#75 Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business: Union Square Hospitality Group CEO, Danny Meyer

What this episode is about

Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, emphasizes the transformative power of hospitality in business, equating food with love and community engagement. Through his experiences and successes with renowned restaurants, he highlights how genuine hospitality fosters connections and enhances customer experiences, ultimately leading to thriving business success.

Key takeaways

• Food is love; dining transforms mere sustenance into cherished moments of connection and warmth.
• Hospitality transcends service, igniting hearts by tailoring experiences to individual needs—it's the secret sauce of memorable encounters.
• Emotional intelligence is key; you can't teach care, but hiring those with a 'hospitality quotient' makes all the difference.
• Best lessons come from baking cookies; kids learn responsibility and emotional engagement while whipping up a delicious treat.
• In a world craving personalization, thoughtful gestures in service create unforgettable impressions that linger far beyond the transaction.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tommen (Host) · 10 min speaking
• Danny Meyer (Guest) · 23 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Danny Meyer, Union Square Hospitality Group, Shake Shack, James Beard
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Nestle
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Goldbelly
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Shake Shack, Madison Square Garden
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Madison Square Garden, Shake Shack

Notable quotes from "#75 Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business: Union Square Hospitality Group CEO, Danny Meyer"

• Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with rest Danny Meyer CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group Dany has created many beloved restaurants including…

  about Danny Meyer · at 0:25

• There came an age when I would do this kind of fun experiment and all you got to do is you give your kid let's say they were maybe six years old or something I forget exactly…

  about Nestle · at 5:34

• I think outdoor dining is going to continue I think that to live dely is going to continue I think shipping great food across the country with companies like goldbelly which is…

  about Goldbelly · at 13:56

• Activated the computer screen and this hotel had actually logged in to the live Shack cam the web camera at the original Madison Square Park Shake Shack so that the very first…

  about Madison Square Garden · at 17:23

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Danny Meyer — Person · Main guest · 1 mention · first at 0:30
  He is the featured interviewee, discussing his philosophy of hospitality, leadership, and building restaurant culture through Union Square Hospitality Group and its brands.

Companies & orgs

• Union Square Hospitality Group — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 0:30
  Primary company discussed, founded by Danny Meyer, encompassing various restaurants and hospitality ventures.
  Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with rest Danny Meyer CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group Dany has created many beloved restaurants including…
• Shake Shack — Company · Case study · 3 mentions · first at 0:42
  Highlighted as a successful venture by Union Square Hospitality Group, starting as a solution for Madison Square Park.
  Beloved restaurants including Union Square Cafe gramarcy Tavern the modern and of course Shake Shack his restaurants have won several three star mishan ratings 28 James Beard…
• Gramercy Tavern — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions
  One of the flagship restaurants under Union Square Hospitality Group, exemplifying their hospitality philosophy.
  Including Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, The Modern, and of course Shake Shack.
• Goldbelly — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at 14:04
  Highlighted as a company Union Square Hospitality Group invested in, enabling restaurants to ship food nationwide during COVID-19.
• Nestle — Company · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 5:47
  Mentioned in a personal anecdote about teaching children the value of hospitality through baking.

Places & events

• Madison Square Garden — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at 17:31
  The original location for Shake Shack, illustrating the importance of context in restaurant development.
• James Beard — Event · Achievement · 1 mention · first at 0:46
  Referenced as an award won by Union Square Hospitality Group's restaurants, highlighting their excellence.
  And of course Shake Shack his restaurants have won several three star mishan ratings 28 James Beard awards 16 years in the number one spot on the zot most popular restaurant…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomen hi everyone it's Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with rest Danny Meyer CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group Dany has created many beloved restaurants including Union Square Cafe gramarcy Tavern the modern and of course Shake Shack his restaurants have won several three star mishan ratings 28 James Beard awards 16 years in the number one spot on the zot most popular restaurant list and 17 stars from The New York Times congratulations Danny and welcome and thank you so much for all of your

1:03 wonderful restaurants and for our conversation today it's really nice to be with you Lynn thank you thank you Danny Danny what does food represent for you food is love food is the provision of happiness and sustenance and a big hug there's people who often say that the world divides into people who live to eat and people who eat to live I think we all live to be loved and I think that even if you don't live your life to eat the way people like I do I do think that the expression of giving nourishment and nurturing are inextricably linked and I know that some of the most wonderful experiences in my life are with family and friends at restaurants enjoying wonderful food conversation and the setting and the hospitality absolutely it's something that I've always appreciated and enjoyed deeply as a person first in my own family and then growing up in St Louis and going out to eat in restaurants that

2:10 were not necessarily famous for being Gourmet in any respect back in those days but just the feeling of having someone who's happy to see you and who's creating a social environment in which you can enjoy the pleasures of the table with people you want to be in a large your environment and yeah not have to do the dishes it's a pretty good equation Danny how do you think about Hospitality I think hospitality is so firmly printed on our hierarchy of needs both to give and to receive and I've always defined Hospitality as the sense that someone's on your side I think Hospitality exists when the person on the receiving end of whatever you're doing feels like you did something for them certainly doesn't exist if someone feels like you did something to them but we spend so much time thinking about good service when we go out to a hardware store or a grocery store or an airline or a hotel or a restaurant or a dry

3:14 cleaner whatever the service is the technical delivery of the product you better get it right it's what people expect if I say my car dealer has good service when my car breaks it means they fixed it within the time they said they were going to fix it if I say they have good Hospitality it goes way over and beyond that which I expected and it gets into the category of things that are remarkable because somebody applied thoughtfulness which is a great word because thoughtfulness implies that you are both thinking and feeling so you're using your brain and your heart and somebody applied thoughtfulness to their service meaning they did something tailored specifically for me it could be at the car dealer something as simple as I remember last time you came in here we worked on that same thing let's see if I can do it even better for you this time or I remember last time you came in you were with your son how did he do in that

4:10 little leag game right that doesn't cost the car dealer anything but now you're in Hospitality go fix my car yeah but make it feel like you did it for me like this is custom design for me so a long way of saying service is off the rack you better do it cons consistently well for everybody hospitality is what you did specifically fit for me and that's a feeling that we don't get enough in life and when people do it when people customize the experience for you it is something people remember a lot how do you deliver outstanding Hospitality in all of your restaurants well we hire people who have the emotional wiring to say that this actually matters to them I don't know how to teach somebody to care who otherwise doesn't care about providing Hospitality we've identified six emotional skills that are always present at a very high level in someone who's got what we call a high HQ High Hospitality quotient but we just don't

5:14 know how to teach anyone to have any of those emotional skills people who do have those skills at a high level who have a high HQ are people who are actually wired to be happier themselves when they're providing pleasure for other people and I don't know if I want my kids to know this but when they were all young there came an age when I would do this kind of fun experiment and all you got to do is you give your kid let's say they were maybe six years old or something I forget exactly you give them that yellow bag of Nestle's chocolate chips and you make sure to have all the ingredients in the house and you say I want you to follow the recipe and I'll help you if you need it but let's see what happens here so think about it anybody can make Tollhouse Cookies almost every kid likes them and so in that one bag you've got reading you've got a little bit of math you've got learning to follow instructions you've

6:12 got safety training because you're dealing with something hot as well you've got a little bit of impulse control because you could eat the batter while it's not cooked you could take the cookies out a little bit too soon but then the coolest thing is when the cookies are baked so you've gone through all those great learning opportunities when the cookies are baked now I get to see whether my kids got a high HQ or not because now I get a chance to see does the kid put all the cookies on a plate and take them to their bedroom and you know post them away for good times or is part of the pleasure taking that beautiful platter of cookies and presenting it to Mom and Dad and their siblings or whatever and say look what I made for you you for you and if part of the pleasure is that I'm getting is what I did for you that's a pretty good idea that this kids got a high HQ now I do have to say some of my very best friends

7:12 some of my very favorite family members don't happen to have high hqs I don't hold that against anybody you're not better because you got one HQ or another any more than you're better if you got one IQ or another but as a hiring principle to deliver Hospitality to our customers and guests on a consistent way the more people on our team who over and Beyond what a great cook they are or what a great so they are or what a great coach Checker they are if they also have a high HQ the chances that you're going to leave the restaurant feeling like we were on your side is immeasurably heightened so it sounds like you value HQ or Hospitality more than technical skills well barely we call it the 514 n r i want to get a 100 on our test so if all you had was Hospitality skills and you didn't have technical skills we'd get a failing 51 on our test I would never have been proud to show a 51 to my parents after taking a test probably had

8:14 a couple of those but they didn't get to see it the next day so the reason it's slightly more important is that in the great scheme of things I think that great Hospitality can overcome a technical mistake in a way that Technic proficiency cannot overcome a poor attitude it's just not going to so I make it slightly more important but I'm really really clear that I want all 100 points I think doing what we're supposed to do well is table staks but I want to be your favorite and in order to be your favorite I got to Ace as much of the 49% that food better be good better be cooked the way you asked it to be cooked the temperature of the room better not either melt you or freeze you the sound in the room better not be piercing the bubble of your ability to have a conversation with your table all that stuff is technical we got to get it right but again I want this to be your favorite restaurant and to do that I've

9:10 got to be really good at what we do as starter but then I got to do thoughtful things that make you want to come back and come back what do you think distinguishes your restaurants well I think we work hard on both ends of what we were just talking about we're pretty clear on what the technical components are of the experience and I think like any business maybe at least as much restaurants are hard it's hard to get all that stuff right it's hard to get the look feeling sound taste smells and it's also a very personal thing because let's just take the restaurant decor for an example same person who thinks restaurant a is beautiful someone else may say it's gy everything we do is a matter of taste and so we're trying to consistently offer a version of a point of view we have to take a point of view otherwise who needs our restaurant as much as we would love everyone to love the restaurants that's just not

10:06 realistic and in fact if everyone loves you you're probably not saying much of anything so what we really try to do is get the technical stuff right but then hire people who as I said earlier really live for the opportunity to make other people feel better and then set them free let them make choices I can't write a manual for what to do when someone says I want to half portion of soup on the side I just have to let people know of course you're going to do that with pleasure I don't have a what if for every experience but if I have people on the team who not only are happier themselves when they do something thoughtful for you but understand that we want them to take the initiative that it's their job we want them to take risks we want people to be generous we want people to try to put themselves in your shoes and say what's the thing I could do right now in this situation that's going to make you leave here

11:02 humming the tune if we were a Broadway show that's what I want you to do Danny what business are you in well I think we've been talking about it I'm in the hospitality business food and drink happen to be the stage props but we're in the business of making people feel better and we look for every opportunity to extend what we call enlightened Hospitality not only inside of our restaurants we actually invest in other people's businesses because we're I think hyper aware that not only are we not smart enough to have all the right ideas and best ideas but there's not enough hours in the day to have them anyway so when we see people and businesses and leaders who have come up with an idea we wish we' come up with who are people we wish we had hired will'll even invest in their businesses outside of ours who do you admire in Hospitality well this is going to sound like a cop out but on balance I have to

11:56 say and if I didn't feel it before I certainly feel it since the onset of Co but I admire the entrepreneurs in our entire industry I think what the resilience and entrepreneurial spirit and love and heart to be taken to our knees as this industry has been were the very very thing that we do which is welcoming people into our homes was deemed to be amongst the most dangerous things you could do during Co and our entire industry had to summon every ounce of entrepreneurial Spirit to Pivot in ways we never thought possible to figure out how to sell food for curbside pickup for delivery for shipping across the country with QR codes out the door because we couldn't even give you a menu to set up outdoor dining structures and I might add at the same time to continuously look to the outer Community to find out what can we do to feed people even when they're not our own customers whether they were first

12:58 respond ERS whether they were Hospital workers whether they were people in underserved neighborhoods so my hero is truly our entire industry and our industry had some really rough times even before covid and we've had to learn a lot and I think we are learning from it and I'm really proud of who this industry can become not only as a great first job employer but also as an industry that can promote people to better career ladders throughout their time as professionals how do you think restaurants will be different postco I think that restaurants are not going to stop doing many of the things that they had to learn how to do during Co I think outdoor dining for example is something most full service restaurants never would have contemplated I remember a time many years ago when full service restaurants wouldn't even contemplate serving food at the bar that one has gone by the wayside a long time ago but

13:56 I think outdoor dining is going to continue I think that to live dely is going to continue I think shipping great food across the country with companies like goldbelly which is a company we invested in by the way that has done remarkable things to help restaurants stay in business when we couldn't welcome you into our home and you couldn't get on an airplane we could ship you great food from a restaurant like gramy Tavern all the way across the country that's the kind of thing we're going to continue over time Danny you said that Flawless service is not really the goal can you give some examples of the types of service that you would consider exceptional what you aspire to and what your restaurants actually deliver well I do aspire to Flawless service it just never happens so I would say perfection is not the goal because Perfection is a recipe to be unhappy but I am somebody who cares deeply about

14:52 getting it right if you go on an airplane there's basically three things they have to get right you've got to land and Alive it would be really nice if it were on time and it would be really nice if you got your luggage back now outside of those three things I think Airlines can Peck around the edges to make you feel more or less important by recognizing your loyalty by serving you increasingly better food over time in our business it's very similar we are responsible for serving you safely you are trusting that our business is to create something that you're actually going to put inside your body but outside of that there is room for Flaws I promise you it's not the end of the world if I accidentally serve you rizoto that's too alente for you we can fix that we can overcome that through Hospitality so do I want the rizoto to be too alente of course not I want to have a really really excellent technical

15:51 expression of our product but more than anything else what I want is that when you leave you just feel happier than however you felt when you came in and that takes real Hospitality skills because it takes reading where people are and having the emotional skills and desire to make it even better in many ways Flawless service can just be as you say technical but what your restaurants deliver is something so much more than that for most restaurants it would be exceptional instances of hospitality for yours it's much more the norm can you talk more and give some examp of hospitality and also what you call writing the last chapter well I've been on the receiving end of some exceptional hospitality and partly probably because I'm an industry colleague and I think in our industry one of the really neat things is that we like to show off for each other but in a loving way I'll never forget checking into a hotel and I

16:52 was going to be a speaker at an event speaking about wine and I had made the long or8 hour journey to get to this place and the first thing I do when I get to my hotel room there was a desk set up with a computer a desktop computer and i' put all my wine books all my study materials right on the table accidentally hitting the mouse that connected to the computer and in so doing it was like a rubbe Goldberg invention all of a sudden the mouse activated the computer screen and this hotel had actually logged in to the live Shack cam the web camera at the original Madison Square Park Shake Shack so that the very first thing that happened to me when I got to my hotel room is I'm now looking at a live view of Madison Square Park and I can see exactly how long the line is which fortunately was a really long line that day at Shak Shack and as if I didn't think that was enough the hotel had upgraded me to a suite so

17:54 there was a little kitchen kind of thing and in the kitchen I noticed they've got a little bookshelf and on the bookshelf are four cookbooks that we've written there was a copy of setting the table there was a copy of the Union Square Cafe cookbook gry Tavern cookbook and even a cocktail book that we wrote called Mick Shaker and in the cookbook as if that weren't enough there was a bookmark excuse me in the cocktail book and I opened the page to the page of a cocktail called the Morton which I named after my dad Morton Meyer they had researched and seen my head note that this is my favorite cocktail I named it after my dad and now my eyes are drawn to the dining room table in the suite where they've laid out all of the ingredients for the Morton ready for me to make my own cocktail at this point I'm just absolutely completely blown away you want to talk about customizing The Experience just for me from start to

18:50 finish this is basically three days this conference and on the last night which was a Saturday night before Father's day knowing that I would miss the first part of Father's Day as I flew back home to New York the next morning I'm just about to go to bed and this was in the days when you would still call the front desk to get a wakeup call and don't even bother with that anymore in any hotel but I'm just about to pick up the phone to call the front desk to get a wakeup call really early in the morning and right next to the phone there is a framed picture of my entire family with all the kids and the dog and my wife that the hotel has because I have no idea where they found this Photograph and underneath the frame it says Happy Father's Day Dad see you tomorrow and I'm going like okay that was pushing the envelope about as far as I've ever seen it now the postcript is that I ended up hiring the person who did that who came

19:46 to New York and helped us with our restaurants because I wanted to be able to do that for everybody Danny that it's an amazing story and I think it's also very revealing about you because you're right restaurants are known for their extraordinary hospitality and yet the example you give is not one of your restaurants it's a hotel that you stayed at how do you think about opening new restaurants I think it's really important again to have a point of view and to say why does this restaurant need to exist I've always approached new restaurants one of three ways which is that I've got a burning desire to do an idea to express like what could we add to the dialogue on could be barbecue it could be Indian it could be Italian it could be Jazz I start with an idea that I have to express and by the way once I have that idea I better go find the right location and I better go find the right Chef to express it or it could

20:46 start with there's this Chef I'm just dying to work with now let's go find the right idea and the right location or it could be oh my gosh what an amazing location and business opportunity this is now let's figure out what's the right idea and the right Chef so it starts with one of those three things idea Chef location I would say increasingly as my career has gone on it has more often than not been that the location and business opportunity goes first and it's because someone might be approaching us and say we want to commission you guys to do something special for this place and I like that that's like someone hand you a frame and saying now go paint the picture that belongs in this Frame that's actually how Shake Shack came around it was like here's Madison Square Park We Didn't Start Shake Shack to be a chain we started it to solve a problem what belongs in this park what food what

21:45 idea Etc we did that with the Museum of Modern Art which became the modern one of my favorite restaurants we've ever made and it was basically this is literally the frame what culinary art do you think belongs there and increasingly I really like that challenge because what it does is it allows you to think about the context not just the location but the context of something and so we opened a restaurant just a very very recently called chamo that is off to a fantastic start it's in a part of Manhattan no one's ever heard of before because the street itself doesn't even have an address yet it was a project built over the underpass to the the Lincoln Tunnel we've all been under that underpass many many times it's in the west 30s and yet we never as New Yorkers had a chance to walk on a Surface which never existed full of buildings that are still not even populated and so we have to take that into account and we say

22:47 where is the puck going where will that location be well it happens to be on the 50 yard line between Madison Square Garden and the moan train station and Hudson yards a lot of human bodies that are going to be passing right through that thoroughfare increasingly as time goes by so when you're picking a restaurant site you can pick something that's already highly established but you can also sometimes realize that if you're going to sign a 20-year deal you're making just as much of a bet on the future of where that's going as you are on where it is right now and if you can come up with an idea that works well enough today to be sustainable cuz it has to be but you believe will work even better in time and you can benefit from an underlying real estate deal that you never would have gotten in an already completely established area you can do something really special especially if you get the idea and the culinary

23:44 direction right and I think we have with chiama how do you think about your different constituencies first and foremost about the people who work here I think the people who work in our company are our first customer customer we put them even before our paying customers because if you really care about your paying customer you'd probably do a better job of succeeding with them if you have happier people serving them and cooking for them so I'm a big believer in the power of both a vicious cycle and in the power of a virtuous cycle in a virtuous cycle one good thing keeps leading to something even better it makes complete sense to me that the first thing we have to get right is how does it feel to work here so that's our first St stakeholder our second stakeholder are the people who do pay for our product also known as our guests our customers our third constituent are the communities in which

24:38 we do business our fourth are our suppliers and our fifth are our investors we don't put our investors fifth because we don't want to make money in fact to the contrary we think we can do better for them if each of those other stakeholders is rooting for our success so if our staff members come to work saying this is the best job I've ever had had in this industry I'm going to do my best I can't wait to take great care of our guests and offer exceptional Hospitality chances are better than our guests are going to leave raving and humming the tune and if they do that theoretically we're going to have enough Revenue so we can do great things for our community and then the community is rooting for us to win and then we can probably get the best suppliers the best prices the best products the best service from our own suppliers and with all those things we have to be pretty bad business people not to take great

25:29 care of our investors and by the way the reason I call it a virtuous cycle it's not a totem pole where the investors are on the bottom it's truly a virtuous cycle the best way to have happy employees it turns out which is job number one is to have really happy investors because what do employees want they want professional and financial opportunities to grow and you better make money if you want those two things to happen Danny how if you changed as a leader what have been some of the most important lessons that you've learned I hope I'm considered to be a better listener than ever I've always been a decent listener sometimes to a fault sometimes wanting to build consensus so much that I don't put my foot down and make the decision soon enough because I think people know that I start a conversation with a point of view I think they know that I want to hear from everybody but I think that being a

26:25 better listener is not just are you listening it's also are you reading body language and sometimes people just want the decision that may sound counterintuitive because I think a lot of bad listeners don't even welcome the conversation I think in my case I sometimes welcome too much conversation and I think people really appreciate Clarity of accountability and Clarity of decisionmaking and I think I've learned how to do that better where you still get hurt but people truly have an opportunity to participate but they know when it's time to move on there's a great expression I think Jeff Bezos from Amazon may have said it years and years ago but it goes something like disagree and commit because there comes a point when not everyone is going to agree but everyone had their say and everyone needs to leave that meeting moving ahead what is success to you I have no idea it's something that I'm very

27:22 uncomfortable with the term because it seems to imply that you've reached a destination I don't view success UC as a destination I view success as pursuing a path that is consistent to your values I don't think one ever arrives if you're shooting for the moon and you're walking there I don't think you're ever going to get there so for me success in many ways is not believing in your own success but rather being committed to hopefully a noble Journey where you're saying these are the things that matter I've communicated that to everyone in the company the people who want to come along can't wait to unleash you and your talents and let's put one foot out in front of the other and keep heading in the right direction before I ask for the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today is there anything else you would like to mention that you haven't already talked about what should

28:13 I have asked you that I didn't what gets me what continues all these years later because I started this business when I was 27 with Union Square Cafe what continues to get me excited about coming to work each day and creating new places and truly it's this question that I scratch my head about all the time which is how can you use your growth to advance your culture I was always told that growth was the Surefire way to diminish the culture of your business and I don't believe that I believe you need growth to advance your culture because if you indeed are promoting and giving raises to not only the people who are the best at what they do but the best for your company culturally the culture carriers if you're doing that I think that each time you grow you're actually advancing the culture of the business and the thing that I'm most excited about is it's something that I know we're working hard at every single

29:10 day and it's one of these things we may never attain it but can you scale culture famously in our industry Ray Croc with McDonald's taught the world how to scale systems for cooking food consistently so the fries taste exactly the same whether you're in Idaho or Alabama or Moscow for that matter but I don't think that they thought that much about did the experience of working there or did the experience of eating there feel emotionally consistent and that's the thing I'm most excited about as a challenge which is can you scale culture and I love that so that's what you didn't ask me but that's what I'm proud to share that is wonderful what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with well the first one is this too shall pass I think that no matter what challenge we have faced it could be an internal challenge with something that wasn't a business that wasn't working out or a senior employee that wasn't

30:12 working out or it could have been an exogenous event like 911 or Hurricane Sandy the Great Recession certainly covid the biggest of them all so far I just think that the biggest lesson I've learned is this two shall pass and you got to double down on your behaviors and values when that happens and realize that it will be over and you will be remembered for how you behaved while it was happening and you may as well just focus on those things that you can impact which are who were we while it was happening and who do we want to be when it's over number two something I learned many many years ago from the late founder of nean Marcus guy named Stanley Marcus and he taught me something that I think about every day of my life the road to success is paved with mistakes well handled as human beings we are probably better wired than any animal on Earth to be mistake makers and the same way that the ocean is

31:07 constantly producing another wave we're constantly producing another mistake and as long as it's an honest mistake I think that you can actually end up in a better spot because of how you handled the mistake how you overcame the mistake that's a big one for me the road to success is paved with mistakes well handled the third one is the minute you are ready to give up your values for any reason just hand in the Keys just don't do it anymore whatever it is you do just Life's too short so I think a values-based approach to decision making is really really helpful it's understanding what are those core values that you have and they should probably be different core values for every human being on Earth but what are those three things and I'm not going to tell you what my three are even though you ask me what are the three but what are the three things that even if someone were to say if you just did it differently

32:01 this time you'd make an extra million dollars you'd still say no I'm just not going to do it know what your core values are that's thing number three and the minute you're willing to compromise on them just give back the keys to the store because no one needs you Danny thank you so much thank you for your wonderful restaurants and thank you for our conversation today come see us soon that I will do with great pleasure if if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at three takeaway.com or follow us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook note that three takeaway.com is with the number three three is not spelled out see you soon at 3 takeaways tocom

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#75 Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business: Union Square Hospitality Group CEO, Danny Meyer"?

Lynn Tommen (Host), Danny Meyer (Guest).

What is "#75 Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business: Union Square Hospitality Group CEO, Danny Meyer" about?

Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, emphasizes the transformative power of hospitality in business, equating food with love and community engagement. Through his experiences and successes with renowned restaurants, he highlights how genuine hospitality fosters connections and enhances customer experiences, ultimately leading to thriving business success.

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Danny Meyer, Union Square Hospitality Group, Shake Shack, Gramercy Tavern, Madison Square Garden, James Beard. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#75 Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business: Union Square Hospitality Group CEO, Danny Meyer"?

The episode runs 33 min; the transcript is about 5,893 words in 34 timestamped sections.

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