The Monday Rethink: Three powerful insights from the world's top restaurateur
How the legendary Danny Meyer pushed the boundaries of fine dining - and in the process scaled a culture of 'enlightened hospitality'.
It’s a balmy evening in 90s New York and Danny Meyer is hard at work in his fine dining restaurant, Eleven Madison Park*. He overhears a table of out-of-towners saying with dismay, “We’re leaving New York without even trying the classic NYC hot dog!” Now, Danny could’ve shrugged it off. Hot dogs? Not exactly fine dining. But that's not how Danny operates. Instead, he dashes out, grabs a bunch of hot dogs from a street cart, and brings them back. His chefs, hesitant at first, elevate the humble hot dog, serving it gourmet-style. The guests are blown away. I don’t need to tell you this wasn’t just about the hot dogs—it was about deeply listening, responding with utmost care, and turning a simple craving into a perfect New York moment.
(*For the gourmands among us, Eleven Madison Park went on to earn three Michelin stars and be named the World’s Best Restaurant in 2017).
Danny Meyer is one of the world’s most iconic restaurateurs, but what sets him apart isn’t just his restaurants' rise to fame over 40 years. I admire him because he upended the world of hospitality by incessantly asking the question: “Whoever wrote this rule?! Whoever wrote the rule that fine dining needs to be about stiff culinary conventions, tuxedo-clad waiters and an intimidating hushed atmosphere?” And so he infused this world of obsessive preciseness with empathy, joy and a deeply personalised guest experience - a philosophy he calls 'enlightened hospitality’.
Twenty years later, he flipped the question: “Whoever wrote the rule that fast food needs to be trashy, unhealthy and mass-market?” And so he brought fine dining principles to the humble hot dog cart and Shake Shack, now a $3.5 billion publicly listed global sensation, was born.
But a single man bent on pioneering new concepts isn’t enough. By his own admission, Danny’s juiciest challenge over 40 years has been:
“How do I scale culture? How do I keep expanding and innovating without these restaurants losing their soul?”
So intrigued was I by how he managed to create places of substance whose soul endures even decades later, that I went on the Danny Meyer rabbit hole.
Here are the top 3 leadership & culture lessons I gleaned from his work:
Apply “constant gentle pressure”.
Everything starts from a leader being super clear on what sits at the centre of the table; and specifying how it should be positioned (in his world, that’s the actual salt & pepper shaker - but metaphorically, that’s your leadership north star, what excellence means to you.)
Says Danny:
“Wherever your centre lies, know it, name it, stick to it and believe in it. Everyone you work with will know what matters to you.”
The forces of entropy will inevitably conspire to constantly move that ‘salt & pepper shaker’ off centre. Your job as a leader is to apply constant gentle pressure in a way that helps your people course-correct, while also respecting their dignity.
Hire for 49% technical prowess, 51% emotional mastery
Despite having built a fine dining empire, Danny is adamant that human connection trumps the refinement of food. And so he’s come to prioritise emotional mastery in his new hires. Some of the things he’s looking for are kind eyes, intellectual curiosity, a sense of ‘wouldn’t it be awesome if we could…’, deep devotion to guests’ experience.
He calls his people ’51 percenters’ and recounts regretting every time he made a compromise on emotional intelligence in favour of outstanding technical skill.
3. Have explicit conversations: The 4 quadrants of performance
The locker rooms in all of Danny’s 20 restaurants have mirrors displaying the below quadrant. As they put on their uniform every day, staff get to reflect on the quadrant they play in.
The quadrants are self-explanatory. What got my attention is that Danny has a timeframe and an action point for each of them - and makes these conversations explicit:
—> “If you’ve got somebody who can and will — those are my flowers, I really want to water them. Too often we ignore those people because, “Oh, that’s easy. We don’t have to worry about Johnny because he always gets it right.”
—> If you have someone who can’t but will, I’m going to coach them, and I don’t mind saying this, but the wick on my candle is pretty long for someone who will.
—> Conversely, for the person who can’t and won’t, there’s going to be a short window. The longer that person stays on the team, everyone else on the team says, “Why should I try?!’
—> The hardest one is the ‘can but won’t’. That’s the person where you just go, “You’re way better than this, but for some reason, you’re just choosing not to bring it here.” In such cases, the window is around 6 months.
In Danny’s book, we’re all in the business of hospitality. Hospitality exists when you trust the person on the other side of the transaction is rooting for you. For each and every one of us, our success depends on our ability to continually earn that trust.
Stay fierce & curious!
Alina