Every time I come off a 36-hour set of flights to Perth, Australia, I go to the same two places: Francoforte’s for some kangaroo ragú, and then down the road to Alfred’s, a tiny pizzeria and dive bar.

In Francoforte’s, where it’s strictly ‘no reservations’, they keep me a table. Whether I’m hungry enough for it or not, I get a scoop of the owner’s mama’s airy lemon tiramisu.

And the first time I edged down the steep staircase to Alfred’s and took a stool at the bar, the whole crew said ‘hello’. Not a polite, perfunctory, scripted hello. A proper loud welcoming one to go with the rock music. They asked what I felt like starting with. They made it feel like the opening scene of Cheers.

Now, many years and visits later, the greeting is still the same: smiles, hellos, the occasional hug. Not bad for a restaurant and bar more than 9,000 miles from home.

In both spots, the welcome doesn’t feel like a tactic. It feels like a culture they’ve invested in.

I feel like family.

But this sense of hospitality is not created by dedicated staff alone.

The staff can set the tone. They can shape the room, offer the welcome, notice the small things I might need or want. But the people around me, sitting at the tables and at the bar, are part of the recipe too. How you respond as a customer changes what happens next for everyone else in the room.

I’ve seen people at Alfred’s blank the bartender’s greeting. They still got good service. They absolutely did not have the same experience.

Danny Meyer, the restaurateur behind Union Square Cafe and Shake Shack, built his work around this distinction. In Setting the Table, he writes that service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how that delivery makes someone feel.

Service is getting the booking right, the food to the right person, the wine poured properly, the plate cleared gracefully.

Hospitality is different.

Hospitality is the thoughtful, caring, gracious work that makes someone feel: they are on my side**.**

That distinction matters far beyond restaurants.

In schools, we can become very good at service. We build systems. We answer enquiries. We run tours. We write prospectuses. We measure conversion rates. We improve the admissions journey. We polish the website. We make sure ‘excellence’ is visible in our exam results.

All useful.

But none of that guarantees hospitality.

Does every family, student, colleague and community member feel that we are on their side?

Not just served well. (Not just great exam results at the end of the day.)

Not just processed smoothly and answered quickly.

Do they feel like the school is on their side?

That feeling is where trust breeds. where belonging grows. That is where a school brand stops being a logo, a strapline or a set of polished messages, and starts becoming something people can feel**.**

Brand strategy is not really about how your school looks on the website.

It’s about shaping carefully how it feels, how it sounds.

It’s about how people experience it from the first moment they hear about you, to the moment they become part of your community, through to the moment they leave you.