Skip to main content

The Road To Success…


Danny Meyer is a true entrepreneur. He has recently published a must-read book: Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. From Publishers Weekly:



Meyer opened Union Square Cafe in 1985 when he was 27 years old. It hit its stride three years later when he hired chef Michael Romano, and Meyer charts its evolution from a neighborhood to international institution. Initially cautious about expansion, he opened Gramercy Tavern with chef Tom Colicchio three years later, eventually broadening his New York City restaurant empire to 11 establishments including Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke, Shake Shack and the Modern.



Can you say successful? Danny has had to satisfy a lot of customers to drive such success.


The quote that brought me to this book was:



The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.



The quote is credited to legendary retailer Stanley Marcus (yes, of Neiman Marcus fame, who took over the family business in 1926 at the age of 21 after getting a Harvard business degree), and oh does it ring true. Startups will make lots of mistakes along the way. The best ones survive in large part due to their "response reaction" to those mistakes. We are entering a period of greater transparency in business. I think it's great, and the companies that can become more transparent and more honest with every aspect of their business will be the ones that thrive.


The food industry is certainly a service business (aren't they all?). What I like about Danny is that he doesn't think of it that way. It's a hospitality business (aren't they all?). While foodies will enjoy this book for the memoir-style, I think other business owners will get just as much out of it. If more startups could follow Danny's lead here and not think about customer service but hospitality delivery, I have no doubt that their customers will respond (and rejoice!).



Meyer makes a distinction between service ("the technical delivery of a product") and the "Enlightened Hospitality" at the core of his business strategy—both necessary for restaurant success. He notes that hospitality "is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel" and shares tips like hiring "51 percenters," or staff with "skills divided 51-49 between emotional hospitality and technical excellence," and the "Five As" for addressing mistakes: awareness, acknowledge, apologize, act, additional generosity.



Danny's other insights:



  • Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts -- for and to -- express it all.

  • Context, context, context, trumps the outdated location, location, location.

  • Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it's theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business.

  • Err on the side of generosity: You get more by first giving more.

  • Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it. When you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit.


In a related story, take a peek at Dan Meyer's Response to Restaurants Are A Service Business. Gothamist covers it in Battle of the Book Readings. The Wall Street Journal talks about it in Hospitality for Everyone. 800-CEO-READ covers it in Setting the Table. New York Magazine covers it in Danny Meyer Walks Into A Pub.


Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments

  1. [...] The Road To Success… at Brian Berliner’s Brain (tags: memori.us sevice hospitality) [...]

    ReplyDelete
  2. [...] The Road to Success… - Brian Berliner, Brian Berliner’s Brain [...]

    ReplyDelete
  3. [...] The Road to Success… - Brian Berliner, Brian Berliner’s Brain [...]

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kernel-based Virtual Machine hits Linux

Many congratulations to my good friend Moshe Bar and his team over at (stealth-mode startup) Qumranet . Techworld reports that the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) project has been accepted into the 2.6.20 version of the Linux kernel distribution. KVM is an Open Source kernel driver that basically allows a Linux kernel to host virtual machines, as plain old Linux processes, that can run Linux or Windows (or other x86-based operating systems). It runs only on hardware that support Intel's VT instruction set (which is fine) and will soon support the AMD-V instruction set as well. This is cool for a number of reasons. It's Open Source, released under the GPL. It basically turns the Linux that we all know and love into a "hypervisor". Linux-as-hypervisor makes sense because Linux already knows how to manage devices, memory, processes, multi-cores, etc. VMware ESX is, essentially, a "hypervisor" - a small kernel, built on Linux as it turns out, that

Bill Coleman Joins 3tera Advisory Board

I think this move surprised a number of people, since Bill recently wrapped up Cassatt Corproation, getting the technology and people  acquired by Computer Associates . However, I was not surprised at all. The announcement, via  3tera Welcomes Bill Coleman : You may or may not have seen the recent press realease.  Bill Coleman, IT/Silicon Valley luminary, Founder and CEO of BEA Systems, has joined 3Tera’s Advisory Board. Yes, this alone is a great testimonial to what we have accomplished in our field.  Getting dignitaries such as Bill does not come easy.  But here’s the best part - this has a lot more than just marquee value and I doubt that Bill would have joined us if that was the case.  Bill, especially since his most recent stint as Founder and CEO of Cassatt Systems, is an extremely knowledgeable visionary in the area of utility and Cloud Computing; and, data center automation. So, Bill will be extremely valuable, reviewing and tweaking both our business plans and techno

Big In Japan Open Sources Their Ruby On Rails Tools

The kind folks over at Big In Japan have graciously decided to Open Source the code they used to build their demo web sites . It's all Ruby on Rails code, and it's being released with a GPL license. The code trees being made available include: elfURL ~ URL Shortner FeedVault ~ OPML file storage FrankenFeed ~ RSS feed merger InstantFeed ~ RSS feeds via email QwikPing ~ Ping Server SocialMail ~ RSS via email Very cool. I just love the Open Source community . I have actually been writing some code of late, and it's great to have some reference code to check out. Not sure if I'm going to go with Ruby on Rails yet, however. And, for the record. I have no idea if this is big in Japan. Tags: Open Source , GPL , Ruby On Rails , Big In Japan , Brian Berliner , brianberliner