Recent Reading - "Setting the Table"

Danny Meyer's insightful book on how he built his restaurant empire in NYC (Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Blue Smoke, the Modern, Shake Shack, among others). It's an autobiography as well as a business guide, full of wise advice for life and for business. Meyer describes himself as having a need to please customers, which he transforms into his own unique brand of "enlightened hospitality." Meyer comes across as a person who is warm, curious, cautious, charitable, and with business acumen and integrity. What makes his restaurants so popular often have to do with his willingness to go against the grain -- the smoking ban a decade before the government's own, the accommodation of single diners, the effort of the reservationists to "be on the caller's side," the insistence on properly spacing tables, the graciousness to take an item off a customer's check if the customer is not happy with it. The book succeeds in that it not only makes you understand his business and his philosophy, it makes you really want to go eat in one (or all) of his restaurants!

Memorable Quotes:

• On Hiring -- "It's pretty easy to spot an overwhelmingly strong candidate or even an underwhelmingly weak candidate. It's the 'whelming' candidate you must avoid at all costs . . . . Overwhelmers earn you raves. Underwhlemers either leave on their own or are terminated. Whelmers, sadly, are like a stubborn stain you can't get out of the carpet. They infuse an organization and its staff with mediocrity; they're comfortable, and so they never leave; and frustratingly, they never do anything that rises to the level of getting them promoted or sinks to the level of getting them fired. And because you either can't or don't fire them, you and they conspire to send a dangerous message to your staff and guests that 'average' is acceptable."
  

• On applying 'a sense of abundance' to his restaurants after 9/11 when downtown commerce suffered -- "[Act] from a positive and hopeful place, rather than from fear that can ultimately be self-fulfilling. The mindset 'we're just hanging on' perpetuates scarcity. Investing money, imagination and hard work to create a mindset of abundance achieves abundance."
  

• What Meyer's grandfather used to say to him: "People will say a lot of great things about your business, and a lot of nasty things as well. Just remember, you are never as good as the best things they'll say, and never as bad as the negative ones. Just keep centered, know what you stand for, strive for new goals, and always be decent."
  

• "When you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit."
  

Setting the Table - The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. By Danny Meyer.