Please welcome to the stage Executive Vice President and General Manager of the US Merchant Services business of American Express, Gunther W. Good afternoon. It's so great to be here among so many top retailers from the US and abroad. I want to thank the NRF for the great work the organization does to advance the industry and help retailers grow. Now, last night at the NRF Foundation Gala, Mark Parker of Nike was recognized as the Visionary 2017. This is the NRF's highest honor for his extraordinary successes. It was pretty amazing to see the depth of current and pipeline talent within the retail industry. Now, the gala, now in its third year, has raised, as was said earlier from Matt, two million, over two million in support of the next generation of retailing talent. Now, it's been inspiring to hear about the terrific innovation happening across the retail industry. Given the incredible success of last night's gala, I'm considering launching a petition to make this a semiannual event. To Matt's staff, I'm just kidding. That would be really cool. Matt, American Express has partnered with the NRF Foundation for more than 40 years, and we're really proud of what we've achieved together year after year. In particular, I'm glad to introduce our next speaker because we at American Express share a lot of the same principles of service, integrity, and leadership. We'll all have the pleasure to hear from this renowned New York restaurateur and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, Danny Meyer. He's going to talk on the power of hospitality. Now, Danny will share key insights and principles that he's seen lead to profound customer loyalty and long-lasting patronage. Late in the session, Dan will be joined from Phil with Phil Wahba from The Fortune magazine for a question and answer period. Whether it's American Express's customers or merchant partners, we strive every day to provide the highest level of service. Maintaining loyal customers has gone deeper every day with a transaction. It must go deeper than a transaction. It's about fostering long-standing relationships that build trust. To do that, we not only have to know our card members and merchants but and anticipate their needs. So I'm excited to hear more of Danny's thoughts on the topic. So please join me in welcoming Danny Meyer.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you, Gunther. Thank you, American Express, which has been just an amazing partner to us since we opened Union Square Cafe in 1985. So Union Square Cafe was my first restaurant. I was 27 years old, and I didn't think about what I wanted to do. I just did it. And for those of you in the audience who are entrepreneurs, you know that when you get that kind of itch, you don't think about whether it's going to work or not. It's kind of like, I know I'm not supposed to itch this thing, but I just have to. You got to open that place because you want to share something you love with somebody else. My guess is that for many of you in the audience who come from all kinds of different retail companies, you started the exact same way I did. There's a product you loved, there's a way of treating people that mattered to you, there's a design sense, a merchandising ability you have, there's an ability to edit and to find products that you know nobody else can find. That's kind of where it all starts. And when we talk about going back to the basics, I think we make a big mistake. We should be talking about going forward with the basics. Most of my restaurants, and I'm not including Shake Shack, which is now a separate public company which is all over the world, but of our fine dining full-service restaurants, most of them are right here in New York City. New York City, for those of you who haven't checked the census recently of restaurants, has 26,500 restaurants, 19,000 if you eliminate the pizza parlor. But that's still a hell of a lot of competition. And so what do we do day in and day out when we're selling a product that nobody really needs to make them instead not only need it but crave it in the worst possible way? People come to restaurants not because they need to eat and drink, because no one needs to drop $150 for two people on dinner at Union Square Cafe, and they certainly don't need to spend $250 at Gramercy Tavern or The Modern. But what can we do as a food version of a retailer to make people say, not only do I need that stuff they put on the plate and that stuff they put in the glass, but I crave it? Well, the first thing is to understand that our recipe is really, really simple. It's only got two ingredients in it. If our chefs could have a recipe with two ingredients, they'd be really, really happy. Here are the two ingredients, and these are two ingredients: on one hand, to de-commoditize yourself, and on the other hand, to make yourself essential in the lives of all of your stakeholders. So first, let's talk about the de-commoditization. What are the two ingredients? The two ingredients are your product and your hospitality. What we sell actually has a point of view. The most important thing, 51 parts of our recipe, are the hospitality, and that always comes down to who we picked to be on our team. Did we pick somebody, not just somebody to fill the position, but did we pick somebody who has the emotional skills to actually be happier themselves when they've made me, the customer, feel better myself? We are both in businesses happily where the bar for entry is reasonably low. You do not have to come to Shake Shack with a degree in making milkshakes. As a matter of fact, I don't think anyone has ever been quizzed on how expert they are at making cheeseburgers or milkshakes. And in fact, you could even come to one of our Michelin-starred restaurants, and you don't already need to have Michelin-level experience as a cook. You can get a job in the retail business, in the restaurant industry, if you have a hospitality heart, a good work ethic, and a mind that is trying to connect your heart with your thoughtful actions. We become essential in people's lives when the very fact that we exist makes their lives better, and if we didn't exist, their lives wouldn't be as good. Now, you may say, well, that's kind of a lofty goal. I'm just selling stuff. And I would just argue, if you're just selling stuff, you're going to quickly end up in this commodity heap. And we know that from the restaurant business. What we are selling more than anything is a need to belong. We are satisfying people's needs to belong. One of the things we try to tell our team all the time is that, you know, when you get your bill at the end of a restaurant meal and it itemizes all the things that you just ate and drank, and then you get a big number at the bottom, I always tell our team, not the cooks, but pretend if you're the server, that 100% of what they were paying for was how you made them feel. That $249 is how did you make them feel. The food was free. The drinks were free. Because the real question is, in terms of someone's interest in coming back to the restaurant, is as Maya Angelou said many years ago, people will forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they'll always remember how you made them feel. And that's what we're all selling. It's those gestures.
