regional food culture. Tea with an Edge
Next steps
The audit. Where most work starts. A firsthand read of your guest journey. See how it works
The newsletter. Free, weekly, stories from places worth remembering. Subscribe
A read of your floor. An unannounced visit at my expense, then thirty minutes on the single largest gap I found. No charge, no obligation. Book a call
patrick@vianarra.com · 650-418-0507