Yes, running a restaurant is difficult. It involves rapidly changing costs, new delivery surcharges to cover increased supplier diesel expenses, staffing challenges, regulatory compliance and intense competition. Yet it also can be rewarding when managed well.
Finding time for training and retaining skilled employees is a constant struggle. Turnover can disrupt service and morale. Some days, it can feel like a miracle when everyone shows up for work.
Michael Higgins, executive chef and owner of Maldaner's, often shared with students enrolled in culinary classes at Lincoln Land Community College that owners are usually the last people to get paid. Your suppliers, garbage people and others all get paid first, and you get what is left.
The work also takes a physical toll. Standing all day on a hard kitchen floor is not good for the knees. Long hours, multitasking and constant problem-solving can lead to exhaustion.
Danny Meyer, acclaimed restauranteur, writes about all this in his new book, “What Could Possibly Go Right? The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture.” The book provides what he describes as a transformative roadmap for success.
Who is Danny Meyer? Originally from St. Louis, Meyer remembers going to Kreis’ Steakhouse, a restaurant on Lindbergh Boulevard, as a child. The maître d’ would greet him and ask if he wanted his usual seat. Meyer later moved to New York with the original intent to attend law school. The week after taking the LSAT, however, he applied to a New York restaurant school. The rest, as they say, is history. In 1985, at the age of 27, he opened his first restaurant, Union Square Café, which became the flagship of his Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG).
Under Meyer’s leadership, USHG has operated acclaimed restaurants including Gramercy Tavern, The Modern at MoMA, Eleven Madison Park (where Carol and I were first introduced to small plates), Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard and, of course, Shake Shack. While opening 27 restaurants, he also had to close 10. He describes it as “scraping his knees.” He turned a Manhattan hot-dog stand, Shake Shack, into a public company that now sells $1.45 billion worth of food a year with 703 restaurants in 24 countries.
In 2015, Meyer shook up New York’s restaurant scene when he eliminated tipping and increased prices by about 21%. The move was a response to the changing landscape of the restaurant industry, where rising costs and stagnant wages made it difficult for servers to make ends meet. By doing away with tipping, Meyer aimed to create a more equitable and sustainable model. He had hoped this change would have a positive impact on the overall dining experience for customers, as servers would be less stressed and more focused on providing excellent service. It was a very controversial move. Some waiters quit, customers were confused, social media turned against him and he faced lawsuits accusing him and other restaurants that eliminated tips of fixing menu prices. When his restaurants began to reopen after the pandemic shutdown, he brought tipping back.
In his book, Meyer writes that the single most important trait he looks for in employees is a “genuine love of making other people feel good.” A person can be taught how to set a table, but it is much harder to teach someone how to make sure guests feel happy. “Warm service can overcome practically any honest mistake by a cook,” Meyer writes. “There is no amount of delicious food that will conquer an inhospitable reception from dining room staff.”
His goal is that when guests visit any of his restaurants, they feel that someone is expecting them and happy to see them — that they belong.
Meyer seeks employees with emotional intelligence to read and anticipate guests’ needs. As he writes, it’s “not just another transaction or in restaurant lingo, another cover.” The goal is “to sprinkle some magic dust on the table and have you feel just a little bit better than you felt when you walked in.”
He hires for what he calls “HQ,” or hospitality intelligence — the ability to read the room and instinctively take action to make it better. The six traits he looks for are optimistic kindness, curious intelligence, work ethic, empathy, self-awareness and integrity. Meyer cautions against settling for normal when he writes that “normal is not essential. Restless improvement is vital.” He also writes, “As leaders, one needs to push yourself every day and to offload things others can do better.”
Meyer first introduced the concept of high HQ at home with the family preparation of chocolate chip cookies. For his kids, it meant following instructions and paying attention to perform each step. The process included using judgment to apportion the batter into certain shapes, placing the cookies on a hot sheet pan in the oven, looking out for potential dangers, understanding timing and learning to be patient. The first batch was rarely perfect. The process taught persistence and the willingness to learn from mistakes. It also became a learning opportunity for the parents, an opportunity to learn more about how the children responded to the experience. Was their response, “Look what I made”? Or was it, “Look what I made for you”?
“What Could Possibly Go Right” is a great read, even if you are not a restaurateur or aspire to be one (Meyer’s book offers a good look at both the rewards and the challenges). I close with Meyer’s Sunflower Theory. “If you look closely at a field of golden-yellow sunflowers in blossom, you will see that every single one of them in unison has turned to the sun,” he writes. “As the leader of a company, you perform the function of the sun, and the most effective thing you can do is to shine that light on your sunflowers. It’s almost magical how the flowers in the middle will follow and then turn in the direction of your sunlight.”
About
Lincoln Land Community College offers credit programs in Culinary Arts, Hospitality Management and Baking/Pastry, and non-credit cooking and food classes through LLCC Community Education.
Cooking or food questions? Email epicuriosity101@llcc.edu.