Unreasonable Hospitality

Guidara ran Eleven Madison Park with the chef Daniel Humm, and he wrote about the management and service practices that took the restaurant from a large brasserie to the top of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2017.

His central distinction separates service from hospitality. Service is the technical delivery of the product, meaning correct food, correct timing, correct execution. Hospitality is how the delivery makes the guest feel, and it is produced by attention, by noticing, and by acting on what you notice. Guidara argues that most businesses invest almost everything in service and almost nothing in hospitality, and that hospitality is where differentiation and pricing power come from in a crowded category.

The operational content is specific. He created a role he called the dream weaver whose only job was to act on information the staff gathered about guests. He allocated a discretionary budget for unscripted gestures. He instituted daily line-ups where the team reviewed what they knew about the evening's guests. He argues for hiring on character and training on skill, for giving front-line staff authority to spend money without approval, and for what he calls the one per cent, meaning the small share of effort spent on the unexpected element that guests remember.

The book is a memoir with management lessons attached, and the evidence is his own experience. The obvious limits are economic: these practices were funded by very high average spend per guest in a restaurant designed to be exceptional. Guidara asserts the principles transfer to other businesses without demonstrating it. The restaurant's later shift to an entirely plant-based menu and the partnership's dissolution are outside the book's scope.