How can you distinguish yourself from others? Two words: Unreasonable Hospitality

Will was the manager of Eleven Madison Park when it was selected to be one of the World's 50 Best Restaurants. Disappointingly, at the award ceremony in 2010, they were chosen as #50, still an honour, but disappointing to be 'last' out of the 50 restaurants in attendance. At that point, Will thought about the top restaurants: all of them had phenomenal food and Daniel Humm (the chef) was one of the best chefs in the world, but Will wondered, could they do for service what the chefs did for food?

What follows are some of the most interesting ideas from Unreasonable Hospitality I enjoyed:

The concept of conflicting goals

That's how the brainstorming session came about. As a team (and the whole restaurant staff was involved), they came up with several words they wanted their guests to use to describe their experience at EMP.

Two of the words that came up were "Excellence" and "Hospitality". On the surface, these two words make sense in the restaurant: you want your food to be excellent and you wanted to be treated well when you're in the restaurant.

Except if you think about it more closely, the two words are in conflict with each other. Excellence implies consistency: you can't have good food at one table and poor food at another table. Hospitality on the other hand means personalized service. Contrast the experience staying in a hotel vs. the experience staying in your friend's home: your friend knows what you like and dislike and can personalize the experience to your preferences in ways that hotels can't afford to do for every guest.

But Will learned that conflicting goals aren't an impossible oxymoron to admire, but it's where the EMP team could be creative in meeting both goals.

Handing responsibility and ownership to others

At EMP, Will saw an opportunity to prevent the breakage of their plates and dishes. Because they couldn't serve food on plates that were cracked, they had to regularly replace plates and dishes that were damaged either through washing or being roughly placed on tables. He asked one of his staff to own this: giving him a budget, teaching him how to manage and run the budget, and giving him the agency to change how they did things at EMP to reduce breakage.

The individual changed how they loaded the dishwasher because part of the problem was that the dishes were being placed incorrectly in the dishwasher which meant there was breakage from loading and unloading the dishwasher, and furthermore, they placed a soft cloth on the serving table so that the plates didn't crack or chip from the metal top.

The changes were minor and inexpensive but saved the restaurant money.

People can surprise you when they have more responsibility and ownership.

The 95/5 rule

Will has a 95/5 rule for managing budgets. EMP is known for creating 'legends' - a term they use to describe when guests find a moment that is legendary they need to share with others.

Will recalls a story about a group of people with luggage coming into the restaurant. Generally, when people come in with luggage, it's either the first thing in their itinerary or the last thing on a trip to New York. He found that these guests had made EMP the last item before they flew out. He overheard them talking about how the one thing they had not tried was a New York hot dog.

Will rushed out of the restaurant, purchased a hot dog, and then asked the chef (Daniel Humm) to cut the hot dog and plate the dish. Daniel was confused, but did what Will told him and then he served the hot dog to the people, telling them he couldn't help but overhear their conversation and that he didn't want them to miss out on the one remaining 'New York bucket list' item. The group was absolutely delighted and could not stop talking about how legendary the moment was.

Will encourages all of his staff to look for moments where they can create 'legends'. You might be wondering how he can afford to do this. Not all legends are expensive (as you can see with the hot dog) but Will adheres to a 95/5 rule: ruthlessly manage 95% of the budget so you can spend lavishly on the remaining 5% of the budget. In other words,if you can do 100% of the work on 95% of the budget, that gives you the freedom to spend the remaining 5% on creating legendary moments for guests.

The overall takeaway from the book is that outstanding service can be a competitive advantage, in fact, it can be your competitive advantage.

Think about the times when you ordered something from Amazon but you didn't get the right product or it came slightly damaged and you complained: perhaps you got a new product re-shipped, or you got a full refund but got to keep the item (this happened to me). Once this happened, I couldn't help but praise Amazon's customer service to anyone who would listen to me.

If your competitors are practicing reasonable hospitality, is it time for you to incorporate unreasonable hospitality into your organisation?

Hey you got to the end! Want more from me? Did you know I also have a Substack where I share what I learned from the 50+ books I read every year? It's a lot like this newsletter - a weekly article - except I also cover health and other non-work-related topics. Join hundreds of readers and subscribe so you won't miss the next newsletter when it comes out.