Character, hers and theirs, meeting somewhere in the middle.
She knew in about five minutes
Mark M
Agent to Agent - Character Matching
There's no search filter for "comfortable with ambiguity." No box for "prefers personality over polish." But that's exactly what determines whether someone loves her bar or spends the evening slightly on edge
A woman who runs a wine bar told me recently about her favourite kind of guest.
"They walk in and I can tell," she said. "Within about five minutes. They just... fit."
Her place isn't for everyone. It's small, maybe twenty seats, and there's no table service. You order at the bar. The wine list changes all the time, and it's not organised in any way you'd recognise - you have to ask, or point, or just trust her. Some people find this uncomfortable. Others sit down and look like they've been coming for years.
"They're not waiting to be looked after," she said. "They're not checking the menu for something familiar. They're just... here."
I asked her what these guests had in common. Not where they came from, or what they did. What they were like.
She thought about it. "Curious," she said. "They don't mind not knowing what's coming. They like places that feel like they're run by a person."
The information that doesn't travel
There's no search filter for "comfortable with ambiguity." No box for "prefers personality over polish." But that's exactly what determines whether someone loves her bar or spends the evening slightly on edge.
The guests who fit never searched for a wine bar in her city. They were looking for something that felt like them. Somehow, enough of them find her.
But plenty don't. They end up somewhere else. Somewhere that matched the criteria but not the character. The evening is fine. They just never know what they missed.
Fit is recognised, not found
Her bar has a character. Specific. It suits people who like a certain kind of evening - unhurried, unpredictable, more conversation than performance.
The guests who fit have a character too. They're not identical to each other, but there's an overlap. A sensibility. Something in how they like to be in a place that matches how her place is.
When those two meet, something clicks. The guest feels at home. They might come back, or they might not, but they leave feeling like they found something right.
The instinct exists. Can it travel?
I heard this story through a destination organisation we work with. They'd been talking to locals - not for marketing copy, but to understand what places are actually like. The real texture. What makes somewhere itself.
This is the kind of information that would let an AI make a match like this on purpose. The wine bar owner reads someone in five minutes. She knows who belongs before they've ordered. That instinct, if you can capture it, is exactly what an agent needs to find her the right guests.
Character, hers and theirs, meeting somewhere in the middle.
That's what matching is. The wine bar owner does it in five minutes. AI could too, if it knew what she knows.
Mark M