Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer

- ## Introduction

   - True, a restaurant has all kinds of moving parts that make it particularly challenging. In order to succeed, you need to apply—simultaneously—exceptional skills in selecting real estate, negotiating, hiring, training, motivating, purchasing, budgeting, designing, manufacturing, cooking, tasting, pricing, selling, servicing, marketing, and hosting. And the purpose of all this is a product that provides pleasure and that people trust is safe to ingest into their bodies. Also, unlike almost any other manufacturer, you are actually present while the goods are being consumed and experienced, so that you can gauge your customers’ reactions in real time. That’s pretty complex, emotional stuff.

   - Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It’s that simple, and it’s that hard.

 - ## Chapter 1

   - When I meet people who look like locals, I ask them where they’d eat if they had only one or two days in town, as I do.

   - Whether the subject is Indian spices, new American cuisine, the neighborhood bistro, barbecue, luxe dining, a big-league jazz club, the traditional museum cafeteria, or hamburgers and milk shakes, my passion is always to explore the object of my interest in depth, and then to combine the best of what I’ve found with something unexpected to create a fresh context.

   - I then look at the result and ask myself and my colleagues what it would take to do this even better. Creating restaurants or even recipes is like composing music: there are only so many notes in the scale from which all melodies and harmonies are created. The trick is to put those notes together in a way not heard before.

   - Sometimes, we’ve moved in the other direction, beginning with the casual atmosphere of a barbecue joint or a shakes-and-burgers stand, and then attempting to exceed expectations by employing a caring staff and using the finest ingredients. Our formula is a lot tougher to achieve than it sounds, but it can be applied successfully to virtually any business you can name.

   - Hospitality is the foundation of my business philosophy. Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side. The converse is just as true. Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions—for and to—express it all.

   - At home, too, he and my mom were Eurocentric: They often hosted cocktail parties and dinner parties for friends and business colleagues from France, Italy, and Denmark, who either were in town on business or had made a detour to St. Louis just to see us.

   - by whether I would be able to“leave the campsite neater than I had found it.”(That concept remains, for me, one of the most significant measures of success in business, and in life.)

   - It’s hard not to fall in love with a society that is confident about and content with its traditions, so that it doesn’t need to eat a different kind of food every day at lunch and every evening at dinner. I came to love the ritual of dining each evening at the same time with the same people and eating the same foods. This runs counter to the compulsion in our culture to continually change channels.

   - Learning to manage volunteers—to whom, absent a paycheck, ideas and ideals were the only currency—taught me to view all employees essentially as volunteers. Today, even with compensation as a motivator, I know that anyone who works for my company chooses to do so because of what we stand for. I believe that anyone who is qualified for a job in our company is also qualified for many other jobs at the same pay scale. It’s up to us to provide solid reasons for our employees to want to work for us, over and beyond their compensation.

   - The joy I was experiencing each day by setting my own personal and professional agenda made it increasingly clear to me that I would never go to work for someone else. Even at Checkpoint, where I officially reported to sales directors, I worked for myself out of my own walk-up apartment on the East Side. I had built my own little business within a business, creating my own schedule, plotting my own tactics, and exceeding whatever goals were set for me.

 - ## Chapter 2

   - I was determined to go against the grain. I was no expert in New York real estate, but I understood on a gut level that if I handicapped the location correctly, and could successfully play a role in transforming the neighborhood, my restaurant, with its long-term lease locked in at a low rent, could offer excellence and value.

   - This combination would attract smart, adventurous, loyal customers, in turn giving other restaurants and businesses the confidence to move into the neighborhood until a critical mass had been reached and the neighborhood itself changed for the better. Moreover, were I to go belly-up after a few years in such a neighborhood, I was confident that I could find someone else who would be eager to pay my below-market rent on the remaining years of my lease. I sensed a lot of upside and felt protected against the downside.

   - I believe it became a wonderful restaurant because of its imperfections, which helped build the kind of team character necessary to overcome adversity. One of the core business lessons I have taken from the continued success of Union Square Cafe is that willingness to overcome difficult circumstances is a crucial character trait in my employees, partners, and restaurants.

 - ## Chapter 3

   - I was good at dealing with that, guided by my instinct to let the callers know I was on their side.“I’d love to put your name at the top of our wait list for eight o’clock,” I would say. Or,“There are literally no tables at eight. Is there any way I could do this for you at eight-forty-five?”—which I knew sounded a little earlier than“quarter of nine.” Or,“Can you give me a range that would work for you, so that I can root for a cancellation?” The point was to keep the dialogue open while sending the message: I am your agent, not the gatekeeper!

   - For those who had to wait too long, there was often a reward—a generous supply of dessert wines on the house. We had resuscitated an old refrigerator from Brownies in the back bar that we named the“Medicine Cabinet,” the medicine being our ample collection of dessert wines, which we dispensed liberally by the glass as an apology to guests. Except for the most hostile, the medicine generally worked. Back in 1985 one rarely saw dessert wines by the glass on a menu in New York—this was still much more of a European custom—but I began offering an extensive list of dessert wines by the glass. It was an important early lesson in applying defensive hospitality when things don’t go according to plan.

   - If there’s a better restaurateur in the world than Taillevent’s Jean-Claude Vrinat(whose father created the restaurant), I have yet to meet him or her. Self-deprecating to a fault, Monsieur Vrinat brushed off my gratitude for an evening of perfect service.“We have fun taking service seriously,” he said.“And as for perfection, we just hide our mistakes better than anyone else!” That was a refreshing insight for me as I continued to hone my own version of hospitality.

   - These experiences led to a determination that in my restaurant solo diners would be treated with extra courtesy and respect.

   - When I thought about how much time and care I put into choosing where to take myself to dinner, and how often I recommended those places that treated me well(and conversely, how strongly I warned everyone off the inhospitable ones), I knew that treating solo diners as royalty was both the right thing to do and smart business. Union Square Cafe began serving the full menu at the bar, mostly to single diners and couples, long before others in the city did this.

   - I have always felt that solo guests pay us the ultimate compliment by joining us for a meal. Their visit has no ulterior motive(it involves no business, romance, or socializing). These guests simply want to do something nice for themselves, chez nous. Why wouldn’t we reward that?

   - I don’t remember ever having particularly enjoyed a place just because I’d been afraid that it wouldn’t have me, so I was appalled to think that by charging people too much money and putting up barriers to entry, some restaurants had actually created an inflated demand to be part of their scene. However, these candles had short wicks.

   - There’s aesthetic value in doing things the right way. But I respond best when the person doing those things realizes that the purpose of all this beauty at the table is to create pleasure for me. To go through the motions in a perfunctory or self-absorbed manner, no matter how expertly rendered, diminishes the beauty. It’s about soul—and service without soul, no matter how elegant, is quickly forgotten by the guest.

   - Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel. Service is a monologue—we decide how we want to do things and set our own standards for service. Hospitality, on the other hand, is a dialogue. To be on a guest’s side requires listening to that person with every sense, and following up with a thoughtful, gracious, appropriate response. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top.

   - hospitality, which most distinguishes our restaurants—and ultimately any business—is the sum of all the thoughtful, caring, gracious things our staff does to make you feel we are on your side when you are dining with us.

   - I had already learned that the trick to delivering superior hospitality was to hire genuine, happy, optimistic people.

   - I don’t tell the staff precisely what to do or say in every scenario, though I do have some pet peeves that I don’t ever want to hear in our dining rooms. I cringe when a waiter asks,“How is everything?” That’s an empty question that will get an empty response.

   - And if a guest says“Thank you” for something, the waiter should not answer,“No problem.” Since when is it necessary to deny that delivering excellent service is a“problem”? A genuine“You’re welcome” is always the appropriate response.

 - ## Chapter 4

   - There is no stronger way to build relationships than taking a genuine interest in other human beings and allowing them to share their stories.

   - Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it’s theirs. They can’t wait to share it with friends, and what they’re really sharing, beyond the culinary experience, is the experience of feeling important and loved. That sense of affiliation builds trust and a sense of being accepted and appreciated, invariably leading to repeat business, a necessity for any company’s long-term survival.

   - When you are considering several restaurants for dinner, other things being equal, you’ll choose the one whose maître d’ went to the same school as you, or roots for your sports team, or has the same birthday as you, or knows your second cousin. You’ll also tend to choose a restaurant whose chef came out to greet you on your last visit, or who saved you the last soft-shell crab special, knowing it was a favorite of yours. The information is always there if it matters enough to look for it.

   - I’m certain that this couple felt a sense of ownership in the restaurant after our encounter. As far as they were concerned, they were in part responsible for our putting the new sauce on the table.

   - I try to be in the restaurants as often as possible. For nearly twenty years, until the opening of The Modern on West Fifty-third Street, all my restaurants were within a ten-minute walk of one another and my apartment—and I made it my business to visit every one of them during lunch. I’m not there just to greet and shake hands. I’m building daily communities within the restaurant’s larger community.

   - The best way to do this is to first gather as much information as I can about our guests. I call this collecting dots. In fact, I urge our managers to ABCD—always be collecting dots.

   - Whenever I see that the direction of someone’s eyes is not bisecting the center of the table, then a visit may be warranted. I am not certain that something is wrong, but I am certain that there is an opportunity to make a connection without feeling like an intruder. It could be that a guest has been waiting too long for his or her food and is looking for a waiter. It could be that someone is simply curious about the architecture, a work of art on the wall, or, for that matter, an attractive guest across the dining room. Or a guest could be momentarily bored, or just taking a pause, or having a fight with a companion.

   - But within two or three years I began to notice that the wording I chose for our first comment card—“ We want you to return to Union Square Cafe and eagerly seek your comments or suggestions”—was being adopted almost word for word in all kinds of restaurants. Today, we have collected well over 150,000 names on our mailing lists. The lists have proved to be an extremely effective way to build a community and stay connected with our guests and friends all over the country—and even worldwide. Today, of course, the entire marketing profession is out to collect e-mail addresses to stay in touch with existing and prospective customers. We do that too, but in my judgment nothing can or will replace the meaningful contact that happens with a personal note or newsletter sent the old-fashioned way.

   - If we can get to the third round with a guest, we’ve got a good shot at moving him or her into the important group of patrons who become cherished regulars.

   - Even so, our batting average is pretty good. I’d guess we succeed at earning repeat business over 70 percent of the time. It’s significant that the older our businesses become, the more popular they become—and not just according to the Zagat Survey. With few exceptions, our restaurants have also enjoyed increased revenues each successive year they’ve been open. I know that popularity is not in and of itself a measure of excellence but it is one reliable measure of how many people you’re pleasing, and how well you’re pleasing them.

   - At its best, a restaurant should not let guests leave without feeling as though they’ve been satisfyingly hugged. If you can do that, regardless of what product you are offering, you’ve built a solid foundation for your business.

   - Automobile companies and watchmakers have long understood that people buy their products not just because of how the product itself performs, but to tell a story about themselves.

   - Knowing who is dining where—and when—helps me determine how to plan and plot out my day. It also gives me the opportunity to get involved with seating and greeting plans. We look for opportunities to create chance encounters by strategically seating people with similar business interests near one another. We also try to create privacy for those who want it. I happen to love maps. I view our reservationists as cartographers, the reservation sheets as a map, and the dining experience as a brief vacation for our guests. As with any trip, there are lots of routes one can take; and it’s our job to draw a map with the greatest possible detail.

   - The more specific information we can gather ahead of someone’s dining experience, the greater the chance that we can create a“rave” experience.

   - Our telephone reservationists, who are our first line of offense in delivering hospitality, listen carefully and then input whatever data they receive from a caller into our Open Table reservation and“guest notes” database.(In the old days, we’d also gather information, but it was simply written in pencil on the reservation sheet for the day. That system made it unlikely that we’d ever be able to retrieve the information again.)

   - I realize that I don’t have to do this kind of thing, but there is simply no point for me—or anyone on my staff—to work hard every day for the purpose of offering guests an average experience. I want to hear:“We love your restaurant, we adore the food, but your people are what we treasure most about being here.” That’s the reaction that makes me most proud and tells me we’re succeeding on all levels. I encourage each manager to take ten minutes a day to make three gestures that exceed expectations and take a special interest in our guests. That translates into 1,000 such gestures every year, multiplied by over 100 outstanding managers throughout our restaurants. For any business owner, that can add up to a lot of repeat business.

   - I’ll purposely make certain that these people are seated near, but not next to, one another. Or I may simply introduce them, hoping that something positive, beyond a good meal, may come out of the“chance encounter.” A publisher who sees another publisher dining at Union Square Cafe will logically assume:“This is where publishers come for lunch.” A food journalist who sees a well-known chef dining two tables away may conclude:“This place must be good if he eats here.” I call this form of dot-connecting“benevolent manipulation.” Everyone wins, including us.

 - ## Chapter 5

   - I take something that is already accessible(such as frozen custard) and try to make it better; or I take what’s excellent(a selection of artisanal cheeses or a wine list) and try to present it in a more user-friendly context. I’m never out to invent a new cuisine. Instead, I’m interested in creating a fresh“hybrid” dining experience; and then, like a museum curator, I strive to put a complementary frame around it, find the right wall to hang it on, and aim just the proper lighting on it.

   - I feel the entrepreneurial spark when some instinct tells me that a certain dining“context” doesn’t currently exist but should exist. I then ask myself a series of questions that force me to examine and challenge the status quo—and then change it. Each question begins with these five words:“Who ever wrote the rule…?” Who ever wrote the rule, for example, that you shouldn’t be able to enjoy a refined dining experience, with the finest ingredients, served on Limoges china, in a rustic tavern? Or that you can’t serve slow-smoked pulled pork with a glass of champagne or Chianti Classico, just off Park Avenue? Or that you can’t create a classic burger-and-shakes drive-in in New York City, where no one drives? Or that live jazz sounds good only in a late-night club and only if everyone around you is smoking?

   - I have never relied on or been interested in market analysis to create a new business model. I am my own test market. I am far more intuitive than analytical. If I sense an opportunity to reframe something I’m passionately interested in, I give it my absolute best shot.

   - So Tom and I began by asking,“Who ever wrote the rule that the only way to enjoy luxurious fine dining is in the environment of a stuffy restaurant with tuxedo-clad waiters and a stiff, hushed atmosphere?” And,“Who ever wrote the rule that a rustic tavern couldn’t be a setting for truly outstanding modern food?”

   - Some people expect a stuffy ambience at Gramercy Tavern, but when they walk in they find an animated community hall—with excellent food and drink. This setting immediately puts guests at ease and makes it somewhat easier for the restaurant to exceed expectations.

   - I managed by example, and I had yet to learn how critically important it is to lead by teaching, setting priorities, and holding people accountable.

   - “It takes a while for a restaurant to hit its stride,” she wrote,“there is no timetable for this; each proceeds at its own pace. It can take a year or two or more before everything comes together in one smooth motion. But when it finally happens, everyone knows it: one step through the door and you can feel the energy running through the room.”

 - ## Chapter 6

   - We immediately started talking seriously with the agent for the project at 11 Madison. The primary notion of restoring the park was to bring beauty and life to the neighborhood and provide the community with a reason to use the park. That idea reflects one of my core business philosophies: invest in your community, and the rising tide will lift all boats.

   - Invest in your community. A business that understands how powerful it is to create wealth for the community stands a much higher chance of creating wealth for its own investors. I have yet to see a house lose any of its value when a garden is planted in its front yard. And each time one householder plants a garden, chances are the neighbors will follow suit.

   - “Before we discuss any details of a lease,” I said at this meeting,“it’s important for me to know that you will first commit to partnering with me in rebuilding and restoring Madison Square Park—to where it was in its heyday.” He may not have fully realized what he was getting his company into, but the MetLife executive, Dom Prezzano, replied,“I don’t think you have any idea how many people have tried to do this and for how long; but if you have the energy to lead, we’ll lend our financial support.”

   - Know Thyself: Before you go to market, know what you are selling and to whom. It’s a very rare business that can(or should) be all things to all people. Be the best you can be within a reasonably tight product focus. That will help you to improve yourself and help your customers to know how and when to buy your product.

   - It had always been a priority of mine to develop leaders from within, both for the sake of team morale and as an assurance that we’d begin our new restaurants with as much of our preexisting DNA as possible. Letting our business grow on the shoulders of those who’ve gotten us there provides safety and is its own rationale for growing in the first place.

   - Perhaps because it was“just a joint,” Blue Smoke was in some ways the most challenging restaurant to design. Many beloved barbecue joints around the country are on the wrong side of the tracks. And part of what people love about going to them is having to travel to a rural outpost or a down-and-out part of town to hunt down the ethereal smoked pork. The barbecue seems to taste better both because of what you have to do and because of where you have to go to get it. That’s also why hot dogs taste better at the ballpark and Vernaccia di San Gimignano tastes better in Tuscany. Context is everything.

   - We wanted our hospitality to be at the highest possible level. Without reservation lists, our staff never knew any of the guests’ names, so the emphasis was on recognizing repeat customers by face and remembering their usual orders. And with nine toppings, everyone seemed to have a personal preference. We believed that a customer’s desire to be recognized could just as easily be satisfied by a summer intern at our hot dog cart as by the host in the dining room of a three-star restaurant. We encouraged our young, energetic staff to create“plus ones” or“legends of hospitality”—offering those in line free samples and cookies; and spotting, say, a regular man on a park bench, making him his usual order, and bringing it to him just as he started to head for the line. Though they were spending $ 2.50 for a hot dog, the satisfaction and loyalty of these guests was no less important to us than that of our regulars at Gramercy Tavern or Tabla.

   - Our application of enlightened hospitality had proved a phenomenal success. Our staff loved the work; our patrons were captivated; the park was bustling; Vienna Beef was thrilled with the unexpected business in New York; and by the season’s end we presented a check for $ 7,500 to the newly formed Madison Square Park Conservancy.

   - As we imagined our new kiosk, we thought about a lot more than food. We understood that people don’t go out just to eat; they also select restaurants in order to be part of a community experience. Starbucks took the notion of drinking good coffee(and standing in line to buy it) and figured out how to make the experience of drinking coffee with a community of other like-minded people become the real star of the show. The company also learned to superimpose its blueprint onto thousands of locations north, south, east, and west, while also conveying the sense that each Starbucks belonged to its particular community.

   - A business that doesn’t understand its raison d’être as fostering community will inevitably underperform.

   - I understood that it’s not enough to just restore a park: you must sustain its beauty and safety by providing good citizens with lots of reason to visit it. Otherwise, you’ve merely given the park a temporary face-lift. Union Square Park always relied on the greenmarket as its most powerful magnet in attracting people. Other attractions were the park’s playgrounds; its dog run; and Luna Park, its summertime restaurant.

   - Shake Shack became not just a huge success but also a wonderful business model. Because a percentage of every sale becomes rent, paid both to the conservancy and to the city, every hot dog, burger, frozen custard, or beverage purchased and enjoyed by a guest contributes something to the park’s ongoing vitality. Shake Shack is a useful example of a for-profit entity whose success contributes monetarily and programmatically to the community. It shows that you can do well by doing good. Perhaps most important, it serves as a human-magnet, attracting all kinds of people of all ages and from all walks of life to the park. That makes them stakeholders in the park, and it increases the odds that the park will remain beautiful, safe, and enjoyed.

   - But I would love it if we were fortunate enough to stay in this business long enough, and continued to execute consistently well, so that today’s young people might one day be in a burger joint somewhere with their kids and say,“The best hamburger I ever had when I was growing up was at Shake Shack.”

 - ## Chapter 7

   - The only way a company can grow, stay true to its soul, and remain consistently successful is to attract, hire, and keep great people.

   - We searched high and low for the rare employees who love teaching, know how to set priorities, work with a sense of urgency, and—most important—are comfortable with holding people accountable to high standards while letting them hold onto their own dignity. Time after time, I had noticed that great leaders tend to have a heightened sense of how to attract and hire other extraordinary people.

   - People duck as a natural reflex when something is hurled at them. Similarly, the excellence reflex is a natural reaction to fix something that isn’t right, or to improve something that could be better. The excellence reflex is rooted in instinct and upbringing, and then constantly honed through awareness, caring, and practice. The overarching concern to do the right thing well is something we can’t train for. Either it’s there or it isn’t. So we need to train how to hire for it.

   - Optimistic warmth(genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always at least half full) Intelligence(not just“smarts” but rather an insatiable curiosity to learn for the sake of learning) Work ethic(a natural tendency to do something as well as it can possibly be done) Empathy(an awareness of, care for, and connection to how others feel and how your actions make others feel) Self-awareness and integrity(an understanding of what makes you tick and a natural inclination to be accountable for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgment)

   - From a selfish standpoint alone, if that’s your choice, it pays to surround yourself with compelling human beings from whom you can learn, and with whom you can be challenged to grow.

   - When we look for intelligence, we’re thinking about open-minded people with a keen curiosity to learn. Do they ask me questions during interviews? Do they display a broad knowledge about a lot of subjects, or a deep knowledge about any one subject? A hallmark of our business model is to continually be improving.

   - I appreciate it when waiters want to learn more about cooking. I love it when cooks want to learn about wine. I adore it when hosts and reservationists want to learn more about the person behind the name they are greeting on the phone or at the front door.

   - It’s not hard to teach anyone the proper way to set a beautiful table. What is impossible to teach is how to care deeply about setting the table beautifully.

   - We want waiters, for example, who can approach a new table of guests and intuitively sense their needs and agenda. Have they come, for example, to celebrate or to conduct business? Are they here to experience the cuisine, or simply to connect with a colleague over a light meal? Do they want extra attention from the restaurant, or would they prefer to be left alone?

   - Our training is designed not as a hazing, but as a healthy way to foster a stronger team. Staff members, by being directly involved in the decision making, have a good deal of influence over who is hired and thus a stake in the ongoing success of the outcome. Trailers don’t advance to their second trail unless the first trainer recommends this to the manager; they don’t move on to their third unless the second trainer endorses it; and so on. After five or six trails we end up with a well-trained candidate who has also been endorsed by as many as half a dozen team members. And the candidate doesn’t move along unless he or she agrees that the fit seems good. By creating a built-in support system for new hires, we greatly enrich the subsequent team-building experience.

   - They infuse an organization and its staff with mediocrity; they’re comfortable, and so they never leave; and, frustratingly, they never do anything that rises to the level of getting them promoted or sinks to the level of getting them fired. And because you either can’t or don’t fire them, you and they conspire to send a dangerous message to your staff and guests that“average” is acceptable.

   - knew I would be spending many, many hours working in the restaurant business, so I’d need to surround myself with employees who were fun, smart, and interested in learning, not to mention dedicated to excellence and eager to play on a winning team. I grew foolishly confident that I could recognize a good hire in a roomful of applicants even without an interview.(Back when I was dating, that may have been an OK strategy at a bar, but it was sorely defective as a way to make meaningful hires.)

   - There’s a facade of refinement—guests are leaning forward while speaking in hushed tones; tuxedoed servers are calling a woman madame and a man monsieur when everyone knows they’re both American. Everything is delivered perfectly, cleared perfectly, decanted perfectly, and yet it’s not fun. It’s not sincere. There’s no soul. It’s a perfectly executed but imperfect experience.

   - “I’m aware that you’re all here, on the most basic level, to pay the rent,” I tell new hires.“Just as you need a job, I need people to take orders accurately, and to cook wonderful food.”

   - “You could all be doing what you do anywhere else,” I say.“But you chose to be with us. You have volunteered to be on our team, and we owe it to you to provide you with much more than just a paycheck in return. We want you to feel certain you have made a wise choice in joining our company.” It’s a chance to work at a company where respect and trust are mutual between management and workers, where you can enjoy working alongside and learning from excellent colleagues, and where you can know that your contributions can make every day truly matter.

 - ## Chapter 8

   - But savvy diners know that it takes a fair amount of time for a staff, no matter how talented, to learn to work together smoothly. A restaurant can take months to understand which of its dishes work and which don’t; the fine-tuning of the menu can easily take up to a year. In fact, it generally takes two to three years for our new restaurants to even approach their ultimate potential for excellence. And this is because it takes that long for a restaurant’s soul to emerge. I tend to hold my nose for the first three months, and I don’t begin to have any real fun for six months. It’s usually a full year after one of my restaurants has been open before I begin to feel truly proud.

   - Most of our early guests had never before experienced Indian spices paired with local, seasonal ingredients, hip cocktails, sexy music, and modern art; and the curiosity generated by Ruth Reichl’s three-star review in the New York Times kept Tabla packed for the entire first year. But then in the second year business tailed off a little, and our performance in the third year was flat(it was especially hurt by the 9/ 11 attacks). This was the first time one of our restaurants had failed to post consistent, steady, year-over-year growth.

   - As a consequence, rather than exceeding the guests’ expectations for a brasserie, we were falling short of their expectations for a grand restaurant. The food was indeed better than that of a typical brasserie, but not as refined as one might expect from the restaurant’s majestic, urbane décor. This seemed to be a two-pronged challenge. We had to find a way to muss up our hair a little—to make the restaurant a lot more fun—and to meaningfully improve the quality of the dining experience at the same time.

   - I am also well aware that people are pummeled with more information each day than our ancestors received in an entire lifetime. Therefore, our messages have to be useful and have to be sticky if we are to stand any chance of earning a piece of your mind share. And they must be presented in a context that supports our larger business point of view, or they will be confusing at best and damaging at worst.

   - “People will say a lot of great things about your business, and a lot of nasty things as well. Just remember: you’re never as good as the best things they’ll say, and never as bad as the negative ones. Just keep centered, know what you stand for, strive for new goals, and always be decent.”

 - ## Chapter 9

   - THREE HALLMARKS OF EFFECTIVE leadership are to provide a clear vision for your business so that your employees know where you’re taking them; to hold people accountable for consistent standards of excellence; and to communicate a well-defined set of cultural priorities and nonnegotiable values. Perhaps most important, true leaders hold themselves accountable for conducting business in the same manner in which they’ve asked their team to perform.

   - Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, stick to it, and believe in it. Everyone who works with you will know what matters to you and will respect and appreciate your unwavering values. Your inner beliefs about business will guide you through the tough times. It’s good to be open to fresh approaches to solving problems. But, when you cede your core values to someone else, it’s time to quit.

   - Our job is to adjust to circumstances, and keep the dance flowing with technical precision and artful grace.

   - It helped me understand that we needed all three words—constant, gentle, pressure—working at once to push our business forward. This is one aspect of business where batting.667 isn’t a winning average. Leave any one element out, and management is far less effective. If you are constantly gentle but fail to apply pressure when needed, your business won’t grow or improve: your team will lack the drive and passion for excellence. If you exert gentle pressure but not constantly, both your staff and your guests will get a mixed message depending on what day it is, and probably won’t believe that excellence truly matters to you. If you exert constant pressure that isn’t gentle, employees may burn out, quit, or lose their graciousness—and you will probably cease to attract good employees. Leaders must identify which of the three elements(constant, gentle, or pressure) plays to their greatest natural strengths and, when necessary, they must compensate for their natural weaknesses.

   - Coaching is correction with dignity. It’s helping people refine skills, showing how to get the job done, and truly wanting employees to reach their peak potential.

   - That’s called setting the table. Understanding who needs to know what, when people need to know it, and why, and then presenting that information in an entirely comprehensible way is a sine qua non of great leadership.

   - When team members complain about poor communication, they’re essentially saying,“You did not give me advance warning or input about that decision you made. By the time I learned about it, the decision had already happened to me, and I was unprepared.”

   - Poor communication is generally not a matter of miscommunication. More often, it involves taking away people’s feeling of control. Change works only when people believe it is happening for them, not to them.

   - Ideas at their best happen for people. At their worst they happen to people. Had the staff members known in advance about the Today Show, they probably would have brought in an extra cook and additional product, and we would have had a lot more fun serving a lot more bratwursts.

   - good managers can have a multiplier effect and add significantly to the company’s excellence. Poor managers have the power to do just the opposite.

   - The moment people become managers for the first time, it will be as if the following three things have happened: An imaginary megaphone has been stitched to their lips, so that everything they say can now be heard by twenty times more people than before. The other staff members have been provided with a pair of binoculars, which they keep trained on the new managers at all times, guaranteeing that everything a manager does will be watched and seen by more people than ever. The new managers have received the gift of“fire,” a kind of power that must be used responsibly, appropriately, and consistently.

   - “Fire” is the most important element in management’s application of constant, gentle pressure.

   - The biggest mistake managers can make is neglecting to set high standards and hold others accountable. This denies employees the chance to learn and excel. Employees do not want to be told,“Let me make your life easier by enabling you not to learn and not to achieve anything new.”

   - My job is to serve and support the next layer“above” me so that the people on that layer can then serve and support the next layer“above” them, and so on. Ultimately, our cooks, servers, reservationists, coat checkers, and dishwashers are then in the best possible position to serve our guests. A balanced combination of uncompromising standards and confidence-building reassurance sends a very clear and consistent message to your team:

   - “I believe in you and I want you to win as much as I want to win.”

   - If a manager builds too many campfires(suspending his or her power and authority and spending too much time relating to certain employees as close friends), power may be compromised, causing the line between manager and employee to dissolve. And others may resent feeling left out. Even the most compassionate manager must sometimes use fire to singe or scorch someone who is dishonest, or disrespectful to a teammate, a guest, the community, a supplier, or the restaurant itself. An organization puts itself in grave danger when it permits integrity to be compromised.

   - I’ve grown more and more convinced that my team—any team—thirsts for someone with authority, and power, to tell them consistently where they’re going, how they’re doing, and how they could do their job even better. And all the team asks is that the same rules apply to everyone.

   - Wherever I saw the word corporate applied to restaurants, I saw cookie-cutter or at least derivative establishments with little soul.

   - Like any business owner, entrepreneur, or corporate executive, I had to figure out how to put winning systems in place, clarify for others all the things that I do and all the things that I expected everybody else to do, while repeatedly asking myself one essential question: How many of these things could be done at least as well or better by somebody else if only I were willing to let go and allow that to happen? I was suddenly faced with a mandate to grow personally.

   - My mentor(and our longtime consultant) Erika Andersen gave me a gift when she taught me that for most people it’s far more important to feel heard than to be agreed with.

   - A charitable assumption might be,“You must have had a tough time getting here. We’re delighted that you made it!” I am going to get the most out of my relationship with every guest, including repeat business, when I base the relationship on optimism and trust. Hospitality is hopeful; it’s confident, thoughtful, optimistic, generous, and openhearted.

   - By giving more, we’d end up getting more. If you want to be busy, especially in times of scarcity and uncertainty, you cannot accept diminished standards of excellence in even one area. You do everything you possibly can afford to show your staff and guests that you care deeply about improving. That’s acting from a positive and hopeful place, rather than from fear that can ultimately be self-fulfilling. The mind-set“We’re just hanging on” perpetuates scarcity. Investing money, imagination, and hard work to create a mind-set of abundance achieves abundance.

   - Some restaurants, unfortunately, offer inexpensive fare and propose very limited menu options as a way to manage costs and do a bit better than break even on a three-course meal. We take the opposite approach. I am convinced that if you’re going to offer a gift, it’s important to give it graciously.

   - In several of our restaurants, we go a step further. As the already-low check is dropped, each guest at the table is presented with a thank-you note as well as a gift certificate to welcome him or her back for lunch at another time.(In 2005, for example, we presented each guest with a“come back” lunch certificate for $ 20.05.) At this point, guests are thinking,“They’ve already offered an outstanding lunch for $ 20.05, and now they’re giving me a $ 20.05 gift certificate to return!” And return they do.

   - Countless times, this has proved that the more we give the more we get back. Generosity is clearly in our self-interest. We get two things out of the deal. We gain a means of reaching new guests and remaining in touch with them, because the only way guests can redeem their certificate is first to provide us with their name and contact information. And when they return, we’ve gained a crucial second opportunity to create regulars. In fact, a returning guest may bring, say, three new guests with him or her, having told them how generous we were during Restaurant Week. So, for example, four gift certificates worth $ 80 can have a multiplier effect and produce as many as twelve additional new guests at full price. Roughly 80 percent of the certificates are redeemed at lunch in the season following Restaurant Week, and lunch business in each of our restaurants has consistently grown each year.

   - As I always point out to managers and staff members, the single most powerful key to long-term success is cultivating repeat business, and ultimately regular guests.

   - I don’t believe you even enter the competition for regulars until you get people to try your product for at least a third time. Restaurant Week provides us with a perfect opportunity to do that.

   - No amount of generosity has so far succeeded in putting us out of business!

   - There’s a steep price to pay for an organization when a staff member feels confused or intimidated.

   - As I once read in Kenneth Blanchard’s One Minute Manager, it’s the managers’ job to“catch people in the act of doing things right.” I subscribe to that and take it one step further. When managers catch somebody on their staff doing something right in a consistent or remarkable way, I encourage those managers to let me know about it first so that I can learn, and also so that I can connect with employees and tell them that their boss told me what a great job they’ve been doing, with specifics.

   - Show me a defensive boss and I’ll show you a team desperate for new leadership. Great bosses own up to their mistakes, insist on learning from them, thank others for pointing them out, and move on.

   - A great leader must repeatedly ask himself or herself this tough question:“Why would anyone want to be led by me?” And there had better be a good number of compelling reasons.

   - But the higher you climb the ladder of power, the less technical skills count and the more significant emotional skills become. Employees are expert boss-watchers who instinctively focus their“binoculars” on the bosses with the most power.

 - ## Chapter 10

   - If someone spills his or her glass at the bar, we pour another round, period. A child once spilled a glass of Sprite at his table, so we bought all six members of his family a round of what they were drinking. If a guest doesn’t like his or her dish, it is to be removed from the bill.

   - Unbeknownst to the woman, we sent a staff member uptown to meet the driver and retrieve the wallet and cell phone, both of which were in her hands before the check for lunch was on the table. She was amazed and obviously delighted. We had turned a nightmare into a legend of hospitality. Our round-trip taxi ride had cost $ 31. I’d be surprised if the woman hasn’t already given Tabla 100 times that value in positive word-of-mouth.

   - “All right, you’re on,” the man said. He called to alert his doorman, and our maître d’ took a cab to their address where he transferred the champagne from the freezer to the refrigerator. And next to the bottle, he set some dessert chocolates from the restaurant and a small tin of caviar along with a note that read,“Happy Anniversary from Eleven Madison Park.” These folks became dedicated regulars.

   - On entering the sauna(aka Eleven Madison Park), each guest received not just a deep apology about our air-conditioning failure, but a gift of one of the fans. The mood in the dining room was actually festive, not hostile. New Yorkers often take adversity and crises in stride, and the guests that day seemed to be enjoying the novelty of the tiny fans on each table.

   - When I heard about this, I immediately met with Floyd. My message was stern and clear: Policies are nothing more than guidelines to be broken for the benefit of our guests. We’re here to give the guests what they want, period.

   - The woman interrupted Audrey with one of the greatest hospitality responses I’ve ever heard.“Say no more! You didn’t even have to bring the box in. You could have just called. Now let me get two replacement blades for you right away.” Audrey was so impressed that she ended up buying five more things in housewares—and Bloomingdale’s ended up in a much better place with her than if those blades had come with the mixer in the first place. The story gets even better. When the sales clerk saw Audrey eyeing a set of barbecue tongs and spatula for the pit, she said,“That’s on sale today. Do you have one of our coupons?” Audrey said no.“Too bad,” the saleswoman said.“It’s thirty percent off today. Hold on—I’m going to go find you a coupon in the back office.” On her way there, she stopped to pull the two mixer blades from the demo model on the floor, and then returned with the coupons. Say no more! There’s always a solution if you’re open to finding one.

 - ## Chapter 11

   - Being jazzed is a combination of feeling motivated, enthusiastic, confident, proud, and at peace with the choice to work on our team.

   - I consider the initial dialogue so crucial to our business that for years the path to becoming a manager at Union Square Cafe began with being a reservationist.

   - In the course of their calls, our reservationists must continuously listen to themselves and ask: am I being perceived by this caller as an agent or a gatekeeper? An agent makes things happen for others. A gatekeeper sets up barriers to keep people out. We’re looking for agents.

   - For any guest, the greeting should provide an immediate affirmative answer to the question:“Are they happy to see me or not?” Guests know when a host is insincere, harried, or just going through the motions in greeting and seating them.

 - ## Chapter 12

   - I tend to view new business opportunities as chances to explore and learn, rather than as a license to expand the company without limits, at any cost.

   - Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Eleven Madison Park are not concepts. They are restaurants of, by, and for their communities. It’s important for me to understand that and act accordingly.

 - ## Chapter 13

   - The museum is viewed in the world of art precisely as I dreamed our restaurants might be in the world of fine dining: an institution that endures and is at once forward-looking, sensibly grounded in tradition, and relevant today.

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