Unreasonable Hospitality

Chapter 1

Welcome to the Hospitality Economy

At home, we were on top of the world.

Our restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, had recently received four stars from The New York Times, and a couple of James Beard Awards, too. But when my chef-partner Daniel Humm and I arrived at the cocktail reception the night before the awards for the 2010 World's 50 Best Restaurants, we understood: this was a whole different ball game.

Imagine every famous chef and restaurateur you've ever heard of milling around, drinking champagne and catching up with friends-and not one of them was talking to us. I'd never felt so much like a freshman at a new high school trying to figure out where to sit in the cafeteria, not even when I was a freshman.

It was a huge honor to be invited. The 50 Best awards had begun in 2002, but they'd become immediately meaningful in the industry. First of all, they were decided by a jury of a thousand well-regarded experts from around the world. And nobody had ever considered before how the best restaurants on the planet ranked against one another. By doing so, the awards gave these restaurants a push to become even better when they might have been content to rest on their laurels.

The awards ceremony itself was held at London's Guildhall, so regal and imposing it might as well have been a palace. As Daniel and I sat down, more than a little intimidated, we foolishly tried to gauge where we were going to land on the list based on where we were sitting relative to chefs like Heston Blumenthal of England's Fat Duck, or Thomas Keller of Per Se, both of whom had been in the top ten the year before.

I guessed forty. Daniel, always more optimistic, guessed number thirty-five.

The lights went down, the music played. The emcee for the night was a handsome, debonair Brit. And while I'm sure there were all the usual formalities and introductions and "thank you for comings" before the bomb dropped, in my memory there was little preamble before the man said, "To kick it off, coming in at number fifty, a new entry from New York City: Eleven Madison Park!"

That knocked the wind right out of us. We slumped over and stared at our feet.

Unfortunately, what we couldn't have possibly known (because it was our first year at this event, and because we were the very first restaurant called) is that when they call your name, they're also projecting your image onto a gigantic screen at the front of the auditorium, so that everyone can see you celebrating your win.

Except we weren't celebrating. We were at the very bottom of the list! Mortified to see our dejected faces on the thirty-foot-tall screen, I elbowed Daniel, and the two of us mustered a smile and a wave, but it was too little, too late: an auditorium filled with the most celebrated chefs and restaurateurs in the world-our heroes-had already borne witness to our devastation. The night was over for us before it had even begun.

At the reception afterward, we ran into Massimo Bottura, the Italian chef of Osteria Francescana, a Michelin three-star based in Modena-and number six on the list (not that we were counting). He saw us, started laughing, and couldn't stop: "You guys looked pretty happy up there!"

Fair enough, but Daniel and I weren't laughing. It was an honor to be recognized as one of the fifty best restaurants in the world; we knew that. Still-in that room, we had come in last place.

We left the party early and headed back to our hotel, where we grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the bar and sat, ready to drown our sorrows, on the steps outside.

We spent the next couple of hours moving through the five stages of grief. We'd staggered out of the auditorium in denial-had that really happened? Then we got mad-who the hell did they think they were? We breezed through bargaining and spent the better part of the bottle on depression before settling into a state of acceptance.

On one level, it's absolutely ridiculous to call any restaurant "the best restaurant in the world." But the importance of the 50 Best list is that it names the places that are having the greatest impact on the world of food at a given moment in time.

The techniques that Spanish chef Ferran Adriˆ pioneered at El Bulli introduced molecular gastronomy to the world. RenŽ Redzepi championed foraged and wild-caught foods from the land and water surrounding his Copenhagen restaurant Noma, and a local food movement was born. And if you've eaten out or walked down the aisles of your local grocery in the last ten years, you've felt the impact those innovations have had on my industry and beyond.

These chefs had the courage to make something no one had made before, and to introduce elements that changed the game for everyone.

We hadn't done that yet. We'd worked our butts off to earn a spot on that list, but what, really, had we done that was groundbreaking? The more we talked, the more it became clear: nothing.

We had everything we needed: the work ethic, the experience, the talent, the team. But we'd been operating as glorified curators, picking the best features of all the great restaurants that had come before us and making them our own.

Our restaurant was excellent and made a lot of people happy. But it hadn't yet changed the conversation.

When I was young, my dad gave me a paperweight that read, "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" That's what I was thinking about when Daniel and I wrote, "We will be Number One in the world," on a cocktail napkin.

It was very late, and the bottle was mostly empty by the time we stumbled back to our respective rooms. I was exhausted, but my mind kept racing back to that napkin.

Most of the chefs on the 50 Best list had made their impact by focusing on innovation, on what needed to change. But as I thought about the impact I wanted to make, I focused on the one thing that wouldn't. Fads fade and cycle, but the human desire to be taken care of never goes away.

Daniel's food was extraordinary; he was undeniably one of the best chefs in the world. So if we could become a restaurant focused passionately, intentionally, wholeheartedly on connection and graciousness-on giving both the people on our team and the people we served a sense of belonging-then we'd have a real shot at greatness.

I wanted to be number one, but that desire wasn't just about the award; I wanted to be part of the team that made that impact.

Just before I drifted off to sleep, I smoothed out the napkin and added two more words:

"Unreasonable Hospitality."

Service Is Black and White; Hospitality Is Color

When I was younger, I took a lot of pride in coming up with interview questions.

I now believe the best interview technique is no technique at all: you simply have enough of a conversation that you can get to know the person a little bit. Do they seem curious and passionate about what we're trying to build? Do they have integrity; are they someone I can respect? Is this someone I can imagine myself-and my team-happily spending a lot of time with?

But before I had the experience to let the conversation flow, one of my favorite questions to ask was, "What's the difference between service and hospitality?"

The best answer I ever got came from a woman I ended up not hiring. She said, "Service is black and white; hospitality is color."

"Black and white" means you're doing your job with competence and efficiency; "color" means you make people feel great about the job you're doing for them. Getting the right plate to the right person at the right table is service. But genuinely engaging with the person you're serving, so you can make an authentic connection-that's hospitality.

Daniel Humm and I spent eleven years turning Eleven Madison Park, a beloved but middling two-star brasserie serving seafood towers and soufflŽs, into the number one restaurant in the world. We got on that 50 Best list by pursuing excellence, the black and white, attending to every detail and getting as close to perfection as we could. But we got to number one by going Technicolor-by offering hospitality so bespoke, so over the top, it can be described only as unreasonable.

We had a radical idea of what the guest experience could be, and our vision was unlike any other out there. "You're not being realistic," someone would invariably tell us, every time we contemplated one of our reinventions. "You're being unreasonable."

That word "unreasonable" was meant to shut us down-to end the conversation, as it so often does. Instead, it started one, and became our call to arms. Because no one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable. Serena Williams. Walt Disney. Steve Jobs. Martin Scorsese. Prince. Look across every discipline, in every arena-sports, entertainment, design, technology, finance-you need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn't yet exist.

Chefs at the finest restaurants in the world had long been celebrated for being unreasonable about the food they served. At Eleven Madison Park, we came to realize the remarkable power of being unreasonable about how we made people feel. I'm writing this book because I believe it's time for every one of us to start being unreasonable about hospitality.

Of course, I hope everyone in my own industry reads this book and makes that choice, but I believe this idea can result in a seismic shift if it extends beyond restaurants. For most of this country's history, America functioned as a manufacturing economy; now, we're a service economy, and dramatically so-more than three-quarters of our GDP comes from service industries. So whether you're in retail, finance, real estate, education, healt hcare, computer services, transportation, or communications, you have an incredible opportunity to be just as intentional and creative-as unreasonable-about pursuing hospitality as you are about every other aspect of your business. Because whether a company has made the choice to put their team and their customers at the center of every decision will be what separates the great ones from the pack.

Unfortunately, these skills have never been less valued than they are in our current hyperrational, hyperefficient work culture. We are in the middle of a digital transformation. That transformation has enhanced many aspects of our lives, but too many companies have left the human behind. They've been so focused on products, they've forgotten about people. And while it may be impossible to quantify in financial terms the impact of making someone feel good, don't think for a second that it doesn't matter. In fact, it matters more.

The answer is simple, if not easy: create a culture of hospitality. Which means addressing questions I've spent my career asking: How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging? How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves? How do you make them feel welcome?

There's a long-standing debate in my profession as to whether hospitality can be taught. Many leaders I respect believe it can't; I couldn't disagree more. In fact, in 2014, I founded a conference for dining room professionals with my friend Anthony Rudolf, who was at the time the general manager of Per Se, with the intention of doing just that.

Chefs gathered at different conferences around the world, but there wasn't a single one for the people who worked in the dining room. So we set out to create a space where like-minded, passionate people could form community, trade ideas, and inspire one another-and, in so doing, evolve our craft.

We called it the Welcome Conference, and it was an instant hit with restaurant people. Dining room professionals from all over the country attended lectures, networked over drinks, and went home reinvigorated.

By the conference's third year, though, when we looked out into the audience, we saw sommeliers and servers sitting next to people who didn't work in restaurants at all: tech titans, small business owners, the CEOs of huge real estate companies. These people believed, as I do, that how they served their clients was as valuable as what they served. And they knew that what they could learn from leaders in my business could supercharge how they ran theirs.

When you create a hospitality-first culture, everything about your business improves-whether that means finding and retaining great talent, turning customers into raving fans, or increasing your profitability. It's my hope this book will be part of the movement ushering in this new era. But my motivation isn't your bottom line-or not my only one, anyway. Because what I'd really like to do is let you in on a little secret, one that the truly great professionals in my business know: hospitality is a selfish pleasure. It feels great to make other people feel good.

In this book, I'll share stories from the twenty-five years I've spent working every position in a restaurant, from dishwasher to owner, and everything in between. And I'll share the lessons I've learned about service and leadership through the lens of hospitality-the little ones, the big ones, and the little ones that turned out to be big ones. Everything, in other words, you need to turn the world from black and white to color for you, the people you work with, and the people you serve.

Welcome to the hospitality economy.

Chapter 2

Making Magic in a World That Could Use More of It

For my twelfth birthday, my dad took me to the Four Seasons for dinner.

At the time, I had no idea the Four Seasons was the first truly American fine-dining restaurant. Or that the elegant, mid-century modern interior was so iconic, it would eventually be designated a landmark by the City of New York.

I didn't know that James Beard and Julia Child had consulted on the menu, or that President John F. Kennedy had celebrated his birthday there an hour before Marilyn Monroe serenaded him with "Happy Birthday, Mr. President." Or that celebrities, titans of industry, and heads of state could judge whether their star had fallen in the city's ever-shifting power rankings by how close their table was to the Carrara marble pool at the center of the room.

What I did know was that the Four Seasons was the fanciest and most beautiful place I'd ever been in my life.