The secret sauce: Authenticity and storytelling in hospitality marketing

If you’re just starting out with your marketing, you’ll likely be hearing a lot about "authenticity and storytelling”. Authenticity helps you stand out in a saturated market as it humanises your brand, you’re no longer a machine, you’re a person; and people buy from people.

Going hand-in-hand with that is storytelling. Storytelling allows you to sell an experience rather than a service or a product. You want to spark people’s imaginations, sell them a journey, play on their emotions, make them feel.

And if there’s one industry where you want people to feel the marketing, it’s hospitality. Food isn’t just fuel (for most people, sorry Joel Dommett), it’s memory, culture, comfort. That means the way you talk about food has to hit a little deeper than “here’s what’s on the menu.”

An interesting example of this is Mitchell & Butcher’s restaurants. Harvester, well known in the UK as a staple, has been replaced in some locations with a new restaurant: Orlean’s Smokehouse. While Harvester remains a popular restaurant, it’s obvious with the new brand that Mitchell & Butcher wanted to lean more heavily into authenticity and storytelling, describing Orlean’s as, “authentic Southern experience paying homage to the spirit of New Orleans”. 

In today’s landscape, authenticity and storytelling are what takes a restaurant from just somewhere to grab something to eat to a whole community of shared experiences and genuine connection, a place where people don’t just remember the food, they remember how it made them feel.

The story of marketing in hospitality: A brief history of marketing in the UK food industry

Marketing in the UK food industry has gone through one of the most dramatic evolutions of any sector. What started as simple shop signs and word-of-mouth recommendations has turned into a multi-layered world of brand identity, authenticity, storytelling, influencers, and digital experience.

Here’s how it happened.

Early 1900s: When the product was the marketing

In the early 20th century, food marketing in the UK was basic and practical. No branding. No emotional storytelling. Just shop windows, handwritten signs, and the local reputation of your butcher, baker, or grocer.

Supermarkets didn’t exist yet, so loyalty was built through relationships, trust, and proximity. If Mrs. Thompson said the fishmonger down the road had the best cod, that was the marketing strategy.

Mid-1900s: The birth of supermarkets and “big brand” food

By the 1950s and 60s, supermarkets began reshaping the landscape. For the first time, food brands were competing on shelves rather than behind counters. Packaging became a tool for persuasion: brighter colours, logos, slogans, product claims.

This was when household names started forming: Birds Eye. Heinz. Cadbury. HP. Kellogg’s.

The kind of brands people still recognise today.

Marketing became about convenience, reliability, and family appeal. TV and radio ads introduced jingles and characters that stuck in the public mind. It wasn’t emotional yet, but it was catchy, and it worked.

Recognise any of these?

1970s–1980s: Processed foods, lifestyle advertising, and the rise of choice

As processed foods and ready meals entered everyday life, marketing became more aspirational. Ads began showing families around tables, smiling mums, simple recipes, and “modern living.”

Supermarkets also ramped up their own marketing efforts, loyalty schemes, price promotions, and own-brand products created a battlefield of value and convenience.

Fast-food giants entered the UK, bringing American-style advertising with them: bold, bright, high-energy campaigns that introduced a whole new kind of food culture.

1990s: Celebrity chefs and the foodie boom

The 90s sparked one of the biggest shifts in UK food marketing: the rise of the celebrity chef.

Jamie Oliver (RIP Turkey Dinosaurs), Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay, suddenly the storyteller wasn’t the brand, but the chef.

Food became entertainment. Brands co-created products with chefs. Cooking shows influenced trends. Restaurants, cafes, and supermarkets realised they needed personality and lifestyle appeal to stay relevant.

Food marketing was no longer about feeding people, it was about inspiring them.

2000s: The premiumisation wave

As the UK became more food-curious, brands began to differentiate with quality, sourcing, and ethics.

Think: “hand-cut,” “locally sourced,” “artisan,” “organic,” “fairtrade.”

Waitrose leaned into premium storytelling. Marks & Spencer created iconic slow-motion food ads. Costa and Pret positioned themselves as “better” coffee and lunch experiences, not just grab-and-go stops.

Marketing shifted from function to feeling.

2010s: Social media shakes everything up

Instagram and YouTube created a new currency: aesthetic food. Suddenly, dishes weren’t just eaten, they were photographed, shared, reviewed, and judged online.

Street food exploded. Pop-ups gained cult followings. Independent brands grew on personality instead of budgets.

Influencers, bloggers, and vloggers became powerful endorsement engines. Hospitality brands had to learn to speak directly to their customers, not just through ads.

This is also when authenticity became more important than perfect polish. People wanted “real” stories: kitchens, teams, farmers, craft.

2020s: Experience, honesty, and community-first marketing

Today, the UK food industry is shaped by transparency, values, and experience-driven storytelling.

Customers expect to know:

• Where ingredients come from

• Who prepares their food

• What a brand stands for

• Why it exists

• And what makes it worth choosing

Digital platforms have made restaurants and food brands publishers in their own right, sharing recipes, behind-the-scenes content, long-form stories, humour, and culture.

Marketing has become community-building. The brands that win are the ones that feel human.

And hospitality? It has embraced a blend of authenticity + storytelling to sell something deeper than a meal: an emotion, a connection, a moment.

Where it’s heading

The evolution isn’t slowing down. Food marketing in the UK is moving toward:

• Hyper-personalisation

• Ethical transparency

• Experience-led content

• Creator collaborations

• Local storytelling

• Brand communities

• Less polish, more personality

The future belongs to the brands that can say, “Here’s who we are,” and “Here’s what it feels like to be part of our world.”

Which, conveniently, is exactly the sweet spot where modern hospitality marketing thrives.

Authenticity: Selling yourself 

In the food industry, authenticity isn’t a buzzword, it’s the backbone of trust. Diners want to know who you are before they decide what to order. They aren’t just choosing a dish; they’re choosing the people, values, and intentions behind it.

Authenticity is about selling yourself:

• Your roots

• Your craft

• Your quirks

• Your passion for what goes onto the plate

• And most importantly, what makes you different 

It’s the candid moments in your kitchen, the story behind your signature dish, the personality in your captions, the way your team speaks, and the tiny details that make your place feel different from the restaurant down the road. Everything is easy to take photos of, to film and to share online, and most importantly, people want to see it.

When you show up honestly your audience believes you. And belief is powerful. It builds loyalty long before they even taste your food. Authenticity makes your brand feel familiar, relatable, and worth following.

But on its own, authenticity is one half of the experience.

Because once people know who you are, they want to know what it feels like to be part of your world.

And that’s where storytelling comes in. 

Storytelling: Selling an experience 

If authenticity sells who you are, storytelling sells what it’s like to step into your universe. It transforms your brand from a place to eat into a place to feel something.

Storytelling turns food into narrative:  a sensory journey shaped by culture, memory, emotion, and imagination. It’s not just describing a dish or a menu, it’s giving it meaning. It’s inviting customers to taste the tradition, the technique, the humor, the heritage, the tension, the triumph.

Where authenticity grounds your brand in truth, storytelling lifts it into experience.

It’s the aroma you can’t smell through a screen. The atmosphere you haven’t yet sat in. The flavours you haven’t tasted but already believe you’ll love. The community you haven’t joined but already feel connected to.

And as a brand you need to be selling more than the food, you need to be selling your grandma’s paella that was cooked in the same pan for 50 years or the gyoza your mum taught you how to make when you were six. 

Two halves of one unforgettable experience

Authenticity makes your brand believable. Storytelling makes your brand unforgettable.

Together, they create the full-bodied, emotionally resonant experience that today’s food audience is hungry for, both online and offline.

You need both to build a hospitality brand that doesn’t just show up in the feed… but sticks in people’s minds, earns their trust, and keeps them coming back long after the first visit.

If you'd like, I can also weave these directly into your existing article flow so it reads as one seamless narrative.

Why is marketing different in the food industry?

You might be thinking, isn’t this the same for every industry? Yes and no. 

Yes, because you should be using this tactics in your marketing regardless, but if you’re selling B2B fintech software your audience might care less about where it came from, and more about what it can do for them now. 

Whereas, the food industry is uniquely high-stakes. 1. People won’t gamble with something they have to put in their mouth. 2. They don’t want to waste money on eating out when it’s something they could just make at home. 

And that means:

1. Trust matters more than anywhere else.

Authenticity builds trust. Over-polished perfection breaks it.

2. It’s a sensory product.

You can’t smell or taste through a screen,  so marketing has to evoke feeling instead.

3. Visual fatigue happens fast.

There is no category more saturated than food content. To stand out, you need owners, not stock images. You need voice, not buzzwords, otherwise people will switch off. 

4. Food is personal.

It’s tied to identity, culture, and childhood memories, so your content needs to feel respectful, human, and rooted in real experience.

5. Personality beats perfection.

The brands that win aren’t always the most polished. They’re the ones that feel the most real.

Setting yourself up for success: Getting the branding right 

As a restaurant owner or manager, you might think you have a great idea of how your marketing should be, but how should it look? 

Typically the first impression a customer will have of your restaurant is how it looks, both in brick and mortar, and online. And while this can be wholly objective, what will make your brand shine is cohesion and creating a brand centered around the experience you want people to have. 

There’s a lot of very differently branded and very successful restaurants out there, for example. Take Emilia’s for example, all the menus and fonts are written as if they’re handwritten to invoke the feeling of being in an Italian trattoria. And the slogan is: “Fresh, soul warming pasta; just like nonna’s”. Whereas somewhere like sketch leans into a strong modern art vibe, telling their customers this is fine dining, immersive experience you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. 

Brand spotlight: What’s a brand that does this really well?

Ben & Jerry’s

Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t just tell stories, they tell stories with purpose. Their entire brand is built on activism, values, and social commentary, and they weave that identity into everything they do. Even on their homepage, the first thing you’ll see is a message for people seeking asylum (at the time that this was written). 

And every flavour of ice cream has its own personality,  backstory, or message. Their copywriting is playful but meaningful, and they’re not afraid to tackle serious issues right alongside ice cream puns. The brand uses its platform to humanise causes, highlight communities, and share real voices.

What makes it powerful is consistency: their social posts, packaging, press releases, and campaigns all speak the same language. You don’t even need to see the logo, you know it’s them.

And what’s even more striking is their unwavering commitment to that. It was announced recently that co-founder Jerry Greenfield would actually be leaving the company after over 50 years, as he felt Unilever is putting a halt to its social activism. For Ben & Jerry it isn’t just about ice cream, it’s about everything that they do, and a part of that story is their commitment to their beliefs. 

Bring authenticity and storytelling into your marketing

Let’s summarise. Authenticity and storytelling dominate the food industry because food itself is emotional. It’s memory, comfort, culture, and connection, all wrapped into something you can smell, see, and taste. The brands that win aren’t the loudest or the fanciest. They’re the ones that show who they are, what they care about, and why their story matters.

And here’s the good news, every hospitality business already has a story worth telling.

Most just need help uncovering it, shaping it, sharpening it, and sharing it in a way that feels true.

That’s where Blackcat Content comes in.

We help food and hospitality brands find their voice, build their narrative, and create content that people actually want to read, watch, share, and remember. No fluff. No stock phrases. No copy-paste marketing. Just honest, strategic storytelling that makes your brand feel real, and makes your audience feel something.