Setting the Table

Meyer built Union Square Hospitality Group from a single restaurant opened at twenty-seven, and the book states the operating philosophy he calls enlightened hospitality. Its central claim is a stated priority order: employees first, then guests, then community, then suppliers, then investors. He argues that this order produces better returns for investors than putting them first would.

His distinction between service and hospitality is the book's most quoted idea. Service is the technical delivery of a product, which is a monologue. Hospitality is how that delivery makes the recipient feel, which is a dialogue and requires reading the specific person. He argues that a business can be excellent at service and produce no loyalty.

The hiring material is specific. Meyer hires for what he calls the hospitality quotient, meaning optimism, curiosity, work ethic, empathy and self-awareness, and treats technical skill as trainable. He uses a fifty-one percent rule, weighting emotional skills above technical ones. He also argues that a manager must remove people who are technically excellent and hospitality-poor, because their presence contradicts the stated priority.

On mistakes he gives a recovery sequence, arguing that a well-handled error produces more loyalty than an experience with no error at all, and that the response must be immediate, generous and personal. The book is written by a successful operator about his own successes, and the failures receive little space. Restaurants are unusual in the directness of the customer relationship, so the transfer to other businesses requires work. The service and hospitality distinction and the hiring weighting are the parts that transfer directly.