| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: February 27, 2025.] Russ Roberts: Today is February 27th, 2025, and my guest is author Will Guidara. He is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which under his leadership was named the Best Restaurant in the World. He is the host of the Welcome Conference, co-producer of the Emmy Award-winning series, The Bear, and is recipient of the Wall Street Journal Innovator Award. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, which is our subject for today. Will, welcome to EconTalk. Will Guidara: Thank you so much. Really a pleasure to be here. |
| 1:11 | Russ Roberts: On the surface, your book is part memoir and part behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to work at and create one of the best restaurants in the world. But it's really about how to manage, how to lead, how to deal with people. And as the president of a small college dealing with leadership issues and management, I found this book incredibly inspiring. And, it's a page-turner, which is no small feat. Explain the title. What is 'unreasonable hospitality'? Will Guidara: Unreasonable Hospitality is my way of urging people across industries to make the choice to be in the hospitality industry. And the way to do that is just to decide to be as relentless and as creative and as intentional--as unreasonable--in pursuit of how we all make people feel as every successful person I know already is in pursuit of the product they're serving or the service they've crafted. I believe it's the most powerful thing we can do. I think that people's memories are based on feelings more than they're on products, and yet in way too many cases, people reserve all their best efforts just for the product. Russ Roberts: Give the flavor of some of the things you did for guests at your restaurant, Eleven Madison Park. A short list would include greeting guests by name at the door, serving waters that they preferred--the kind they preferred--as they sat down. How you handled the check, the coats at the end of the night, ridiculous over-the-top special treatment. How'd you create that magic? Talk about some of those with some examples, so people who have never been in a restaurant like that, to give them a feel for what it's like. Will Guidara: The paradigm shift in the book is that you can systemize hospitality. It's not only about hiring really warm and gracious people and waiting for them to do kind things. You can create systems that reinforce the culture. And so, yeah, the front door: you walk into a restaurant--I believe that if you're creating a culture of hospitality regardless of industry, you want to make sure the experience feels even in the slightest of ways like you're inviting someone to your house for dinner. If you were to come over to my house for dinner, I would throw open the door, I would greet you by name, I'd probably give you a hug, and I'd welcome you in. And, yet you compare that to a restaurant experience where you walk in and you're greeted by someone standing behind a literal barrier. They're faced basked in the glow of an iPad screen that they stab away at their finger and eventually turn to their colleague and say, 'Take them to Table 34,' or something. There's nothing connective. There's nothing warm or gracious or inviting. So, we got rid of the podium. We just had a person standing there. There was still a podium around the corner that you couldn't see; and that person behind that podium, the person that greeted you were interacting using sign language to detail whether a table was or was not ready. The person that greeted you would have Googled you before you came in, such that if you ever put your picture online and you still looked even remotely like that picture, that we'd be able to greet you by name. We went to--and hence the word--unreasonable lengths to achieve these small moments. Inspired by a number of things. But, I think the quote that sums it up quite well is by Teller of the magician duo, Penn and Teller. He says that sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would deem reasonable. Nothing we did was hard. We were just willing to try harder. And, I am of the belief that if you can invest a lot of energy into creating even just a handful of these magical moments, the impact can be profound. So, that's one; but you also talk about over-the-top-gestures we did for people. Yeah, we did crazy stuff that were bespoke, where we would just be present and listen and try to come up with these random one-size/one-ideas for people. But, again, no great things take root in the absence of resource and if you're not willing to structure an environment where it's as easy as possible for your team to deploy a philosophy. And so, we had specific people on our team--in the dining room every night--with no operational responsibility outside of just being there to help everyone else in the team bring their crazy, creative, hospitable ideas to life. I could go on and on with this. |
| 6:01 | Russ Roberts: Just give us one example. You can talk about the hot dog if you want or--yeah. Will Guidara: I mean, we did all sorts of them. Literally thousands and thousands and thousands of these things. We overheard a guest: There was a family of four from Spain--this is one of my favorite stories to tell--dining with us. Parents and their children. We had these big, big windows; it started snowing. One of the hourly employees on my team overheard them saying that it was the first time the kids had seen real snow. They had the idea: Like, wouldn't it be cool if we sent them to Central Park to go sledding? But, here's the thing, it's not uncommon--as weird as what I'm about to say is, I really do believe it--it's not uncommon for people to come up with that idea. Like, 'Oh, that'd be so cool. They've never seen snow. We should send them sledding at Central Park.' And, yet if you don't create a structure within the culture where it's easy for that person to deploy that idea, people are very good at talking themselves out of the idea: 'Well, that's good, but I'm in the weeds right now. I can't run to the store and get sleds.' But, there was a person--we called them Dream Weavers--that was the name of the position. All the bus boy has to do is go to the Dream Weaver and say, 'We need sleds.' And so, when that table left the restaurant, they were greeted by an Uber SUV [Sports Utility Vehicle] with sleds in the back, a big thermos of hot chocolate in the front, for the coolest nightcap of all time: sledding with your kids for the first time ever in Central Park. The power of these things. There's the quote--many people have heard it--by Maya Angelou: 'People will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel.' I would almost go so far as to guarantee that that family of four, in spite of the fact that we were serving some of the best food in the world, doesn't remember a single thing they ate that night; but they will never forget how we made them feel when they walked outside and saw those sleds in the back of the Uber. Russ Roberts: Crazily I won't forget it either. And I wasn't there. And, that's just a tribute to the creativity of some of these ideas. And I think it's--you know, people talk about, 'Oh, that's very clever marketing,' or 'That's great for your brand.' But, one thing that comes through your book and that I found quite moving is it makes people feel special. And, the ability, as you point out, to tell the story--to create a memory like that--is so much more than just, 'Oh, they have a really good restaurant,' or 'They were very responsive to what we needed.' You did something in that one case--and you recount a few dozen in the book. And, as you say, there were thousands more. It's really Willy Wonka. It's in that territory of delight. And, the food's great--special food is really great. I get that. But, the surprise of a gift is uniquely attractive to human beings. It's why economists say there's no free lunch: to remind people that gifts sometimes have a cost. But we don't care as human beings. We love a free thing; and that's a free thing. That really is a free thing. You didn't send them a bill. You didn't say, 'Well, I'll be expecting you to tell your friends about this.' You just did it. And it must have been extraordinary. Will Guidara: By the way--there's two to three things I want to say. That did come at a cost. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And, yet it's not about how much you spend: It's about how thoughtful you are. You referenced the hot dog. We don't need to tell that story. I've told it plenty of times. But, that cost $2. We did plenty of things that were just as connective and gracious that cost nothing at all. It's not about the cost: it's about the thoughtfulness. And, yet we did spend money on this stuff. And so, you referenced the word 'marketing,' and I love actually when people talk about it as marketing. Because, here's the reality: you do this stuff ultimately because it feels great to do and it feels great to receive. And because I believe hospitality and investing in relationships is the greatest competitive advantage any business can have. But, when you look across companies, I have yet to meet a single CEO [Chief Executive Officer]--and I spend time with a lot of them these days--who will not--who doesn't--say they don't want better hospitality or service. Everyone says they want it. And yet, well, almost every organization is willing to invest the required resource to make the product better. Or, while so many of them have giant marketing budgets, people are very reticent to invest in hospitality. And so, listen, I believe that this is what right looks like. And so, if people want to look at it as a form of marketing and that is what is required in order for them to allocate resources to it, then great. Because, by the way, it is one of the best forms of marketing. Because, when you give people stories like this to tell, what do you think they're going to do? They're going to tell them over and over and over again. Russ Roberts: And, they don't take a royalty from you for every time they tell it. It keeps giving, and it's--yeah. |
| 11:24 | Russ Roberts: Let's talk about hiring; and you talk about the exceptional people that you worked with up and down the whole hierarchy of the restaurant. But I'm curious: because all of us listening, almost all of us, have been in a restaurant. And we know what a good waiter is. A good server is somebody who is attentive without being annoying. That would be the first minimum standard. And, yet that's surprisingly difficult. So I'm curious: Did you try to recruit people who understood that? Did you train people? Or did you hire lots of people and then when you saw that they couldn't do that minimum skill, you would let them go? Will Guidara: Probably a little bit of all those things, but I boil it down to something quite simplistic. I think we over-complicate, as a society, the hiring process. Whether--when I sit down with people in other businesses and I'll just pick a random position in their company and I'll ask them what are the requirements in order to even be interviewed for that position? And, the lists are always far longer than they need to be. And, by definition they're filtering out a lot of the people that could be perfect for the job. Or, I'll ask someone how they conduct an interview and they're so proud of this list of questions that they have in order to engage people and figure out who the right person is. Listen, I believe relationships are relationships, and that the lessons you learn from those in life can apply to those in work. I think the biggest interview of our lives is the first date you have with the person you go on to marry. And, if you take the two things I just said and apply them to that: a). I have a couple amazing friends who want to get married and have kids and they're still single because their list of all the things their potential person needs to check is so long that they are filtering out their person. Similarly, if I had gone to the first date with my wife with a list of interview questions that I wanted to ask her, I guarantee you she would not now be my wife. We over-complicate this stuff. I always like to interrogate down that list of what someone needs to have learned or have done to make it as short as humanly possible: such that I can interview the most people possible. It takes a lot of time, but every hire has an outsized and asymmetrical impact on your business, and so you should invest a lot of time in mining through as many as possible to find the right ones. But my interviews--I don't even bring the resumé to an interview. My interviews are conversations where I'm effectively trying to identify four things: Do I think I can trust this person? Do I think they're going to work hard? Do I think I want to spend time with them? And perhaps most importantly: Do I think the people that already work for me will want to spend time with them? We over-index on trying to hire for capacity and under-index on trying to hire for chemistry. Hospitality is a team sport, and unless the team plays together you will never excel. Everything else I can teach them, including hospitality. I don't believe that there are some people who are hospitable and some people who aren't. I believe everyone has it in them: they just need a leader to inspire it out of them. |
| 15:08 | Russ Roberts: Yeah. I've probably told this story before on air, but Southwest Airlines, it tells the story of screening people. There'd be 50 candidates in the room; and then they'd announce that everybody's going to stand up and make a five-minute speech. They gave them a little time to prep. Everybody's writing rapidly and prepping and taking notes. And then, soon some people start presenting. And of course, while the people are presenting, the other folks--many of them--are saying, 'Well, this is my chance to really hone my talk.' And, what Southwest cared about--supposedly; it might be apocryphal, but I love it--it's not the speech, but how you reacted when you were in the audience. Were you ignoring the people talking so you could make progress on yours? Or, were you giving eye contact and nodding and encouraging them and being empathetic? And, when I speak--and I'm sure it's the same for you--I always look for the nodder in the crowd. The person who is going to give me positive reinforcement and keep me going. The person with their arms crossed, I try to not look at them; and I'm looking for the nodder. And, they were looking for the nodders, the people who were empathetic. And it's a beautiful example. What kind of training did you give people once they got there? Will Guidara: I just want to say one thing about the nodder as a warning to people in hiring. Sometimes the person who is nodding the most aggressively--and now I'm using that as a metaphor: the person that's the most charming and the most effusive--they're not actually the most hospitable. They're just really good at faking it or putting on a show. Right? Like, sometimes the most hospitable person might be a little bit introverted and maybe they're not looking at you and nodding with you from the audience because they're intimidated or they're just a little bit uncomfortable or they've never worked for someone that has instilled in them the confidence to make that eye contact and to exude that positivity and that optimism. I always say, too--I mean, by the way, I'm still the same with you. When I'm speaking on a stage, I find the nodders. It is from them that I derive the energy I need in order to reciprocate it. But, when it comes to hiring, I think we rest on first impressions a little bit too heavily. That's why I leave the resumés away--because I want to use that opportunity just to get to know them as a human being. Because, they might be shy, they might be a little bit more introverted, but they might actually be the most hospitable person in the room or the most warm or the most connective or the most generous, and you just need to peel a few layers in order to find it. Now, in terms of training: listen, like, we spent so much time on every single little detail of that restaurant. And, the server in a restaurant like that is effectively your guide. And so, we hired people into the entry-level position, and they had to pass a couple of seasons with us before they could ever become that guide. The reason for that, a). we're a very, very high-end restaurant, and the amount of knowledge you needed to have in order to guide people through that experience, it is just absurd to expect someone to learn all of that in a couple of weeks. But also, culture can only be taught so much. It does need to be caught[?]. And, that requires just spending enough time within the four walls of an environment that you fully understand what right looks like. That's one part. The other thing--and I'm so constantly surprised by this, not just in restaurants, but pretty much across industries--is: people have perhaps even a robust training program at the beginning. Maybe it's a week long, or four weeks long, or three weeks long--whatever. You join the company, train, train, train, train, train. And then you're just out on the floor--whatever the floor is in your business. And that's when training stops. Which is absurd, to me. And, these are the same companies that spend so much money on facility or product or brand or all this stuff; and stop short in investing money into training or inspiring the people that breathe life into those spaces. You look at football teams: they work one day a week; they train the rest of the week. And so, we had constant ongoing training and education and inspiration. And, by the way, you keep on hearing me say inspiration in addition to training and education, because training and education in the absence of inspiration is ineffective and insufficient. It's one thing to tell people the things they need to know. It's another thing to tell them how they need to do the job. And if you're not inspiring them why they should want to learn those things and do that thing in a certain way, they will never learn them or embrace those ideas nearly to the extent you need them to. |
| 20:26 | Russ Roberts: Yeah. Mastery is hard work. It's especially true in education. And people like to think, 'Oh, education should be fun.' Well, it's nice when it's fun and it's great when you serve people and treat them well and get that reward of seeing them reacting to your hospitality, but it's also hard work. And, you talk a number of times in the book about the power of persistence. And, I think you probably share this view: it's incredibly underrated. Incredibly underrated. They think that credentials and formal skill are what lead to success. And, it is part of it. But persistence--and in this case, the word I would actually use is 'devotion.' It's very hard to stay devoted when it requires some sacrifice, either of headspace or personal time, etc., etc. And the inspiration is the only thing that makes that work well. Will Guidara: I put this quote, in the book, by Calvin Coolidge. It was a plaque that my dad gave me when I was a kid, but I just think it's so great: Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. That's true. Russ Roberts: But, you have to unleash that, sometimes. This is what you're saying. And that's I think a very deep insight of how to treat people. Will Guidara: Yeah. I think leadership, once upon a time--I'm talking Braveheart days--was just--I mean, the person that would say, 'Hey, this is where we're going.' And people crave leadership. They want to follow someone, and so if you're the person that's saying that people will follow you. And then, over time, that wasn't enough anymore, and I think Simon Sinek covers this so beautifully in Start with Why. People want to be told what they are doing, where they are going, and why they should want to do it or go there. Honestly, I don't even think that's enough anymore. I think people want to be told what they're doing, why they should want to do it; and they want to play a role in helping you figure out how you are going to do it. That's a generational thing. People crave more of a sense of ownership than they did before. Russ Roberts: I agree. Will Guidara: But I think great leadership is now: what, why, and how. |
| 22:44 | Russ Roberts: Talk about what happens pre-meal in a world-class restaurant. Again, I don't think the average person, unless they've watched enough movies or TV shows, have any idea of the amount of prep that goes in before the evening starts. And, what I loved about your--and you talk about it quite a bit in the book--besides the, what we might call, 'blocking and tackling, nuts and bolts' of the evening, there's also a chance to deliver messages that establish your culture. Will Guidara: Yeah. I mean, pre-meal--for anyone listening to this who has not worked in a restaurant dining room, that's the 30-minute meeting we have right before we open the doors and go into service. It's a meeting that most restaurants have. It's a meeting that is wasted at most restaurants. A wasted pre-meal happens when you spend the entire time talking about ideas that could clearly be communicated via an email. Right? That 30-minute meeting, often called a daily huddle in other industries, is in my view, the greatest opportunity a leader has to actually lead the people around them. And that happens when you don't only talk about the what. Obviously you need to cover logistics, housekeeping, whatever changes-- Russ Roberts: Surprises-- Will Guidara: Yeah. But also, the how and the why. When, as a leader, you are keeping your eyes peeled for inspiration out in the world and then bringing that home to inspire your team or inviting them to do the same. I believe the reason why TED Talks [Technology, Entertainment, and Design Talks/videos] are so unbelievably popular is because we all really crave and need inspiration, and yet a lot of people have no one in their lives who has answered the call to inspire them, and so they need to farm it out to the Internet in order to find it. They need to farm it out to strangers. I believe when that meeting is done well, it's when the people you work with cease being a collection of individuals and come together as a trusting team. In my restaurant, those 30 minutes were far more important than any minute we actually spent serving a paying customer. And, they were effective because I looked at it as one of the most important parts of my job. It wasn't just the 30 minutes a day I spent leading that meeting with my team, but it was the 15, 20 minutes a day I spent earlier in the day making sure that I was prepared for that meeting and knew exactly what I wanted to get out of it. If people don't have a daily huddle, I could not be more encouraging of the idea of bringing one to life, and for everyone listening to this that does, but who has not invested any intention or creativity into that meeting for some time, I implore them to give it another look. Russ Roberts: Yeah. I'll just confess that I have a weekly meeting with my leadership team, and I'm sure they would tell you--we could interview them and get their dishonest--which may be honest--response to what the value of that is. But I know what they think about it, and it's a mixed bag. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not good. Sometimes important decisions get made. Sometimes we talk among ourselves for an hour and a half and then nothing comes of it other than we talked. Now, sometimes that's useful to me because I hear different things about what people feel and I get ideas. It's not wasted. But, I don't approach it with the intentionality you're talking about. And you'd say, 'Well, that's silly. Of course you should. Why wouldn't you?' The answer is because I have a thousand things to do, and if I'm not careful, I view this as an obligation. Once a week I've got to meet with my team and keep them posted, and they have to keep me posted, and that's important, and sometimes good things happen. But, thinking about how to make that valuable or shorter when it need not be an hour and a half is something I don't spend enough time at and your book reminds me to do so. It's an incredibly important example that I think is universal, which is: there are a lot of things we know, but we don't know them enough in our bones to actually get them done. We know them, but we don't embody them, and so I think my meetings will be better going forward. Thank you. Will Guidara: And by the way, it's totally natural. We have a habit of becoming less passionate about the things that are habitual. And, this thing, though, whether it's daily or weekly, by the way, depending on industry, it's the most scalable investment of your time that you can actually make, because you have the ability to breathe into the people that are breathing into so many more people. That's where you increase your bandwidth. My one tip for people on these things is: you don't need to be the only one that leads it. We would mandate people on our team leading pre-meals as well. It would just be on the schedule. You could be a busboy and you'd check your schedule and five weeks from now you were leading pre-meal on Thursday night. Which, by the way, I believe leadership is something you do through your actions. I also believe that it's something you do through your words, and one of the best investments I can make into the people on my team is to teach them how to be better public speakers; and compelling them to step outside of their comfort zone to do that is a pretty powerful thing. Russ Roberts: Yeah. It is kind of extraordinary how habituation--how easy it is to be habituated to something that's not what it should be. Because, 'They all know what the right thing is. They don't need me to remind them. They know.' But, they don't. They don't know what the way we're--I mentioned before. Will Guidara: I think we have an alarming tendency to undervalue the power of repetition. If there is something that is important to you, something that you want to see consistently embraced or embodied in your culture, you'd better say it enough times that you grow sick of hearing yourself say it. We had things--in these pre-meals, there were two buckets of things I'd talk about. One: I'd see something or I'd have a conversation and I'd be inspired by it. And, I'd go back to the team and I'd talk about it every day for a week. And then never again. I'll give you an example. I did a virtual talk/conversation with the team at Lululemon yesterday. And, I logged onto the call, it was like a thousand or 2000 of their people all over the country, and they were launching some new ideas, internal things within their company, and they brought me on to talk about unreasonable hospitality. But, I was on 20 minutes early for a tech check. But then, I was just listening in. And so, now it's five minutes before I'm meant to start, and the maître d' or the MC [Master of Ceremonies] or whatever you call it of the call says, 'All right guys, we're going to take five. Be back in exactly five minutes. If you need to, go use the restroom, get a drink or whatever.' And, if you're all good, then you know what time it is. And, music starts blaring through my computer screen. And all of a sudden all these windows open up on my screen and hundreds of people from all over the country are having a full-on dance party over Zoom. There's screens with eight people in a playground, 12 people in a conference room, a bunch of people in one of their stores. Their entire culture is dancing together. And, by the way, it's like 11:15 in the morning or something. Russ Roberts: That's great. Will Guidara: I was so inspired by that. Them. Seriously. Like, how many people do these virtual meetings and how many people have never thought to invest any creativity into making the bathroom break a little bit more connective and re-energizing? So, I might do that; and I'd go back to my team and I would tell that story every day for a week. Is that at all applicable to--someone on my team will do something about their job more effectively because they were inspired by something they connected with in that story. Then, there was another category of things that I'd talk about. I called them the permanent collection. Ideas that I would return to month after month after month after month because they were for me in non-negotiables in terms of things that I wanted to embody as a culture. And, if those things exist and you don't return to them over and over and over again--Newsflash! Your culture will stop embodying them. |
| 31:43 | Russ Roberts: Yeah. It's fascinating. I'm going to say something a little surprising perhaps, which is: there's a bizarre parallel between the kitchen of a world-class restaurant and childbirth. I remember when we had our first kid--it's not what you think, though. I know what you're thinking. That's not what I meant. And, you could think a lot of things actually, but we'll leave those unsaid. When we had our first kid, I was very nervous about it because of having seen many movies about where a woman gives birth in a hospital--the typical scene is a woman is on a gurney, she's being pushed with six people on her side at 70 miles an hour, and she's screaming. And everybody's screaming. It's chaos. Well, most of childbirth delivery is sitting around waiting for the next round of contractions. It's nothing like in the movies. And, I was struck by the fact--a couple of times you talk about tables, they were either in the kitchen special tables for guests or tables that overlook the kitchen. You mention the silence of a well-run kitchen, because it's a lot of people doing a lot of in intense things at once, and they need to keep their heads straight and they need to stay focused. But, in the movies--and I love cooking/kitchen movies, chef movies, TV series like The Bear, which we're going to talk about in a minute. It's chaos and screaming. But evidently it's not really like that. Am I getting that right? Will Guidara: Well, yes, and-- Russ Roberts: That's true of childbirth, too. There are sometimes screaming; but yeah. Will Guidara: No; I think it's more that there's just different types of restaurants. And, there are certainly restaurants out there that--I mean listen, like, the reality of it is, is: what kind of leader yells? An immature leader. And then, leaders grow up and they become more mature and they stop yelling. Or some leaders are just more mature from the beginning, and some leaders never grow up and never become mature. And so, like, the culture in any business is defined by the leader. So, there are some kitchens where people are yelling and screaming and they're super-disrespectful and they're dirty and they're disorganized, and there are others that are just better. But, the reason we're used to seeing the versions of the yelling ones on TV is because a silent kitchen does not make for great television. Russ Roberts: I know. And you need conflict to make drama interesting. You write: The right way to do things starts with how you polish a wine glass. End of quote. Explain what you mean by that. And then, if you could, now, many of our listeners are not watching this video--most of them are listening on audio; if you could at least use your words--how do you polish a wine glass? Will Guidara: I mean, I'll explain to you--I could have honestly said anything there. It could have been polishing a fork, polishing a wine glass. It could have been setting a table. The point is, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything; and you can't decide which things you're going to choose to be intentional in pursuit of. Excellence is a hugely important part of creating a culture of unreasonable hospitality. Right? Like, it's a prerequisite to it. Now, my entire thesis is that excellence is merely table stakes. Unreasonable hospitality is where you turn it from black and white into color. That's how you actually develop the kind of competitive advantage that is very, very lasting. But, the idea is that we strive for perfection. And then you need to realize that perfection is unattainable, and people choose to respond to that realization in one of two ways: They either stop trying or they try to get as close to it as anyone else has. And, for me, it's just the idea that really excellence is thousands of little details executed perfectly. And when you stop thinking about perfection as a whole and instead break it down into all of its little parts, focusing on every single one of them with the same amount of rigor and discipline, you can get a whole lot closer to it than you think. Polishing a wine glass: you need the right type of napkin that is lint-free, and then you need to hold it right at the very top of the stem, and you need to go into the bowl out and around and then get the base. It's a laborious process if you want to do it correctly, but you can't decide when to care. Russ Roberts: And, you have to polish every glass. This is alarming. Right? I'm thinking, 'Why are you polishing a wine glass?' I don't get it. But it gleams and glistens and looks better when you put a napkin in it, I guess. Will Guidara: Well, for people listening at home: when you run your dishwasher, how long does it take? No, no, no. How long does it take to run your dishwasher at home? Russ Roberts: An hour. Yeah. Will Guidara: Yeah. Restaurant dishwashers take 30 seconds. Russ Roberts: Oh. Oh. Will Guidara: They're better in their cleaning of it. But when a glass comes out of your dishwasher at home, if it's even a remotely new dishwasher, there's the drying cycle and there's the venting cycle. There's all this stuff. A restaurant: It comes out wet, and then it air dries, and then that's when the spots get on there. And you can't have spots in a glass because people think it's dirty. It's not dirty, it's just--whatever. Russ Roberts: Yeah. That's very cool. |
| 37:50 | Russ Roberts: I know people in the restaurant business, and there's an incredible camaraderie. You talk about this a little bit, but there's an incredible camaraderie among the servers, bartenders, and others. Why is it so strong? Now, it's rare in other industries, partly maybe because a lot of people eat out and they're going to be in a restaurant with other people who work in that restaurant, and so they encounter each other, which you don't do in many other businesses. But, it seems there's a really special bond between people who do this job that all through the business--not just the high end and not just the chef--but everybody. Will Guidara: Interestingly, I thought it was singular until I started working on The Bear and saw that in television, actually it's the same thing. I think what it really comes down to is a few different things. People that are doing something chiefly out of a genuine passion for that work. I understand some people are working at restaurants either because that's the only choice they have in life, or they're doing it as they pursue something else. The kind of restaurants I've always worked at are a lot of really, really passionate people who could make a lot more money and work a lot less doing other things, but they're doing it because this is what they love. So, one: a shared passion. Two: a lot of hours. And, three: hours that are different from other people's normal hours. And so, this group truly ends up becoming your community, because, when you're at work, the people that used to be your friends are off and vice versa. I found the same thing in television production or movie production where these people go off on these shoots. They're working endless hours. They're in some faraway place. They're in these little rooms together. And, you have this kind of life-defining thing in common, which is: you are all unbelievably passionate about the same thing. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Part of it also, I think, is there's hardships that only the people in the business understand. We didn't talk about it, but there's pressure--a lot of pressure--in your business and in restaurants at every level. And, most people don't think about that. They just expect you to smile at them when you come to the table. And, it's really hard. And, I talk about a lot in football. Football looks like a game, but it's a war for the participants. They hurt each other, they get hurt, and they have an unbelievable respect for each other because they know what it's like to play through pain in a way that the rest of us enjoying the spectacle can't. So, I think there's definitely an empathetic part to it that creates part of that bond. |
| 40:42 | Russ Roberts: Let's talk about The Bear for a minute. I don't want to close with it, but I do want to touch on it. What's your role in that series? Which is an amazing series--if you haven't seen it, folks. Will Guidara: Thank you. So, I'm a co-producer and a writer on it. What that means beyond the titles is: Chris Storer, who is the creator of the show, has become a good friend of mine. I just love, love this man and his creativity and his approach to everything that goes into it. He is the show. There's all these amazing people on the team, but it really comes back to him. But, he does it in the most ego-less and fully collaborative way, understanding that the best ideas are ones that are developed as a community. So, I'll be in the writers' room in the very beginning, and then they'll go off and write it, and then it'll come back to me. An, I'm there in part for accuracy around the industry and in part because we all just get along together really, really well and are good at being creative alongside one another. As a producer, I get to design that restaurant. Favorite restaurant I ever designed, because I didn't have to run it. And so, it's all about just, like, kind of world-making a little bit. Russ Roberts: Yeah. It's fun. I haven't seen Season Three yet, and I thought Season One could have ended the show. It was such a beautiful narrative arc, and the way the last episode ended--of course, it's fun to have another season. But the second season, if I'm getting this right, had the episode "Forks." And, "Forks" is your wine glass example. It's: one of the employees of the restaurant, Richie, has been farmed out to a higher-end restaurant to learn; and his first task is to polish forks, which he finds demeaning. You can tell Chris: I think it's one of the finest 30 minutes of visual storytelling ever. It tears your heart out. The acting is spectacular. The dialogue is spectacular. And, there's an incredible lesson there for life and his interaction with Olivia Colman. It's just a masterpiece. It's a gem. The series is great. It's funny, it's tragic, it's fabulous, but "Forks" is perfection. It's really special and it's clearly influenced by you. Will Guidara: Thank you. And, that's also the riff on the hot dog story is in there. Russ Roberts: Yeah. The pizza. Yeah. I caught that. Will Guidara: But, yeah, I love that episode. You know what I love about that episode so much is: one of the central ideas I tried to communicate in the book is that, like I said before, everyone has hospitality in them. They just need someone to inspire it out of them. And, there are different ways you can do it. Through words: If you're passionate about something and you're willing to be openly passionate about that thing, it can become contagious through the golden rule, treating people the way you want them to treat--well, in this case others. Or, through just compelling people to do it a little bit because that feeling of bestowing graciousness upon others is so good and it becomes so addictive so quickly. And, as much as I try to communicate that through the written word in the book, the transformation of Richie and then racing home in his car, listening to Taylor Swift, it just communicates it in a really, really poignant and profound way. Russ Roberts: And, I just realized something, and I've watched it maybe three times because I like it so much. And, I almost played it for my staff here. English is their second language. I'm in Israel. I don't know if you can get it with Hebrew subtitles--but I thought this is insane: I'm not going to do that to them. But, I talk a lot on the show about how growing up requires recognizing that you're not the center of the universe and you have to find things greater than yourself. Some people can do that through meditation, some do it through religion, some do it through literature. But, I realize now: hospitality is another way to do that. I mean, there's a thousand things that are special about that episode, but the biggest takeaway--which we're not going to spoil for the listeners who haven't seen it yet--is Richie's transformation, which we watch unfold in real time. And, what he learns both about hospitality, himself and what he should be doing with his life, is magnificent. That's why it's a masterpiece, by the way--because those are not small things to convey in a way that touch someone, and you managed to do it there. Will Guidara: I think what they did, the proper TV guise[?] on that was just using every sense. The music, the songs, lighting, the tempo. It's like watching a great comedian: you could tell the exact same joke they told and it wouldn't be funny, but because of their perfect timing, it makes it work. Russ Roberts: And, that's why when, if you said, well, a key part of this is going to be a person peeling a grape, you'ld say that's not going to work. But it works. It almost moves you to tears. I may have cried a couple of times when I've seen it. I mean, it's unbelievable. |
| 46:27 | Russ Roberts: We've got a few minutes left. I want to have a few quick questions. You can answer them a little longer if you want. But, what's the best hospitality you've received in a restaurant or elsewhere? Will Guidara: I've been lucky to receive a lot of it, especially since the book came out. But, one quick story. I brought my daughter--we were in Palm Beach, me and my wife and my daughter. And, there's a hotel called The Breakers there, which is just old school, significant, famous. I wanted to go there. My wife is a pastry chef. I wanted to get key lime pie. And so, we went for dinner and we're pulling up; and I hadn't been to The Breakers in so long, I'd forgotten what it looked like. And it kind of looks like a castle. I have a three-year-old daughter at that point. And so, as we're driving up, I'm like, 'Baby, this is the castle from Frozen.' And, I'm talking to her about how this princess is up there and this one's over there. And we go into the restaurant, and I just--and she's like, 'Oh my God, am I going to meet Elsa?' And, I'm like, 'I don't know. Babe, if she's home, I bet she'll come down and see you.' And so, when we're going into the restaurant, I said to the maître d'--I was like, 'Can you do me a big favor? Can you just come over to the table in 30 minutes and just say, 'Hey, Frankie, Elsa's actually not home right now, but she heard you're here and she just wanted to say she hopes you have a great dinner.'?' That's all I asked. He did come over 30 minutes later, except he had a magic wand and a tiara and this fake pearl necklace, and he said, 'Elsa's not here right now, but Frankie, she heard your're here and she wanted to give you some gifts just to make sure you knew how much she appreciated you visiting her house.' I've received a lot of hospitality for me--people researching me, people coming up with cool things for me. The best way to love on someone is to love on the people they love. And, they did that. Russ Roberts: That's beautiful. That's just beautiful. |
| 48:39 | Russ Roberts: You left Eleven Madison Park. You split from your longtime partner, the chef there, Daniel Humm. Have you eaten there since? Will Guidara: I have not. My family and I actually moved to Nashville. And I make an effort to--I have two little kids. I travel a lot these days for work. And, if you travel a lot and you have two little kids, it means when you're home, you just want to be home. And, New York City is not the place to live if one you're home, you just want to be home. Man, it's just been so good. I convinced my mother-in-law to also move there. So, Grandma is two blocks away from us. And it's funny: you have restaurants. And for me, the way I ran restaurants, they were like my children. And, it's really fun to actually have real children now. Russ Roberts: Yeah. That's true when you write a book, in my experience. In a way, it's a grotesque thing to say--to say that there's anything similar to a book and a child. But, there is a parallel there. And, the real ones are better. I agree with you. Do you cook? Will Guidara: I do. I married a chef. Russ Roberts: Smart. Will Guidara: And so, she cooks more. But, I love cooking when I get a chance to do it. There's something for me that's very meditative about cooking. If you're cooking--there's two types of cooking. There's: I just got home at 5:15, the nanny is leaving at 5:30, my kids need dinner on the table at 5:40. That's not fun cooking for me. That's just like, get it done. But I love--I make it one of the best spaghetti carbonaras that you could ever have. And, like, there's a process. And, to do that the right way--most people don't do it the right way. But, it's a process and you need to be doing it exactly the right way. And, there's something for me that's really beautiful about that. Russ Roberts: Well, when you're talking about being in a hurry with your kids and you're snapping your fingers and to show the franticness of it, doesn't a world-class chef do that every night in a serious restaurant? Do they miss a contemplative, meditative style of food preparation because they have to be on their game in a way that the rest of us can't imagine? Will Guidara: Well, no. The difference between me being dinner for my kids--I get home at 5:15; I'm, like, 'All right. What am I making for dinner?' You're rummaging through the 'fridge. You're trying to figure it out. As opposed to--in a world-class restaurant, these dishes, they're designed over the course of months. And the prep is done over the course of days, if not weeks. And then, the mise en place is slowly done over the course of the entire day. And, when you get to service, that's just the final crescendo: the moment where it's all coming together. You're not rushing the process. There's this beauty. And, with the service as well--with the design, with every little detail. Like, we pour over those details. We derive unbelievable amounts of pleasure in getting them right. And, we recognize that, like, a perfect three-hour experience takes months to create. Russ Roberts: Give me an example of a complex dish that you loved at Eleven Madison Park that customers loved. Will Guidara: My favorite was the honey lavender glazed Muscovy duck. Dry-aged for two weeks. Exactly what goes on the skin such that the skin is remarkably crispy, yet the meat is still really, really tender--that's--you think about tracing that back. You need to find the right farmer that is raising the right ducks, that has the right fat ratio. And then, you need to find the right temperature to dry age them at. And, you need to experiment for a very, very long time to figure out how long should you be aging them? And then, how long do you cook them? and is that too much sichuan peppercorn versus lavender versus honey versus black pepper? And then, on a seasonal basis, what puree are you putting on the plate and what is the jus? And, you better make sure that you're really investing time and energy and unbelievable patience into that jus. And then, what is the wine you're pouring with it? What plate are you going to serve it on? What's the perfect mise en place? How do you course that into the meal? Do you do--you're only serving the breast when you do a dry-aged bird, right? Because that's the thickest part of the bird. And so, the other stuff just is not edible by the time you're done dry-aging a bird. So, people order the duck; so they probably want the duck meat as well. Is there an opportunity to do a pre-course before the breast that's maybe a little bit of a duck confit of the leg on a salad or something even more creative than that? And, if you're going to do that, is there a fun way to serve that so it's more of, like, a canapé leading up to that dish? You can go on, like, forever. And that's the beauty of feeling passionate about something: that, no idea is ever done. And, if you create the right culture, where it's not about whose idea it is, it's about what the best idea is, and nothing is ever not open to challenge no matter how long you've been doing it a certain way, it's just great. |
| 54:45 | Russ Roberts: You quote your dad a lot in the book. How would you summarize his influence on you? Will Guidara: My dad is the most important person when it comes to who I am today. He's my best friend. He's obviously my dad. He's my greatest mentor. He's my forever mentor. I talk about mentorship a lot. There's mentors that come in and out of your life. To this day: I have a difficult decision to make, he's my first call. He is kind, he is generous, he is strong, he is compassionate, he is vulnerable, he's funny, he is hardworking, and most of all, he lives with a level of integrity that I have yet to witness in another human being. Russ Roberts: That's beautiful. What's next for you? Are you doing it, what's next? Is this it? Will Guidara: I'm doing it. Russ Roberts: Consulting? What else is on your plate, if I may ask? Will Guidara: We host conferences. I'm working on books. We do some consulting. I do speaking. My team does training workshops. I work on The Bear, and more television will come after that. I'm writing music, now that I live in Nashville. I have a bunch of Grammy Award-winning songwriter friends. I'm actually doing songwriting sessions with them. I've spent my entire life operating with a maniacal focus on one thing. The gift I got from COVID was--I was about to open a bunch more[?] restaurants and then COVID hit, and I'm so grateful for COVID for that one reason: is that it gave me the grace to not just run right back to what I'd always done, but to take some time and decide what I wanted to do next. What I want to do next is wherever my heart brings me on an annual basis. I want to create enough space in my life that I can pursue different passions, because I love this idea of getting to the end of it--my life--and looking back and feeling the joy or pride of having seized upon all of my strengths and passions and scaled a few different mountains along the way. Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Will Guidara. His book is Unreasonable Hospitality. Will, thanks for being part of EconTalk. |
What can the restaurant business teach us about leadership and management? Listen as Will Guidara, the former owner of Eleven Madison Park, explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts how his restaurant became good enough to be named the best restaurant in the world. Foodies will enjoy a look behind the scenes of a restaurant at the very top of its game, but the lessons for leadership and organizational culture are useful for anyone interested in creating and sustaining excellence.
READER COMMENTS
Shalom Freedman
Mar 10 2025 at 11:01am
This conversation opened to me a completely new way of thinking about a world I had a great deal of experience in my younger years. My uncles of blessed memory were in the restaurant business. It was in no way thought of as the hospitality business. It was about making money. My famous uncle the Toots Shor of Washington Duke Zeibert was very much into greeting and giving priority and place to the bigshots in Politics and Sport. This was different from thinking about providing the best possible experience to everyone who entered the restaurant. But that world had a kind of color and character I feel has no place in the kind of experience Will Guidara describes to Russ Roberts. In fact, the world of providing the best tasting duck in the world seems to me in some way ridiculous and trivial. Life is something quite different from making everyone feel good all the time. As I think of it, the restaurant world I remember especially in the Saratoga Restaurant ‘The Wishing Well’ that my uncles of blessed memory Jack and Irving (Reddy) Zeibert ran was worlds away from the perfect team cooperation Guidera aimed at in his restaurant. There were conflicts and arguments between staff and with customers who had one too many too many times.
This said Guidera has many insights about something I know very little about, the world of leadership. In this area he and Russ seemed to be very much in happy agreement with each other.
Ajit Kirpekar
Mar 10 2025 at 1:15pm
I enjoyed this podcast episode, but I found myself disagreeing with the guest on a few issues:
1) Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, Joel Robuchon. All three are/were world class all time great chefs. They are also at times(at all times?) known for being irascible, combative and even sometimes violent leaders. Gordon’s personality has become a bit of a caricature at this point, but Marcus Waring, Claire Smyth, and top chef winner Buddha Lo all speak glowingly about him as a chef, mentor, and leader.
2) I felt like the guests ideals about hiring and who makes a good employee were bordering on the kind of Romanticism that Russ is usually wary to indulge in. In my experience as a tech worker, There are so many different kinds of aspects to the job that some Excel at and some don’t and success is really about the right manager finding the appropriate task for your skill set. Some engineers are great builders of features but not of full architectural design. Some are great communicators with stakeholders. Some are better managers of people. I met a lot of talented engineers who are not married to the job or see it as a fulfilling life mission, but are nonetheless quite good. Some are happy to teach and mentor and indulge my questions. Others are curmudgeonly and prefer to be left alone.
Since football was mentioned, I’ll draw an analogy to football. There are a lot of great football players who worked hard Monday through Saturday, studying the game and understanding the deep nuances of it. There are a lot of other great players who admittedly did the very bare minimum Monday through Saturday, but were naturally talented on Sunday that it didn’t matter. Patrick Mahomes wins games in a completely different way than Tom Brady or Peyton Manning did. Hall of famer Jared Allen studied a repertoire of pass rushing moves while Hall of famer Dwight Freeney relied on speed and a spin move and would spend a lot of time honing his diet to maintain his lighting speed. Von Miller ate fried chicken and smoked pot during his early days but was still a dominant player.
3) Finally, I had the pleasure of eating at 11 Madison Park back when the guest was there. It is therefore truly ironic that my experience was almost the complete opposite of what he described. I’ve been at enough of these three Michelin star, San Pellegrino top 100s to know what to expect. By contrast, 11 park seemed to take a casual spin to the usual stuffy fine dining atmosphere. It’s ambiance resembled a busy midtown restaurant with lots of bustle and hearty conversations from neighboring tables. The servers were cordial, but hardly providing the kind of personal concierge service the guest described.
In that sense, the service I found to be fine but largely an afterthought. It was actually the food I remember quite vividly. 11 Park has the distinction of serving the single greatest plate of food I’ve ever eaten – a savory cheese cake dish that was utterly scrumptious. They also served a terrific fois gras dish and lamb dish. Absolutely stunning. Their cheese course was also a play on a traditional cheese course, light and airy bread rolls filled with gooey melted cheese but with the strong aroma of traditional hard long aged cheeses.
However, it was also memorable for serving two dishes I did not care for. One was a lobster dish served under a simple tomato broth and an escargot dish wrapped in seaweed. I found both were plagued by the overwhelming sourness that overwhelmed every other flavor.
Russ Roberts
Mar 11 2025 at 12:03pm
Actually much of the book is about getting people with very particular skills and lots of shortcomings into the right roles given that mix. And a lot of the goal of Guidara’s vision of Eleven Madison Park (which is captured in the book but not our conversation) was to have it be a less formal more casual model of fine dining. When you only have an hour, some nuance gets lost.
Bryan Todd
Mar 10 2025 at 3:30pm
In the ancient story, Isaac’s servant went out looking for a wife for him.
It was in an encounter at a town well that Rebekah stood out.
He asked her for a drink. She obliged, and then went above and beyond: she offered to water his ten camels as well.
This was his sign that she was someone special.
(Genesis 24)
Russ Roberts
Mar 11 2025 at 12:04pm
Love it. The first example of unreasonable hospitality. There is nothing new under the sun…
Gregg Tavavares
Mar 10 2025 at 9:43pm
Random thoughts / shares
(1) The idea that hospitality can be raised to another level reminded me of the 1937 movie “History is Made at Night”. If you’ve never seen it check it out! It’s the first movie that made me feel like the greeter (no idea what the proper name of that position is) can be one of the most important people at the restaruant.
(2) Maybe similar to Ajit’s comment but, hiring who you think will fit in sounds great. I’d like to be with people I fit with. But, there’s a lot of push back on that type of idea because often it means “people like us” which, for example in tech, is Brogrammer. So, companies are pushed not to use “fit” or “I’d like to work with this person” as a hiring signal as they think or have been told it prevents diversity. I don’t have any idea how to reconcile those things.
(3) I’d like to hear a few more thoughts on The Bear from others. I tried watching when my friends got into it and I wasn’t quite into that people could be so mean to each other, people intetionally sabotaging recipes, and the episode where Richie gets a bunch of kids drugged just seemed too unbelievable for me. My friends who recommended The Bear were also into Succession which I’d poorly summarize as “Bad people being bad to each other” which isn’t my thing but The Bear seemed to be heading in that direction. Does it change or is it basically more of the same as it goes on?
Anthony
Mar 12 2025 at 2:33pm
I love these episodes about real businesses. I recall another restaurateur from a few years ago, a lady, she too emphasized the importance of a competent dish washer (an individual, not a machine). Some of my takeaways from this one: try to inspire, repetition to reinforce culture, constant training, give people opportunities to lead (the story of a bus boy leading meetings). Now to nitpick, a high end dining is an experience most of us do not experience, so while all this was interesting, much of it was unrelatable.
Tony Martyr
Mar 12 2025 at 6:45pm
Great conversation – I’ve said this before, but this one was one of your best. There is a lot in his leadership and organisational culture philosophy, and it can be taken usefully out of that context into many others. While I was listening, I was thinking about the things that work in the great team I have currently, and there was a lot of congruence. You always surprise, Russ.
Luke J
Mar 20 2025 at 4:25pm
Customers are adult children who scream and cry when their selfish expectations are unmet. You can treat them kindly and respectfully, but keep hospitality to friends and family.