When I was hired as the Director of Customer Ops at Animalz, Walter Chen (founder and former CEO) sent me two books:

I devoured Trusted Advisor, picking up the book that seemed like the most natural way to level up my customer success skills shifting from SaaS into professional services. Setting the Table collected dust but I returned to it this spring when working with our now Director of Customer Ops to codify the first principles of customer management at Animalz.

While the book was wordy for me (the first chapters flowed like an intro to Chef’s Table and I was lost on some of the details shared about some ingredients/meals) the key principles around creating a best in class customer experience resonated. I feel like I read this at the exact right time, as I am less involved in the day to day business and have to think about becoming a better teacher, facilitator and people leader.

I recapped key ideas (sans in depth food stories) mostly for myself, but would to connect with anyone who has incorporated these principles into their business (or read any other great books about customer experience!)

About the author

Danny Meyer is the Founder & CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. He’s opened restaurants including Grammercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Square, The Modern and Shake Shack. He created the Enlightened Hospitality philosophy that puts employees first so that they can put customers first, knowing that the benefits trickle down to investors, vendors and the community.

As a child, Danny watched his father aggressively pursue entrepreneurial opportunities and fail, which helped him create principles for vetting new ventures. His family and his extensive culinary led travels informed his business philosophy. Danny traveled all over the world taking notes about the best places he ate and stayed and how he felt treated at each of those places. He modeled his initial restaurant after California, Paris and Rome:

Danny saw California as a great example of a place where “passionate people work together, breaking rules, boundaries and traditions.”
Parisian perspective on refined excellence, where everyone is accountable to precision and hospitality.
In Rome, great restaurants were built around family.

Danny cares a lot about growing businesses in emerging neighborhoods and doing something new with boldness and innovation. In addition to focusing on core business functions like HR, Finance, Business Development and IT, Danny focused on Community Investment to “make sure our company and its employees are finding and taking opportunities to play an active role in helping our communities fulfill their greatest potential.” Danny takes a lot of his ethos around community from Share our Strength founder Billy Shore’s notion that “creating community wealth is the most effective way to achieve lasting social change.”

Enlightened hospitality is designed to provide a delightful experience for every customer with SOUL. Good service is the right food delivered to the right person at the right table at the right time at the right temperature. Hospitality is all of the things that people at the restaurant do to make you feel that they are on your side; the host remembering you and welcoming you back, everyone is made to feel included (the big tables and tables of 1), and the people who work there approach every interaction with guests as a dialogue, not a monologue. No stiff “how is everything” empty questions or “no problem” responses. Employees are genuinely engaging and thoughtful to make sure that everyone has a great time at every restaurant and all team members are focused on the details that make experiences great. Great restaurants leave guests feeling “satisfyingly hugged.” That’s how you get people to tell a story about your business.

Enlightened hospitality also requires caring for your staff first and communicating context well: “who needs to know what, when people need to know it, and why.” Everything goes more smoothly when others are looped in and brought into the decision making process. “Ideas at their best happen for people. At their worst they happen to people.” Danny believes in servant leadership as taught by Robert Greenleaf.

Key ideas

“Have fun taking service seriously”: bring excellent dining down to Earth
“Invest in your community and the rising tide will lift all boats”
An expensive restaurant is not necessarily an excellent restaurant. Danny focused on offering exceptional value in all restaurants, wary of anyone accusing them of overcharging. Value was a way to distinguish themselves from the competition.
Don’t try to replicate existing ideas, go after things that are new
People need a mental model for how to think about a new concept. When he first tried to open 11 Madison Park, he wanted to be a lot of different things. A good friend of his said that when people go out to eat they say they’re in a mood for a specific cuisine “no one says they’re going out for eclectic.”
Finding great people
- Interview questions
  - How has your sense of humor been useful to you in your service career?
  - What was so wrong about your last job?
  - Do you prefer Hellman’s or Miracle Whip? Why?
- Hiring
  - The better Danny got about being precise about hires and communicating expectations the more he was able to realize his vision for enlightened hospitality.
  - Know what you need in a hire: eg a bbq pitmaster is very different than a chef. They don’t need creativity as much as commitment and consistency, a love of repetition that allows them to find joy in doing the same things repeatedly day in and day out.
  - Danny looks for strong emotional (hospitality) and technical skills. He tries to hire people who are 51% the former and 49% the latter because connection with guests is central to everything they do. He knows that a flawless restaurant can have fewer fans than a lower star restaurant with soul. Hiring 51% people means less time and money on training later; technical skills can be trained for, people skills less so.
  - Danny looks for “the excellence reflex” in all hires with 5 core emotional skills:
    - optimistic warmth
    - intelligence: open minded, curios, excited to learn and strive for excellence
    - work ethic: people who care enough to take great care and pride in setting the table beautifully each time
    - empathy
    - self awareness and integrity
  - What Danny looks for when hiring managers, who might be 15% of his staff at any given time
    - infectious attitude
    - self awareness
    - charitable assumption: assumes positive intent
    - long term view of success: put employees first, guests second, community third, suppliers fourth, investors fifth.
      - Don’t just think in terms of today dollars, think about tomorrow dollars. Ideally you get both but focusing on the long game creates a bigger upside.
    - sense of abundance
      - give more
    - trust (us as a team, together and united) over fear (them against us)
    - approving patience and tough love
    - not feeling threatened by others
    - character
  - Prospective employees go through 4-6 paid test “trails” before being hired to make sure they are a good fit. Candidates may repeat the same trail multiple times, they will not advance until an employee signs off.
  - Danny hires based on team consensus, taking candidates through thought experiments and getting reactions from his team. He is always seeking to find the best of the best or those who could be the best of the best. He refuses to hire “just ok” people who can erode organizational values and be tough to remove if they don’t work out.
  - The best customers are attracted and retained by the best employees.
  - Danny gets guests involved in hiring, asking for their recommendations and buying them dinner if they refer someone successfully.
  - Getting listed in the Zagat survey has been a powerful recruiting tool (by extension, reputable best of lists)
  - If Danny finds a candidate that they love that they don’t have a req for he will create one for them, knowing that good people are really hard to find.
  - Tends to stay away from people who put themselves before the org.
- Onboarding
  - Don’t allow new hires to change the menu/restaurant flow until they get to know it. Specials menu = a space to experiment but the main focus should be improving the existing menu/service before trying new things.
  - Leading by example is important but at scale, you have to “lead by teaching, setting priorities and holding people accountable.”
  - Danny meets with new hires every 4 weeks, striving to, like a champagne house “produce a vintage that tastes virtually the same each year”
  - Danny had a restaurant staffed with more junior people that became a farm system for talent. They’d hire 51%ers who needed help with technical skills.
Don’t make people wait!!! When you prioritize volume over hospitality you start to lose.
In the early days of a restaurant
- It will take 6+ months for a restaurant to start to come into it’s own, for the staff and menu to really gel. Early days may require trimming the menu down, slowing down reservations. Big numbers create logjams. By getting really specific about the details
  - how long it takes to cook and transport each dish
  - the average number of courses per table
  - the turn time per table etc
- Every “vote” counts. In the early days especially, it’s important not to take any votes for granted. Caring about every single person that comes in is how you develop a core group of regulars. The first visit to a restaurant in particular has to be amazing. Danny knows this and has designed his hospitality experience to earn 70%+ repeat business. 40% of lunch business and 25% of dinner business go to his restaurants 6-12x/year, which is representative of a great restaurant experience.
  - Restaurants keep detailed notes on guests to remember mistakes they’ve made and special requests they’ve gotten to continuously personalize their dining experience.
  - Danny acknowledges that his restaurants depend on word of mouth. The restaurant has to be top of mind for people to refer it. They aim to be as helpful as possible to accomplish that.
He was able to proactively avoid those logjams and continuously improve the “pace, flow and progress” of service
“Athletic approach to hospitality, sometimes playing offense, sometimes playing defense, but always wanting to find a way to win.”
- Offense: enhance experiences with free desserts on birthdays, wine for regulars
- Defense: overcoming mistakes, defusing problematic situations. Always being on the guests side in how they framed solutions/provided options, really trying to show when making reservations on a busy night for example empathy and effort to get them a reasonable solution even if it wasn’t what they had originally hoped for. They trained hosts in particular to be customer advocates instead of gatekeepers.
Don’t unnecessarily interrupt guests…every interaction should provide value. Every part of the restaurant experience should be designed to provide value and pleasure for the guest.
To become an “unofficial club” for a certain group of people/businesses is a strength that can lead to more business. To do this, you have to become part of that group, part of the neighborhood.
Turn over rocks: look for the story behind the story. Details help signal opportunities for improvement whether that’s a guest drumming their fingers on the table, looking around the dining room, leaving a meal largely uneaten, etc. Seeing those things and addressing them = turning over rocks. Take interest in people a la Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People.
- Shared ownership: a restaurant becomes uber successful when people talk about a restaurant as soon as it’s theirs. People generally feel like a restaurant is theirs if they feel loved and important in that restaurant, which builds trust and a sense of affiliation. Danny fosters this by encouraging team members to build relationships with guests. That may be as simple as asking where someone is from to build a connection, the chef coming out to say hi and ask what questions or feedback they have on the meal, the GM saying “thanks for being here.” Danny shares a story about serving a couple from Kansas City at his bbq restaurant and how skeptical they were of eating bbq in NYC. Danny was able to build connection by asking if they’d sample the Kansas City bbq sauce they were piloting and give input, giving them a sense of ownership in the future of the restaurants.
- Always be collecting dots: the more information you have about people, the more you can connect them. Connecting dots requires turning over rocks. This requires paying attention, making eye contact, being proactive, asking for feedback, saying thank you, being open. Danny shares a comment card with every guest to share opinions about food, wine, ambience, and service. Managers respond to every card to resolve the issue and thanks them for sharing their feedback. Assistants review the reservation list every morning to find more dots to connect. The more they know before a guest visits (is it someone’s birthday, first visit, do they have preferences that we can accommodate) the more they can create an amazing experience. For regulars that Danny knows, he will reach out to them in advance of their reservation if he can’t be at the restaurant. People love to feel important. Pay attention to the tiny signs.
- Google people: obvious but useful.
- 10 minutes, 3 gestures a day: Danny encourages managers to take a special interest in guests and to create 3 delightful experiences everyday.
- Pay attention to the little things: Danny tells the story of a late night at the restaurant where he told the last table that he’d have to cook them breakfast for dessert if they stayed much longer (nicely). The table mentioned eggs daffodil, which Danny had never heard of, but he used it as an opportunity to tell the chef to figure out how to make it and deliver it to the table at 2AM. The table loved it and still talk about it to this day.
How to decide on a new venture (direct quotes)
- Passionate about the subject matter
- Will get challenge, satisfaction and pleasure from the venture
- Meaningful opportunity for professional growth and people at the company who are ready to take on those growth opportunities
- Adds something new to the dialogue, groundbreaking, could be leaders in this
- Financial projections for profit warrant risk being undertaken: right context for the right idea at the right time in the right place for the right value, timing is right to execute with excellence
- Enhances company’s strategic goals
- Existing businesses will benefit and improve
- Excited to do business in this community
- Context is the right fit. Restaurant and style of doing business will be harmonious with its location
Don’t extend your brand until the core brand is clearly established.
Know who you are before you go to market.
“A business that doesn’t understand it’s raison d’etre as fostering community will inevitably underperform”
- It’s the business owner/CEOs job to communicate the core principles/values of the business
Constant, gentle pressure: hold your people accountable as you hold yourself accountable. A strategy to keep people focused on continuous improvement.
- Salt shaker story: one of Danny’s friends tells Danny to place a salt shaker in the middle of the table. Danny’s friend questions whether it’s centered. Danny adjusts it. His friend moves the salt shaker 6” off center and asks where he wants it now. Lesson: everyone else…staff, customers, the media, are moving the salt shaker from the center of the table. Don’t get pissed when this happens, just keep moving the shaker back.
- constant: always bring things back to center
- gentle: do it in a way that doesn’t challenge people’s dignity
- pressure: standards
Fire
- breathe fire to motivate others
- fire in bellies to motivate self
- fire to singe anyone who strays from the bar of excellence set
Addressing problems: mistakes can be a problem to repair and strengthen relationships
- awareness: pay attention so that mistakes don’t go unnaddressed
- acknowledgement: say it out loud
- apology: I’m sorry this happened to you (no excuses)
- action: “say what you’ll do to make amends then follow through”
- additional generosity
  - remember, policies are guidelines. err on the side of the customer when possible. we’re here to give customers what they want.
Prioritize employees first. If people are pumped to come to work, work will be a better experience for everyone (them, customers, leadership, the business). You can tell which restaurants have great team work by how efficiently the dining experience is run, people actively trying to help each other, a feeling of mutual respect.
Prioritize customers so that they know that you are always on their side. Find the win win acting as an agent not a gatekeeper.
Constantly balancing two competing voices in his head:
- succeed, expand, grow
- caution: go deeper, go slower
- “you can only be in one place at one time, you can only do one thing well.”
Write a great last chapter: if something has gone wrong that’s ok, but make sure the customer leaves on the best possible note