1: “The first time my boss saw one of those spoons, she narrowed her eyes and asked me what they had cost,” Will Guidara writes in his amazing book Unreasonable Hospitality.
When Will told her the price, her eyes got even narrower: “We’ll talk about this later,” she said.
The year was 2004. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City was reopening after a two-year-long, $450-million renovation and expansion.
Legendary restaurateur Danny Meyer had been chosen to open a prominent fine-dining restaurant called the Modern on the ground floor of the museum, which would look out over the MoMA’s legendary Sculpture Garden.
Danny offered Will, then 25 years old, a job as general manager for the casual food service operations in the museum.
“These included two cafés, where museumgoers could grab a salad for lunch or a cup of coffee as a pick-me-up; a staff cafeteria; and an in-house catering team that could service meetings and small gatherings,” Will writes. “In other words, I would be responsible for everything except the fine-dining restaurant downstairs.”
Will had spent the prior year working at Restaurant Associates as an assistant purchaser and a controller. The experience gave him a solid foundation in the financial details of how a restaurant operates.
For Will, the opportunity to be GM of the casual food service at MOMA was “the perfect job.” Because the opportunity was “truly unique and right up my alley: The chance to find out if I could bring corporate-smart to the most restaurant-smart company in the world.”
He accepted the position and immediately got to work. One project he “became completely, utterly obsessed” about was creating a gelato cart for the Sculpture Garden.
“Since the cart would be sharing space with artwork by Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse,” Will writes, “not to mention rotating installations by contemporary artists like Richard Serra, everything about it would have to be perfect.”
He partnered with Jon Snyder, who owns il laboratorio del gelato, a company on the Lower East Side of Manhattan known for their “small batches of dense, world-class gelato from chef-quality ingredients,” Will shares.
Jon saw the value in being the official ice cream of MoMA’s Sculpture Garden. “I convinced him to pay for the cart and to give us a bargain-basement deal on his ordinarily very expensive gelato,” Will writes. “(At that volume, he’d still do very well.)”
One day, Jon presented to Will a tiny blue spoon made by an Italian company.
“How amazing could a plastic spoon possibly be? You’re going to have to trust me on this,” Will writes, “they were paddle-shaped, extraordinarily well designed, and completely unique. They were also preposterously, heartbreakingly expensive.”
Now what? “I had to have them,” he shares, “the Sculpture Garden deserved them. Nothing else would do.”
2: The blue spoons are an example of what Will calls the Rule of 95/5: “Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny,” he explains. “Spend the last 5 percent ‘foolishly.’
“It sounds irresponsible; in fact, it’s anything but.
“Because the last 5 percent,” Will notes, “has an outsize impact on the guest experience, it’s some of the smartest money you’ll ever spend.”
Will knew he had made a good decision one day as he observed Glenn Lowry, the head of the museum, buy gelato for a group of visiting curators.
“Every single one of them spent a second or two admiring the spoons,” he recalls. “I’d like to think some museumgoers went back to the cart for seconds, just because they loved that spoon.”
Years later, the Rule of 95/5 became an essential part of Will’s philosophy as the co-owner and operator of Eleven Madison Park, recognized as No. 1 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
“Wine pairings—a taste of wine to accompany each course in a tasting menu—are common in fine dining,” Will writes. “And, as with everything, there was a budget for what we could spend on those pairings.
“But instead of splitting that budget evenly across all the wines we served, which is how it’s often done, I’d ask our sommeliers to select slightly less expensive wines for the majority of the courses (these were no less excellent, because our wine director was so expert and our cellar was so diverse).
“Then, at the end, we could splurge on one special, rare, and most expensive glass.
If you love wine, it’s always exciting to drink Grand Cru Burgundy,” he shares. “But the chance to do so almost never happens during ordinary wine pairings—so imagine how excited our guests were when it did!
“The Rule of 95/5 gave us the ability to surprise and delight everyone that ordered those pairings,” Will notes, “making it an experience they would never forget.”
This approach also applies to how the company managed staffing expenses. “Wherever we could,” he writes, “we worked to minimize expensive turnover and the dreaded overtime.
“But then, a few times a year,” Will explains, “I would spend a truly obnoxious amount of money on an experience for the team, whether that meant closing the restaurant for a day so we could host a team-building retreat or hiring a DJ and buying a couple of cases of Dom Pérignon for the over-the-top staff parties we were famous for.
“The Rule of 95/5 ensured that I wasn’t blowing the budget,” he states. “I could afford these indulgences because I’d been so disciplined the rest of the year.”
3: One of Will’s favorite stories of the Rule of 95/5 in action involved a family of four from Spain who were dining at Eleven Madison Park on the last night of their vacation.
“The children at the table were incandescent with excitement, and for the most wonderful reason,” he writes. “Thick snow was falling past our massive windows, and they’d never seen real snow before.
“Spur of the moment, I sent someone out to buy four brand-new sleds. After their meal was over, we had a chauffeur-driven SUV whisk the whole family up to Central Park for a special nightcap: A few hours of play in the freshly fallen snow.
“That 5 percent, spent ‘foolishly’ (really, with tremendous intention),” Will notes, “allowed us to create those special memories for our guests.”
The big lesson?
“My experience at MoMA showed me that it was possible to be corporate-smart and restaurant-smart at the same time,” he shares. “The team was empowered, the guests were happy, and we were running a lean, mean, profitable business.”
So how did things turn out with Will’s boss, who was worried about the cost of the blue spoons?
“A month later, we sat down to review the first P&L for the cart,” Will writes, “and I never heard another word about those spoons. I’d managed 95 percent of my budget aggressively, leveraging MoMA’s brand to get excellent gelato at a steep discount, and the beautiful cart for free. I’d earned the right to splurge on those spoons, the one small detail I believed would dramatically transform the experience of getting an ice cream at the cart.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I managing the majority of my resources with discipline so I can intentionally splurge on the small details that make a lasting impact?
Action: Identify one area where a small, well-placed “5 percent” investment could delight our team or our customers and turn a good experience into a remarkable one.
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