Danny Meyer

Well, it's about time I got to join you. Thank you so much, Carrie. This is going to be fun.

Well, yeah, thank you for saying that. And interestingly, I can't believe the confluence that it is the actual 20th anniversary of Setting the Table. And there's literally not a day that goes by that I don't hear from somebody or meet somebody, many of whom are completely different professions than what we consider the hospitality industry. And they say this book really spoke to them. I think I didn't teach anybody anything they didn't already feel. But I do think that what Setting the Table did was provide a language for people to say, you know what, I'm not alone in feeling this stuff. Now that I know I'm not alone, and now that I have a story that I can pin that feeling on, I can actually take things that had always been intuitive to me and make them intentional. I think it did that for people. It does that for people. I hope it will continue to do that for people even though it now has a new baby sister.

Well, I don't think I gave any advice in it. I think I told stories. As a matter of fact, in the very introduction, I made it clear that you will never hear me say you should, you ought to. I told stories and talked about how I handled them and then people, you know, can take it from there and do whatever they will with them. And I do think that the stories and some of the lessons I learned have held up. I've made it very, very clear. In fact, I think I opened What Could Possibly Go Right by acknowledging that there is one thing I wish I had not written, and that is right in the first paragraph of Setting the Table, and that was when I proudly proclaimed that in whatever it had been, almost 25 years, we had opened a huge number of restaurants and never had the experience of closing one, as if that were something to be incredibly proud of. I wish I had not written that. But outside of that, I think that everything has stood the test of time because we use Setting the Table as, you know, kind of a compass for how we do business at USHG and also at Shake Shack, and it has stood the test of time. There are a few things that I wish I had perhaps made more clear, and I'll tell you what they are. I think that I spent a lot of time in Setting the Table talking about how we focus on hiring 51 percenters. And for us, we want a 100 percent employee, just like any employee would want a 100 percent employer. And we're pretty clear that 51 percent of what makes up that hundred are someone's emotional hospitality skills. And 49 percent of what we're looking for are someone's technical skills. And we don't want to hire someone who's a great cook but isn't great for the morale of the team. And we don't really want to hire someone who's great for the morale of the team but can't cook their way out of a paper bag. I think that in the years, in the 20 years since writing Setting the Table, I realize that I don't back off any of that which you just heard me say, but I do think that we're much more clear that we're not looking for 51 percenters. We're looking for 100 percenters. Because in the years after I wrote Setting the Table, my own team, I think, was way too focused on the emotional skills at the expense sometimes of the technical skills. And that doesn't work. I don't want to bring home a 51 on my test any more than I want to bring back a 49. I want to bring back something as close to 100 as I can get.

Well, that's very... Yes. I have no idea why on that day I ate exactly two peanuts. That's not typically what I do. I may have to have some peanuts during the course of this conversation we're having. I always keep a jar or a can of peanuts in my top shelf. When I get hungry, I pour a handful. I have no idea why only two came out that day.

I'm no Obama.

Yeah, he has. Very excited. Matter of fact, I'll tell you quickly. There is a story that I wrote for What Could Possibly Go Right. And unfortunately, my remarkable editor cut it, so I'm going to have to use it some other time, but I'm going to share with you and your listeners. This was at Maialino and I was in my office on a Friday afternoon kind of tying up the week and thinking about the week ahead. My assistant was in the office. She said, 'Get away from your computer because I need your attention. I need to get home. I've got, you know, my baby is at home and I promised I was going to get there.' So, I moved away. We started talking about the week ahead and all of a sudden my phone starts beeping and it was a text message from Sam Kass who was the White House chef and he said, 'Go to your email right now.' So I excused myself and I said, 'I actually have to look at my computer.' His email simply said, 'I have good news and bad news. Call me.' So I called him on his phone and he said, 'The good news is I'm off tonight. The bad news is you're not.' And that was the first time, this was Friday afternoon at 4:00, and it was the first time I learned that President Obama would be at Maialino for dinner with a party of eight and that they were coming in at 5:45 for a pre-theater table. They were going to see Raisin in the Sun. The first thing I said, 'Sam, how come this is the first time hearing it?' Because when the Secret Service is prepping the space, nobody gets to know. The only person in your whole restaurant that knows is the general manager. And so I said, 'All right, so what does success look like, Sam?' And he goes, 'It's real simple. Every Friday night, the president treats himself to two things: a really good steak and a really cold vodka martini. And so make sure to have a really good steak on hand. And I would take your two best bottles of vodka unopened, put them in the freezer because he doesn't like it shaken. He just likes it poured.' So the vodka part was easy. But our chef at the time, Nick Ander, had recently taken steak off the menu. He had seen a film about the horrors of beef. And we had a Roman trattoria with no beef on the menu. And I go, 'Hm.' So, by luck, the general manager of Union Square Cafe was right down the hall paying a visit to our office. And I said, 'You guys still have that Snake River Farm steak, don't you?' And he said, 'Yep.' And I said, 'I need you to get two of them up to Maialino immediately.' He didn't ask me. I didn't tell him. Wanted two in case we messed one up. We're all set now. Oh, Sam Kass also said, 'By the way, the president's going to want to meet you. They want to say hi to you.' I work my way up to the restaurant. The police will not let me get through Gramercy Park. Not on any of the side streets, not nothing. I take out all my ID. It took a neighbor saying he actually is the guy that owns the restaurant to allow me to get in. So now I go get into the restaurant, go through the magnetometer. Now it's probably about 6:45 or 7 at this point. And I had told the staff, I said, 'Whatever you do, make sure that the check is down by 7:20 because we cannot make the president late for the theater.' So, I'm kind of hanging out at the bar and a Secret Service guy comes up to me and he says, 'Things are going well. The president's going to want to see you.' And it's now getting later and later and later. And I'm starting to freak out. I don't want to be the restaurant that made the president late for the theater. It's now 7:25. The check is not down. The waiter comes up and says, 'Who do you give the check to when it's the president?' I said, 'I honestly don't know. Just get the check down.' I asked the Secret Service guy. I said, 'We can't make him late.' He said, 'Do you really think they're going to start the theater without the president there? He's got to be the last one in.' And I said, 'What about traffic?' He said, 'Do you really think there's going to be traffic for the president?' So literally at 10 minutes till 8, the president leaves. I did get to say hi. He stood up in front of the entire restaurant with me, put his arm around me, and he said something that I will take to my grave with pride. He said, 'Do you realize I would not be president if it were not for your grandfather?' And I said, 'Really?' He said, 'Your grandfather schooled me in preschool, zero to three brain science. He was the only one that backed me when I was running for state senate in Illinois and then of course backed me when I was running for senator. Unfortunately, he never got to see me elected because he died earlier that year.' So, I had to tell that story because I wasn't allowed to tell it in the book.

To this day, don't know who we gave the check to. He was dining with the first lady and with six other friends. One of whom was a former football player who I used to watch in St. Louis. His name when I watched him was Bobby Moore. Later on he became Ahmad Rashad. But I don't know who picked up the check.

I don't think you can. I don't think you can ever comp or you should ever comp a public official.

It took me a while, but I'll tell you what happened. I was doing a fireside chat at Wharton with Adam Grant, who I'm sure you heard about or read stories, books that he's written. And one of the questions Adam asked me was, you know, when you conceive all these different restaurants, what plants the seed in you? My answer was something along the lines of I asked myself what's missing, then I asked myself, well, if we did that thing which is missing, what could possibly go right? Because I always think that's a good way to start if you want to imagine something positive. I can't imagine actually thinking about what could possibly go wrong as the first step to being an entrepreneur. And he really kind of hooked into that. And on the car ride to the restaurant after our fireside chat, he said, 'You are writing a book, aren't you?' And I said, 'Yes, I actually am.' He said, 'You should really consider that as the name.' So, now fast forward like a year after that, I was giving the commencement address at my alma mater, Trinity College, and that's a pretty nerve-wracking thing to do. You really want to bring your best. I just kind of road tested this idea, and I thought about all the things in my life that went right for a few reasons. Number one, I believed it would work and I do believe in the power of positive thinking. But number two, just by putting myself in the game, all kinds of unexpected great things happen. And sometimes in the wake of what I thought were bad things having happened. So for example, I didn't even get into Trinity. I didn't get into any school. Trinity took me off the waitlist. It turned out to be the absolute best thing that could have happened for me because without Trinity, I don't think I'd be a restaurateur. And I traced all those steps when I gave my commencement talk. But just like you, Carrie, I just had people coming up to me afterwards saying, 'What could possibly go right?' Yeah. Yeah. That's it. What could possibly go right? And so between that and Adam, it won out. The book, by the way, when I sent in my book proposal, the book proposal was called Gut Check. And I thought that was a very clever idea because really the book is about all kinds of choices that I have faced, choices we all face in our work and our life. And one of my great lessons has been that my better choices have been when I've listened to my gut.

Wisdom got the best of me and it's like that's not a good name for someone who's also a restaurateur to call their book Gut Check. Just doesn't really fit.

It has. And I think you're absolutely right, Carrie, that the whole industry has changed. I learned that closing a restaurant is not a failure if you learn something. If you don't learn something from it, then maybe there is a bit of failure in it. But you got to be trying stuff. And if you're trying things for the right reasons, it's not a failure. Look, we had a period of several years where I don't know how many different websites had this feature, but I know Eater had a feature for several years which was called Death Watch and they had these big red letters going across a picture of the restaurant and it was like the grim reaper. And I don't really know what percentage of Eater's readers were in the restaurant industry, but it was sending a very clear and loud message to all of us: you better not close your restaurant or you're going to end up... You know, the fact is there are restaurants just like good books where you're done. You're not meant to read a good book for the rest of your life. You're meant to finish it and start a new book. You know, for example, Tabla, which was the restaurant that was the first restaurant I closed, was around for around 13 years. And I've learned in retrospect two things. I probably should have closed it sooner because it wasn't fair to our team members who were not getting raises or promotions for the last two years we were open because we weren't making any money. And secondly, I realized that 13 years is a great run for a restaurant that actually made a meaningful difference in a lot of people's lives. Not just those who worked there, but many, many of our guests who to this day shower me with stories about memories that they had from the restaurant that made their lives better.

It does. I mean, it was my first time ever doing that. There's another of our places that still haunts me to this day that we closed and that's Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard, our barbecue restaurant with a jazz club beneath. That was around for nearly 20 years. And during the pandemic, our landlord just would not budge on giving us any kind of leeway on the rent we were paying. And interestingly, that space remains vacant as of today. But we just...

Doesn't that drive you crazy?

Well, there's one that I walk past all the time that we closed during the pandemic which is called Maialino. And the hotel in which Maialino was, the Gramercy Park Hotel, remains shuttered and has remained shuttered since March of 2020. I write about this a lot in the book, but Maialino will not unfortunately go back to that space, but we have really, really persevered and found an incredible new space for Maialino. So, and I walk by that one almost every day of my life as well. So, I know the feeling you're describing. I've often said that when it really pains you to have lost something, it means it really mattered to you a lot. In the case of Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard, we don't have plans to open another one. But in the case of Maialino, it matters so much. I couldn't stop looking. And so I'm really glad we'll get to bring that back.

That's going to happen right about this time next year.

A whole year. It's going to be in a beautiful building on Irving Place that's being converted from an office building into beautiful apartments. We're all ready to go, but we can't build any faster than the building can have us build.

It does not surprise me. That's why we love being in New York City. New York City is like a forest and there's always tree bark falling off some of the trees to make way for the new trees that are coming in and there's always leaves falling off the trees to make room for the new leaves. But no one is here by accident. No one moved to New York because it was easy or was convenient. People are here because they are doers. They are dreamers. You get access to the best of everything: the best ingredients, the best talent to work with, the most sophisticated guests, including tourists. We have the best restaurant community. And one of the great things because there are so many restaurants here, I don't think most restaurateurs feel competitive with one another. I think they feel supportive of one another.

But I think that's a new thing. I don't think that existed. I think the pandemic really helped to accelerate that by a lot. That for me was a silver lining. We had no choice. But it does not surprise me at all. I do think that the pandemic actually gave rise to some of the best vintages of new restaurants. And here's why. If you went into the pandemic as we did with however many restaurants we had, we were actually saddled with a number of leases that we had signed pre-pandemic when the city was a very, very different city. We had much greater office occupancy. We had much greater international tourism at that point. And we all had to go through this painstaking thing of laying off people and then trying to rehire people and trying to renegotiate our leases. If you were opening a new restaurant for the first time after the pandemic, so let's say, you know, early 2022, something like that, you had presumably signed a lease with a whole new set of reality and therefore you should have been able to sign a better lease, more realistic lease. And you also were not hiring your new staff at the exact same time as everybody else was hiring, which was, you know, back in late 2020 and 2021. And you had a chance to create a restaurant based on the, I don't know, the current zeitgeist of how people wanted to dine out. You could have more outdoor space. You just knew a lot more and you didn't have to go through the pain of renegotiating a bad lease. So it doesn't surprise me at all that a lot of entrepreneurs said, 'This is our moment.' And furthermore, think about how many restaurants closed during the pandemic. And so there was a great opportunity to swoop in and get some second-generation space where you didn't have to put in all the gas from scratch and all the ventilation, etc.

You know, Carrie, I don't really like to be in the business of giving anyone else advice. I have a tough enough time just trying to keep our own restaurants as fresh as possible. And frankly, of all the things I'm proud about, I think the fact that we have so many restaurants that have really deep roots. Union Square Cafe, 41 years old. Gramercy Tavern, 32 years old. The Modern, 21 years old. Shake Shack, 22 years old. And it's not that we only know how to open old restaurants. It's that these restaurants keep improving as they age. And that's what I have the most. You know, if I have advice for anyone, it's us. I want to keep our restaurants on the tip of people's tongues and that's all about, you know, the quality of people who work in our company.

Yeah, the three problems with the values, and no problem with any of the four words you just said: excellence, hospitality, entrepreneurial spirit, and integrity. Stand by those any day. But we actually called them family values. You know as well as I do that, you know, one of the great traditions in restaurants is family meal. And in fact, sometimes restaurant workers spend more hours with their cohorts than they do with their own families. So I know why that all came about. But it dawned on me after several years that every now and then if somebody lost their job in one of our restaurants, it would be like, 'How can you let that person go? That's a family member.' It's disingenuous. It is a business. And so calling something family values I think was actually contributing to some unnecessary dips in morale. Secondly, I don't really know how to hold someone accountable to a value. And then third, all four of those words that you heard me say could have been values for any restaurant or any company. Could have been a hardware store. It could have been your favorite movie theater company. Could have had those values. I wanted to transport family values to expected behaviors because I really believe that you can hold someone accountable for a behavior. You should expect them from people. And I wanted to make sure that the behaviors that we were holding people accountable to were very unique to the language from stories that we've actually lived so that it would actually advance our culture. Any culture, whether it's your family's culture or the sorority you were in or the sports team you root for or the restaurant you work in, has a common language. And what common language does is it does two things. It creates a sense of belonging because we all know what it means, right? So if I say center the salt shaker to someone on our team, they know that there's actually a story in Setting the Table about centering the salt shaker that really is a way to say do it the right way. But in addition to creating a shorthand way of saying do it the right way, you do it in a way that lets people on your team feel like they belong. The greatest longing for any culture is the longing to belong. So that's why we did that and it's really helped us a lot. And I wrote about this in What Could Possibly Go Right that the culture of any organization, the two ways I look at it: the culture is what happens when the founder's not in the room, and number two, the culture is the sum of all of the expected behaviors that we celebrate minus all of the unwanted behaviors that we tolerate, and that will end up being, that's our culture. You can't hide from that. So that's why we made that switch and it has really, really helped.

We do. We always have. You know, when I first opened Union Square Cafe, and I only had one restaurant for the first 10 years of my career, every single guest got a comment card. This was long before the internet. And it gave you a chance to give me your name and address, which meant that I could create a mailing list. And I used to write a newsletter four times a year to everybody. But then on the back it basically said, 'We hope you'll want to return and tell your friends how much you loved it. What can we do even better?' And to this day, I think that that is what we hope to do. We hope to send you out humming the tunes. We all know that we need new guests who have never been there before and we need repeat guests who want to come back. I don't know what the proper percentage is of those two things. I love when people discover any of our places for the first time, but I know we're doing a great job if someone comes back a second and a third and a fourth time. And so creating those kind of raves is really what our mission is.