Lessons I Learned From Danny Meyer

Danny Meyer has long been one of my role models and mentors. As a travelling chef, I listened to his book, Setting the Table, more than once, hoping to listen and learn from the vast food empire he was building in New York and across the United States.

Fast forward to 2021 and a year into the pandemic, I had the great pleasure of hearing Danny Meyer speak at the 2021 virtual Restaurants Canada Show.  Danny spoke about how his organization navigated the last year of pandemic-era business as a hospitality company. 

Hospitality Reimagined

Meyer’s version of ‘hospitality reimagined,’ frames his business on the premise that we don’t sell food or drinks, we offer feelings and experiences. “It” (being a hospitality business) is a service, not simply delivering goods. This principle isn’t novel: many of us are familiar with this approach and have preached it to our teams in high-end restaurants. So what’s different now?  

In the pandemic era, a meal delivery becomes a “hospitality house call,” modeled after the service call that a doctor would make to your house. Meyer, in describing a “hospitality house call”, drew a parallel to “delivering a hug”.

Starting from that mindset, the reimagined version of hospitality asks that we examine and question everything that we do and how we do it. How do we flex our hospitality muscle and ask ourselves; how would it feel if I were on the receiving end of this? What would make me rave? What gives me the warm and fuzzies?

Meyers spoke about how his team at Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) thought deeply about the food they serve, how it travels, and how it reheats. Some dishes that you want to order at a restaurant, you don’t want to have at home. As an example, french fries don’t travel well so they looked at tater tots and garlic potato chips as an alternative. 

Once the team thought through the details of each element of their service, USHG suspended their current sense of brand and leaned into their modified version of hospitality. Meyers believes this approach will be a part of their go-forward model once indoor dining returns. 

Enlightened Hospitality

The idea of “hospitality reimagined” forms a part of Danny Meyer’s magnum opus, “enlightened hospitality”. Enlightened hospitality was an approach that Meyer had noticed in his team and brought USHG great success. His realization was to discard two business mantras that were taught to him growing up and reprioritize the stakeholders in his business. Here is a quick summary of enlightened hospitality in his own words.

I'm a big believer in the power of a vicious cycle where one bad thing keeps leading to something worse, and I'm equally, somebody who recognizes the power of a virtuous cycle where one good thing keeps leading to something even better. Look, if you're a chef, you know that you can have the best recipe in the world, but it's never going to taste any better than the worst ingredient you put into it. Even if you get a great ingredient, you better treat that ingredient well if you want the recipe to turn out. The recipe is hospitality, the recipe is how did we make people feel. And so the inputs, the ingredient, are the people who work with us, the people on our team, and I want them to be our first customer.

I realized that in all the years I've been in business, we have never succeeded at making our customers any happier than our staff members feel coming to work. So that's what I said, the input to this virtuous cycle has to be how did we provide hospitality for the people who work for us? Did we create a servant leadership model, where when people come to work, they understand that while they do have responsibility to get their job done incredibly well, as their boss, I have an even greater responsibility to provide the kind of setting where they can thrive, and I must provide the tools they need to do the best job they can for customers. I realized in this virtuous cycle of enlightened hospitality we put our employees first, our customers second, the community in which we do business third, our suppliers fourth, and our investors fifth.

I continue to learn from Danny Meyer and was very happy to hear him speak at such a critical time for our industry. If you are interested in reading more, here is a link to a transcript of the interview where he covers enlightened hospitality, the value of returning employees, learning from mistakes, and of course, the hospitality recovery. 

Adam Hijazi is a foodpreneur, hospitality business consultant and Director for Obelysk Foods. His insights come from years of extensive practical experience leading organizational culture change in the hospitality industry. Adam’s commitment to, and passion about, building inclusive teams, motivated to deliver excellence, shines through in all that he does.