1: A couple was celebrating their anniversary at one of the legendary restaurateur Danny Meyer’s restaurants in New York City.
“Midway through their meal, they remember they’ve left a bottle of champagne in the freezer,” Will Guidara writes in his terrific book Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect.
“They call the sommelier over to ask if it’s likely to explode before they get home (almost certainly yes),” Will writes. “The sommelier saves the day by taking their keys and rescuing the bottle, so the couple can relax and finish their celebratory meal. When they arrive home, they find the champagne safely tucked into their fridge, along with a tin of caviar, a box of chocolates, and an anniversary card from the restaurant.”
That story captures the essence of Danny Meyer‘s philosophy around what he calls “Enlightened Hospitality.”
“Danny had revolutionized fine dining in New York by putting a uniquely Midwestern spin on going out to dinner,” Will explains. “His restaurants offered both a friendlier, more informal dining experience, and a more excellent one—largely because of the people who worked for him.
“The cornerstone of the company’s culture was a philosophy Danny called Enlightened Hospitality, which upended traditional hierarchies by prioritizing the people who worked there over everything else, including the guests and the investors. . . Danny’s big idea was to hire great people, treat them well, and invest deeply into their personal and professional growth, and they would take great care of the customers—which is exactly what they did.”
When Will graduated from Cornell, “there was no question in my mind: Danny Meyer was the guy to work for,” he writes. He received a job offer for a management position at Tabla, one of Danny’s restaurants.
Danny met with all of the new hires on their very first day at work. “Those meetings were in themselves unusual,” Will writes. “My Cornell friends had gone on to work for large restaurant companies who didn’t do anything of the sort. . .
“To begin, Danny would ask everyone to introduce themselves with a line or two. We got to know one another a little bit, which made it easy when we needed to ask for a favor or some advice. . .
“But those introductions were also a meta-message,” he observes. “The fact that the head of the company was willing to use at least half of his meeting to take the time to hear from us individually made a big impression. It was our first indication that this central concept of enlightened hospitality—the idea that taking care of one another would take precedence over everything—was real.”
2: After the introductions, Danny would share with the group a series of phrases and explain the role each played in the dynamic workplace culture of his restaurants.
“Danny has always understood how language can build culture by making essential concepts easy to understand and to teach,” Will writes. “He is brilliant at coining phrases around common experiences, potential pitfalls, and favorable outcomes. These were repeated, over and over, in emails, in pre-meal meetings, and between staff members at USHG.”
Some of Danny’s most important phrases included: “Constant, gentle pressure,” which meant that “everyone in the organization should always be improving, getting a little better all the time,” Will notes.
“Athletic hospitality” translated into always looking for a win, whether we were playing offense (making an already great experience even better) or defense (apologizing for and fixing an error),” he explains.
“Be the swan” was a reminder that guests should always see “a gracefully curved neck and meticulous white feathers sailing across the pond’s surface,” he writes, “not the webbed feet, churning furiously below, driving the glide.”
Will’s favorite Danny expression was “Make the charitable assumption,” which taught the team always to assume the best of people, no matter how they were behaving.
“Instead of immediately expressing disappointment with an employee who has shown up late and launching into a lecture on how they’ve let down the team, ask first, ‘You’re late; is everything okay?'”
This approach was also how team members were to treat guests.
“When someone is being difficult, it’s human nature to decide they no longer deserve our best service,” Will observes.
“But another approach is to think, ‘Maybe the person is being dismissive because their spouse asked for a divorce or because a loved one is ill. Maybe this person needs more love and more hospitality than anyone else in the room.’
“Restaurants are fast-paced work environments,” he writes, “so it was enormously helpful to have an established shorthand,” he notes. “The shared language meant we could offer better hospitality to our guests—and to one another.”
3: Stories like the sommelier taking the couple’s keys and removing the bottle of champagne from their freezer circulated throughout the company.
“They primed every one of us to seek out new ways to make our guests’ experiences a little more seamless, relaxing, and delightful,” Will observes.
One night, a guest mentioned to Will that she would need to get up in the middle of dinner to feed a parking meter a few blocks away.
“It was natural for us to offer to do that for her,” he explains. “Eventually, that gesture became one of our steps of service.
“The host would ask guests, ‘How’d you get here tonight?’
“If they responded, ‘Oh, we drove,’ he’d follow up with, ‘Cool! Where’d you park?’
If they told him they were by a meter on the street, the host asked which car was theirs so a team member could drop a couple of quarters into the parking meter while the group was dining.
“This gesture was the definition of a grace note, a sweet but nonessential addition to the experience,” Will recalls. “It was an act of hospitality that didn’t even take place within the walls of the restaurant! But this simple gift—worth fifty cents—blew people’s minds.
“Systemizing it turned it from an act of heroism into a matter of course, like checking your coat or offering a dessert menu.
“And the more normal it became for us to give this little gift,” Will writes, “the more extraordinary it seemed to be for the people receiving it.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I using language intentionally to shape our culture, making it easier for everyone to understand, remember, and live out our values?
Action: Identify one phrase or shorthand that captures a core part of our culture and begin using it consistently—reinforcing it through stories, actions, and everyday conversations.
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