Is that really the reason for these stories? I only know about them from memes, and looked it up when I first read about it. In my language this trend hasn't caught on yet, thankfully. I always chalked it up to cultural differences (and judged Americans a little bit for it tbh, since the idea of integrating a story into a recipe sounds rather insane).
No, it's more about ads and SEO and the fact that a lot of people like the touchy feely aspect of the stories and that causes them to engage with the site for longer, leaving their own comments and returning to the site and such.
