CHAPTER 4

LESSONS IN ENLIGHTENED HOSPITALITY

It was at Tabla that I learned the power of being the underdog. Tabla transformed contemporary Indian cuisine in the United States-and the engine behind that transformation was Chef Floyd Cardoz, who cooked food inspired by his Goan heritage. Despite its critical success, Tabla never did the business other restaurants in the company did, but Floyd insisted we wear our outsider status like a badge of honor. Meanwhile, he kept his head down, pumping out some of the best food in the city.

Eleven Madison Park and Tabla had opened at the same time, but EMP had gotten two stars from The New York Times , while Tabla had earned a coveted three. This was a huge win for upscale Indian cuisine, and a real tribute to Floyd's stubborn intensity and the true deliciousness of his food.

Floyd wanted the new dining room managers to respect what went on in his kitchen, so every one of us did a brief trail when we started. I showed up, naively assuming I was there to observe the cooks at work on the line; instead, I was ushered to the prep kitchen and given a bucket of shrimp to devein. I spent the next three hours elbow-deep in shrimp guts.

The next day, Floyd asked me to chop an onion. It was terrifying. I'd done a little cooking and attended some culinary classes in college, but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to do it to his standard, and I didn't. Floyd didn't yell, but he did toss my onion in the trash and take the knife out of my hand so he could show me how to do it correctly. Watching the intensity and respect and focus he brought to that most humble of kitchen tasks was a good preview for what was to come.

Two things happen when the best leaders walk into a room. The people who work for them straighten up a little, making sure that everything's perfect-and they smile, too. That's how we were with Floyd. Tabla was his big crazy dream, and everyone who worked for him would do whatever we could to help him make it a success.

Tough as he was, it was impossible not to love Floyd and his huge grin. The childlike wonder on his face as he watched us taste a mind-blowing new dish for the first time was a gift as inspiring as his food.

Go Above and Beyond

In Setting the Table , Danny Meyer's groundbreaking book about enlightened hospitality, he tells a story about a couple celebrating their anniversary at one of his restaurants. Midway through their meal, they remember they've left a bottle of champagne in the freezer. They call the sommelier over to ask if it's likely to explode before they get home (almost certainly yes). The sommelier saves the day by taking their keys and rescuing the bottle, so the couple can relax and finish their celebratory meal. When they arrive home, they find the champagne safely tucked into their fridge, along with a tin of caviar, a box of chocolates, and an anniversary card from the restaurant.

Eventually, that gesture became one of our steps of service. The host would ask guests, 'How'd you get here tonight?' If they responded, 'Oh, we drove,' he'd follow up with, 'Cool! Where'd you park?' If they told him they were by a meter on the street, he asked which car was theirs so one of us could run out and drop a couple of quarters into the box while they were dining.

That story and many others like it circulated through the company. They primed every one of us to seek out new ways to make our guests' experiences a little more seamless, relaxing, and delightful. And so, the first time a guest mentioned she was going to have to get up, midmeal, to feed the meter a few blocks away, it was natural for us to offer to do that for her.

This gesture was the definition of a grace note, a sweet but nonessential addition to your experience. It was an act of hospitality that didn't even take place within the walls of the restaurant! But this simple gift-worth fifty cents-blew people's minds.

Systemizing it turned it from an act of heroism into a matter of course, like checking your coat or offering a dessert menu. And the more normal it became for us to give this little gift, the more extraordinary it seemed to be for the people receiving it.

Enthusiasm Is Contagious

Randy Garutti, who went on to be the CEO of Shake Shack, was the general manager at Tabla when I started working there.

Danny's partner Richard Coraine would often tell us, 'All it takes for something extraordinary to happen is one person with enthusiasm.' Randy was that person.

Randy was a wildly positive presence and an unabashed cheerleader for everyone who worked for him-the perfect foil for Floyd's intensity, and an ideal delivery system for Union Square Hospitality Group's signature combination of energy and integrity.

He'd played competitive sports his whole life and brought both an athlete's tireless work ethic and a coach's sense of mentorship and team spirit to everything he did. His pre-meal meetings mimicked the rousing, before-the-big-game locker-room speeches you see in the movies and invariably ended with him pumping his fist at us in encouragement: 'C'mon, guys, you've got this!'

For a recent and slightly cynical college graduate, Randy's sunny optimism could sometimes stretch the limits of belief. Ask him how his day was going, and he'd say, 'You know, man, I'm trying to make today the very best day of my life .' I might have rolled my eyes, but that kind of unwavering positivity turned out to be impossible to resist, largely because Randy believed every bit of what he was saying-and, before long, so did we.

Randy's animation was a wave that picked you up, whether you wanted it to or not, which was why he could face a crew of the distracted, the hungry, and the very-probably-hungover-and turn them into his own personal army. It was from him I learned: Let your energy impact the people you're talking to, as opposed to the other way around.

'You okay if I get out of here a little early?' he'd ask, tossing me the keys to the front door. As a twenty-two-year-old, I was thrilled to be left in charge. If the boss was gone, then I was the bosswhich is why I worked harder when Randy was gone than when he was there.

Randy also instilled in us a sense of ownership by finding ways to demonstrate his faith in our judgment.

More important, I never forgot how much his trust meant to me, which is why developing a sense of ownership in the people who worked for me would become a priority for me as soon as I was the one tossing the keys.

Language Creates Culture

Danny has always understood how language can build culture by making essential concepts easy to understand and to teach. He is brilliant at coining phrases around common experiences, potential pitfalls, and favorable outcomes.

These were repeated, over and over, in emails, in pre-meal meetings, and between staff members at USHG. 'Constant, gentle pressure' was Danny's version of the Japanese phrase kaizen , the idea that everyone in the organization should always be improving, getting a little better all the time. 'Athletic hospitality' meant always looking for a win, whether you were playing offense (making an already great experience even better) or defense (apologizing for and fixing an error). 'Be the swan' reminded us that all the guest should see was a gracefully curved neck and meticulous white feathers sailing across the pond's surface-not the webbed feet, churning furiously below, driving the glide.

There were tons more of these, usually hooked to real-life stories, like the champagne rescued from the freezer. If you had one, you were encouraged to share it so it could become part of the canon, too.

My favorite was 'Make the charitable assumption,' a reminder to assume the best of people, even when (or perhaps especially when) they weren't behaving particularly well. So, instead of immediately expressing disappointment with an employee who has shown up late and launching into a lecture on how they've let down the team, ask first, 'You're late; is everything okay?'

Because of Danny's book Setting the Table , many of these concepts and catchphrases have made it into the culture at large.

Danny encouraged us to extend the charitable assumption to our guests as well. When someone is being difficult, it's human nature to decide they no longer deserve your best service. But another approach is to think, 'Maybe the person is being dismissive because their spouse asked for a divorce or because a loved one is ill. Maybe this person needs more love and more hospitality than anyone else in the room.'

We were introduced to many of these concepts on our very first day, at the meeting for new hires. Those meetings were in themselves unusual; my Cornell friends had gone on to work for large restaurant companies who didn't do anything of the sort. And the importance of those meetings within USHG's culture sent an immediate signal: 'There's a certain way we do things here, and it's bigger than teaching you how you move through the dining room or how to spiel a dish.'

Restaurants are fast-paced work environments, so it was enormously helpful to have an established shorthand. The shared language meant we could offer better hospitality to our guests-and to one another. Because when you start focusing on extending the charitable assumption to the people around you, you find yourself giving it to yourself a bit more as well.

To begin, Danny would ask everyone to introduce themselves with a line or two. We got to know one another a little bit, which made it easy when we needed to ask for a favor or some advice (and came in handy when you were trying to impress a date and stopped by one of the other restaurants for a glass of wine).

But those introductions were also a meta-message. The fact that the head of the company was willing to use at least half of his meeting to take the time to hear from us individually made a big impression. It was our first indication that this central concept of enlightened hospitality-the idea that taking care of one another would take precedence over everything-was real.

Just being in the room felt like joining a movement or accepting a mission-a vibrant and exciting community more important than yourself.

For the rest of the meeting, Danny would walk us through every one of those phrases and the role they played in the culture, showing us right away that words mattered. He didn't focus on the what-he focused on the why. As a result, those meetings were more like class orientations at college than an introduction to company procedures.

'Cult' Is Short for 'Culture'

Friends working at other large hospitality companies across the country could never believe my work stories. Some of them went so far as to make snide remarks: 'Oh, you're working for the cult. . . .'

Danny's management style made it cool to care, which probably did seem laughable if you worked for a different kind of company. But those of us who worked for him couldn't escape the positive repercussions of the culture he'd created, which was designed to make people feel good.

I knew what they meant; between the shared internal language, our avowed dedication to our bosses, and our unconventional commitment to taking care of one another, there was a slightly devotional feeling about USHG. But I have since come to realize that a 'cult' is what people who work for companies that haven't invested enough in their cultures tend to call the companies that have.

We were happy to come to work; our colleagues were happy to come to work. When our bosses walked in, we hustled a little harder-not because we were scared, but because we wanted them to see we were on top of our corner of the world. And every day, we saw guests leaving our restaurants contented, refreshed, and restored. They couldn't wait to come back, and neither could we.

So when Danny announced he was opening a restaurant and jazz club in the Flatiron called Blue Smoke and asked me to be the assistant general manager, I was thrilled. I'd been a musician all my life, and it was a great opportunity for a twenty-two-year-old.

This culture was strong, and it was working. Call it a cult! I was proud to be a part of it, and no amount of name-calling was going to convince me I was wrong.

Which begs the question: Why on earth did I say no?