The Secret Ingredients of Great Hospitality | Will Guidara | TED

296,735 views ・ 2022-10-31

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:04
For nearly a decade,
0
4292
1335
00:05
I owned and operated a restaurant called Eleven Madison Park.
1
5669
3086
00:09
To give you some context, if you don't know what that is,
2
9297
2711
00:12
Eleven Madison is a very fancy restaurant
3
12008
2294
00:14
on the corner of 24th and Madison here in New York City.
4
14344
2628
00:17
I mean, like very fancy.
5
17013
1752
00:19
We're talking servers wearing suits and ties,
6
19140
2545
00:21
like, crisp, ironed white tablecloths.
7
21726
2503
00:24
More than 30 cooks in the kitchen serving like 10-, 15-course tasting menus.
8
24271
4671
00:28
I think you get the gist.
9
28942
1418
00:30
When I got there in 2006, it was kind of a middling brasserie.
10
30694
3795
00:34
But by the time I sold it at the beginning of 2020,
11
34948
2836
00:37
it had been named the number one restaurant in the world.
12
37784
2836
00:41
(Applause)
13
41204
4880
00:46
Now, to be clear,
14
46126
1168
00:47
our kitchen served unbelievably delicious and incredibly innovative food.
15
47335
4630
00:52
Our service was so gracious
16
52007
2127
00:54
and as close to technically perfect as possible.
17
54134
3253
00:57
And our dining room ...
18
57387
1418
00:58
I mean, just Google a picture.
19
58847
1501
01:00
It's one of the most beautiful out there.
20
60348
1961
01:02
And it was because of those reasons that we were consistently on the list
21
62684
3462
01:06
of the 50 best restaurants in the world.
22
66187
2002
01:08
But it was a hot dog that earned us the number one spot on that list.
23
68857
3962
01:13
Or rather, the winning strategy that it gave birth to:
24
73153
4087
01:17
unreasonable hospitality.
25
77282
2419
01:20
The principle that guided us as we took ordinary transactions
26
80285
4046
01:24
and turned them into extraordinary experiences.
27
84372
2920
01:29
In early 2010,
28
89210
1335
01:30
on a busier-than-normal lunch service,
29
90587
2002
01:32
I was in the dining room helping out the servers
30
92631
2252
01:34
when I found myself clearing appetizers from a table of four foodies
31
94883
3420
01:38
on vacation to New York.
32
98345
1918
01:40
And they were going to the airport to head back home after their meal.
33
100305
3503
01:43
I overheard them talking.
34
103808
1544
01:45
"What an amazing trip.
35
105393
1168
01:46
We've been to all the best restaurants."
36
106603
1918
01:48
And they listed a bunch:
37
108521
1335
01:49
“Per Se, Le Bernardin, Daniel, Momofuku, now Eleven Madison Park.”
38
109898
4629
01:55
Then another person jumped in:
39
115028
1501
01:56
"Yeah, but the only thing we didn't get to try was a New York City hotdog."
40
116571
3545
02:00
You know those moments in a cartoon
41
120742
1710
02:02
where the animated light bulb goes off over the character's head,
42
122452
3086
02:05
signifying they're about to come up with a really good idea?
43
125538
2837
02:08
If you’d been in the room with me that day,
44
128375
2085
02:10
you would have seen one appear over mine.
45
130460
2002
02:12
As calmly as I possibly could,
46
132462
1460
02:13
I walked gracefully back into the kitchen, dropped off the plates,
47
133922
3128
02:17
and then literally ran out the front door and down the block to the hotdog cart.
48
137092
3795
02:20
I bought a hotdog and ran just as fast back into the kitchen.
49
140887
3378
02:24
Now came the hard part:
50
144307
1835
02:26
convincing the chef to serve it in our fancy fine dining restaurant.
51
146184
4421
02:31
Guys, he looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
52
151439
2711
02:34
Serving what New Yorkers call "a dirty water dog"
53
154192
2294
02:36
in a fancy four-star restaurant?
54
156486
1668
02:38
But I asked him to trust me
55
158154
2711
02:40
and I told him it was important to me.
56
160907
1919
02:43
And eventually he agreed to cut the hotdog up into four perfect pieces,
57
163159
3837
02:47
adding a little swish of ketchup and a swish of mustard onto each plate
58
167038
3504
02:50
and finishing them with a quenelle of sauerkraut and a quenelle of relish.
59
170583
3504
02:54
Then, before we served at the table their final savory course --
60
174713
3294
02:58
which happened to be a honey-lavender glazed Muscovy duck
61
178007
4463
03:02
that had been dry aged for two weeks,
62
182512
1793
03:04
utilizing a technique that had taken years to perfect --
63
184305
3879
03:08
we brought them their hot dog.
64
188226
1877
03:10
I introduced it.
65
190770
1418
03:12
"To make sure you don't go home with any culinary regrets,
66
192522
3754
03:16
a New York City hotdog."
67
196317
1710
03:19
Guys, they freaked out.
68
199028
3295
03:22
(Laughter)
69
202323
1544
03:23
I'm not kidding.
70
203908
1168
03:25
At that point in my career, I had served thousands of dishes and many, many,
71
205118
4087
03:29
many thousands of dollars worth of food.
72
209205
2211
03:31
And I can confidently say that no one had ever reacted to anything I served them
73
211458
4546
03:36
better than they reacted to that hotdog.
74
216045
2670
03:39
Each person said it was not only the highlight of their meal,
75
219132
3003
03:42
but of their entire trip to New York,
76
222177
2502
03:44
and they'd be telling the story for the rest of their lives.
77
224679
2920
03:48
See, that hotdog changed the way I approach restaurants
78
228308
3086
03:51
from that point forward.
79
231436
1418
03:52
Because up until then, I had been so focused on excellence,
80
232896
3962
03:56
on all the little details that go into making a meal great,
81
236900
3336
04:00
that I somehow hadn’t realized something really important:
82
240278
3128
04:04
That in restaurants,
83
244324
1543
04:05
our reason for being is to make people feel seen.
84
245867
3712
04:10
It's to make them feel welcome.
85
250163
2294
04:12
It's to give them a sense of belonging.
86
252832
2294
04:15
See, in restaurants, the food, the service, the design,
87
255668
4505
04:20
they're simply ingredients in the recipe of human connection.
88
260215
6298
04:26
That is hospitality.
89
266513
1793
04:28
And I realized,
90
268848
1168
04:30
if we could be unreasonable in our pursuit of that,
91
270058
3253
04:33
we could give people the kind of experiences
92
273353
2085
04:35
they would remember forever.
93
275438
1877
04:37
It was only then that I realized
94
277899
1543
04:39
I wasn't actually in the business of serving people dinner.
95
279442
2836
04:42
I was in the business of serving them memories.
96
282862
2294
04:46
I obsessed over that hot dog.
97
286449
2086
04:48
I kept on going back to the experience
98
288576
1835
04:50
and trying to figure out what happened [so] that the whole thing went down,
99
290453
3545
04:53
what happened so that it could happen and what needed to happen
100
293998
3087
04:57
so that it could start happening all the time.
101
297126
2294
04:59
First, being present.
102
299462
2461
05:02
Which I get, it's like, kind of overused these days.
103
302382
2461
05:04
But for me, being present means caring so much about the thing you're doing
104
304843
4087
05:08
or the person you're with
105
308930
1418
05:10
that you stop caring about all the other things you need to do.
106
310348
3545
05:14
And it's essential in delivering unreasonable hospitality.
107
314561
3378
05:18
See, so often we have such long to-do lists
108
318648
3212
05:21
that we aren't able to slow down enough
109
321860
2127
05:24
to actually listen to the people around us,
110
324028
2753
05:26
to the things they're saying
111
326823
1710
05:28
and all the things they're not saying.
112
328533
2127
05:31
If I hadn't been present at that table,
113
331035
1919
05:32
I never would have heard that throwaway line about the hot dog.
114
332996
3378
05:37
Second, it required taking what you do seriously
115
337792
4671
05:42
without taking yourself too seriously.
116
342505
2378
05:45
Way too often in customer service businesses,
117
345633
2920
05:48
we let these self-imposed standards get in the way of us giving our customers
118
348553
4379
05:52
the thing they actually want.
119
352932
2169
05:55
OK, a hotdog in a four-star restaurant is sacrilegious.
120
355560
3253
05:59
But look at the way it made them feel.
121
359314
2085
06:02
And third, it required the acknowledgment that if what you're trying to do
122
362775
3546
06:06
is give people a sense of genuine belonging,
123
366362
3003
06:09
one size fits one.
124
369365
1877
06:12
Hospitality is about making people feel seen.
125
372577
2502
06:15
And the best way to do that is not to treat them like a commodity,
126
375580
3545
06:19
but as a unique individual.
127
379125
1794
06:21
I really do believe I could have comped that table a bottle of vintage champagne
128
381836
3796
06:25
and given them a free bucket of caviar,
129
385673
2086
06:27
and it would not have had the same impact as that two-dollar hotdog.
130
387800
3212
06:31
Because it would not have been specific to them.
131
391054
2335
06:34
The hot dog had given us a new true north.
132
394682
2711
06:37
And now we had a road map.
133
397727
1710
06:40
I started talking about it constantly at staff meetings,
134
400563
2628
06:43
telling the team what led to the gesture
135
403232
2378
06:45
and encouraging them to go out into the dining room
136
405610
2419
06:48
to find opportunities of their own.
137
408029
2002
06:50
And they were just as fired up as I was.
138
410073
1918
06:51
And we got started right away.
139
411991
1460
06:53
Every night, finding a few really cool experiences
140
413493
2502
06:56
to deliver to our guests.
141
416037
1668
06:58
We had unlocked something important.
142
418164
1960
07:00
We knew it was working,
143
420500
2210
07:02
but we wanted more of it.
144
422752
1585
07:04
We wanted to give these kinds of things to almost everyone.
145
424379
2794
07:07
We wanted to make it a bigger part of our culture.
146
427215
2627
07:09
And we recognized that we needed to invest
147
429884
2377
07:12
in the resources to make that possible.
148
432261
2253
07:15
So, we added a position to the team,
149
435223
3211
07:18
someone whose only responsibility was to help everyone else
150
438476
3212
07:21
bring their ideas to life.
151
441688
2210
07:24
We called the position the Dream Weaver,
152
444482
2586
07:27
named after the iconic song by Gary Wright.
153
447110
2794
07:30
You've heard it, even if you don't think you have.
154
450446
3003
07:33
I'll help you.
155
453741
1335
07:35
It goes something like, (sings) Ooh, dream weaver.
156
455118
4087
07:39
(Laughter)
157
459205
1418
07:40
Oh, sorry --
158
460623
1585
07:42
(Applause)
159
462250
1418
07:43
I just had to sing it
160
463710
1501
07:45
because that song is actually pretty important to me,
161
465253
2502
07:47
it was playing the first time I kissed a girl.
162
467755
2169
07:49
It will now be stuck in your head for the rest of the day, you're welcome.
163
469966
3503
07:53
And with the addition of that position,
164
473803
2044
07:55
we were on fire.
165
475847
1543
07:58
Sincerely, a guest warned us in advance
166
478016
2711
08:00
that his dad was more of a Budweiser steak-and-potatoes kind of guy
167
480727
3336
08:04
than Sauternes and foie gras,
168
484063
1627
08:05
so the Dream Weavers turned our fancy champagne cart
169
485732
3086
08:08
into a Budweiser cart,
170
488860
1918
08:10
filled with every available type of Budweiser
171
490820
2377
08:13
at every bodega in the neighborhood.
172
493239
1877
08:15
(Laughter)
173
495158
1167
08:16
A couple came in to console themselves
174
496325
1836
08:18
after their beach vacation flight was canceled.
175
498202
2503
08:20
So at the end of their meal,
176
500747
1376
08:22
we turned our private dining room into their very own private beach
177
502123
3670
08:25
with reclining folding chairs, a ton of sand on the ground,
178
505835
3670
08:29
and a kiddie pool filled with water they could dip their feet into
179
509547
3128
08:32
while they drowned their sorrows over tropical mai tais
180
512675
2586
08:35
with those little umbrellas.
181
515261
1543
08:37
Or a family of four from Spain was in the restaurant.
182
517388
2503
08:39
They were in New York on vacation.
183
519891
1626
08:41
And while they were eating, the most beautiful thing happened.
184
521559
2920
08:44
The kids were looking out our massive windows with wonder.
185
524520
2962
08:48
It had started snowing
186
528274
1668
08:49
and it was the first time they'd ever seen real snow.
187
529942
2545
08:52
The Dream Weaver found a store
188
532779
1459
08:54
that was open at eight o’clock on a Friday night.
189
534238
2336
08:56
When they left the restaurant,
190
536574
1460
08:58
there was a chauffeur-driven SUV waiting to take them to Central Park
191
538034
3253
09:01
for the most special nightcap:
192
541287
1460
09:02
a few hours of play in the freshly fallen snow.
193
542747
2336
09:06
With these gestures and so many more,
194
546959
1794
09:08
our guests were obviously happier than ever,
195
548753
2127
09:10
but you know what?
196
550880
1001
09:11
This is the cool part, so was our team.
197
551881
2252
09:14
Because for the first time, they had creative autonomy.
198
554217
2586
09:16
They were no longer just helping to execute someone else's vision,
199
556844
3128
09:19
serving plates of food someone else had created.
200
559972
2336
09:22
They were coming up with their own ideas,
201
562350
2002
09:24
and those ideas were affecting the guest experience.
202
564352
2711
09:27
They were empowered.
203
567438
1627
09:29
But mostly,
204
569774
2336
09:32
I mean, we were all just happy
205
572151
1460
09:33
because we were making other people really, really happy.
206
573611
2836
09:37
There are few things more energizing than seeing the look of complete joy
207
577490
3629
09:41
on someone's face when they receive a gift
208
581160
2002
09:43
that you are responsible for giving.
209
583204
2210
09:46
It can become one of the most beautiful addictions.
210
586207
3211
09:49
And as we all found ourselves quickly becoming addicted
211
589794
2627
09:52
to going above and beyond for our guests,
212
592463
2378
09:54
we found ourselves going above and beyond for one another as well.
213
594841
3962
10:00
Now I'm going to say this because I'm sure some people are thinking it:
214
600138
3336
10:03
unreasonable hospitality is not just for fancy restaurants.
215
603516
2961
10:06
I get it, some of the gestures I just described
216
606477
2211
10:08
were quite extravagant.
217
608729
1252
10:10
We did hire people onto the team to help us execute them more consistently.
218
610022
3629
10:13
But remember, that hotdog only cost two dollars,
219
613985
3753
10:17
and the impact it had was priceless.
220
617738
2378
10:20
It does not take a big budget to start infusing this into your culture,
221
620575
3420
10:24
because remember, it's not the cost of the gesture that matters.
222
624036
3295
10:27
It's how it makes people feel.
223
627373
1752
10:30
For most of America's history, we were a manufacturing economy.
224
630501
3170
10:33
Now we're a service economy and dramatically so.
225
633713
3378
10:37
More than three quarters of our GDP is driven by service industries.
226
637133
3253
10:40
Globally, it's more than 65 percent.
227
640428
2669
10:43
That means that whether you're in real estate
228
643848
2169
10:46
or retail or construction
229
646017
1668
10:47
or finance or insurance or computer services,
230
647727
2961
10:50
you do the same thing for a living that I do.
231
650730
2669
10:53
You’re in the business of serving other people.
232
653983
3295
10:57
And if you start to look closely enough,
233
657320
1918
10:59
you will find opportunities for unreasonable hospitality,
234
659238
3212
11:02
to give people more than they could ever possibly expect
235
662491
4130
11:06
all around you.
236
666662
1335
11:08
Take real estate agents, for example.
237
668581
2628
11:11
Every time I've bought or rented a new apartment,
238
671250
2378
11:13
at best, the agent has left me a bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge
239
673628
3378
11:17
as my thank you/congratulations gift.
240
677048
2294
11:19
At worst, they've just thrown the keys on the kitchen counter.
241
679675
3003
11:23
Now, this is someone with whom I've spent weeks, if not months,
242
683095
2962
11:26
looking together for my new home.
243
686098
1752
11:27
If they've been paying attention,
244
687892
1585
11:29
they should know every intimate detail of my life.
245
689477
2711
11:32
So imagine instead, if the first time my wife and I walked
246
692688
2711
11:35
into the apartment that we ended up choosing,
247
695399
2127
11:37
they overheard her talking about the nook
248
697568
1960
11:39
she imagined herself doing yoga every morning.
249
699570
2169
11:41
And when we moved in,
250
701781
1168
11:42
instead of that obligatory bottle of bubbles,
251
702949
2168
11:45
in that nook was a brand new yoga mat with a candle and a note that said
252
705159
3420
11:48
"Welcome to your new home."
253
708621
1877
11:51
I think that would be pretty cool.
254
711040
1668
11:53
And compared to the average commission,
255
713167
1919
11:55
it's a pretty insignificant investment
256
715127
2378
11:57
in what will inevitably become a lifelong relationship.
257
717546
3671
12:02
This is not rocket science.
258
722426
1961
12:05
It just requires caring a little bit more
259
725012
3212
12:08
and trying a little bit harder.
260
728266
2085
12:11
Being present,
261
731435
1710
12:13
not taking yourself too seriously
262
733187
2628
12:15
and remembering that one size fits one.
263
735856
2420
12:19
Just go with me here.
264
739193
1126
12:20
Imagine if the person that checked you into the dentist's office
265
740361
3003
12:23
started thinking like this.
266
743406
1334
12:24
Imagine if the person that sold you your next car started thinking like this.
267
744740
3671
12:28
Or better yet, imagine if everyone on your entire team
268
748411
3169
12:31
started thinking like this.
269
751622
1669
12:34
Because making good products, it's no longer enough.
270
754292
3586
12:38
Serving them efficiently is no longer enough.
271
758462
3546
12:42
It's how we make people feel that matters most of all.
272
762675
3837
12:47
Because I believe we are on the precipice of becoming a hospitality economy.
273
767471
4839
12:53
Listen, unreasonable hospitality helped my restaurant
274
773102
2878
12:56
accomplish every single one of our goals,
275
776022
3545
12:59
and it turned the people I worked with
276
779567
1877
13:01
from a collection of individuals into a trusting team,
277
781444
3461
13:04
unlocking a collective creativity and capacity
278
784947
3170
13:08
we had never experienced before.
279
788117
2419
13:11
So the next time you find yourself pursuing a relationship
280
791454
3253
13:14
with someone you work with or someone you serve,
281
794749
3878
13:18
I'm just here to encourage you to try being a little bit more unreasonable.
282
798669
4630
13:23
(Laughter)
283
803341
1167
13:24
Give people that sense of belonging.
284
804508
2336
13:26
Give them a memory that can last a lifetime.
285
806886
3211
13:30
It will transform your business.
286
810806
2294
13:33
But I can also promise you this.
287
813434
1960
13:35
It will make you and all the people around you
288
815436
3837
13:39
feel really, really, really good.
289
819273
4421
13:45
Thank you.
290
825196
1376
13:46
(Applause and cheers)
291
826614
6298
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7