Ask someone to describe a café or restaurant they love and they will rarely lead with the specific songs that were playing. They will talk about how the place felt: warm, unhurried, like somewhere they could stay for a while. That feeling is the thing they carry with them after they leave, and it is the thing that brings them back. What most business owners do not fully consider is how much of that feeling is shaped by sound. The music playing in a space is not just setting the mood for the visit. It is contributing to the emotional memory of the experience, and emotional memory is one of the most powerful drivers of return visits and word-of-mouth recommendation in hospitality.
Research on how memory works in hospitality contexts is becoming increasingly clear on this point. A 2026 publication from the Gensler Research Institute found that guests rarely leave a space recalling specific design details. What stays with them instead is how the space made them feel, and whether that feeling was coherent across everything they encountered: the lighting, the scent, the texture of the furniture, and the sound. The report argues that multisensory coherence, where all the elements of a space tell the same story, is what transforms a visit into a memory. Music is one of the most active contributors to that coherence, precisely because it is continuous, ambient, and deeply tied to emotional response. A separate study published in the Journal of Marketing Analytics in 2026 found that playing jazz music during afternoon hours in a café over a 13-month period resulted in a statistically significant increase in both beverage sales and perceived ambiance, particularly on weekends. The music did not just improve the visit. It changed how the space was remembered and experienced over time.
What makes sound particularly powerful as a memory tool is that it operates through emotion rather than cognition. Neuroscience research consistently shows that music induces emotional arousal, which triggers the release of stress hormones associated with the emotional modulation of memory. In plain terms: the way a space sounds affects not just how guests feel in the moment, but how vividly and positively they recall the experience afterward. This is why a space with great food but wrong music can feel forgettable, while a space with more modest offerings but a perfectly considered sound environment feels like somewhere worth going back to. The music is not decorative. It is part of the encoding of the experience itself.
For hospitality and F&B businesses, this reframes what background music is actually for. It is not just about making the current visit pleasant. It is about giving guests something to carry with them: a feeling, an atmosphere, a sense of a place that they will want to return to and tell other people about. The spaces that are most remembered and most recommended tend to be the ones where every element, including the sound, was chosen with that lasting impression in mind.
Sources: Gensler Research Institute. (2026). Designing emotion through the senses in hospitality. Gensler. | Baldick, N., & Jang, S. (2025). Emotion and memory in boutique hotel experiences: The role of event design. International Journal of Hospitality Management. | Fonseca, C., et al. (2026). Background music effects in coffee retail: Evidence from survey, electroencephalography, and field data. Journal of Marketing Analytics.