Unreasonable Hospitality with Will Guidara

the world along with amazing food. Eleven Madison Park is known for its legendary hospitality. Will's new book, and I have a copyright with me, is called Unreasonable Hospitality, the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect, and it serves as a guide for business leaders in any industry. And I'm very excited to talk to him about that and many other things today. Will, it's my pleasure to have you here at my farm and on my podcast.

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks. And we met just a couple of weeks ago, formally at a party for Carly close to Supermodel's thirtieth birthday. That was a fun party. It was. It was very fun to see you and see Christina Tosi, who's Will's wife of how many years now? We are at six years? Oh? Really that long? It seems like yesterday when she got married to you and you have a child. We have one daughter named Frankie Francis I read it. Her name was Francis.

We call her Frankie. She's named after my dad and he is he Frankie. Well now his name is Francis and we're just trying to come up with a slate to well, No, that's very cute. I have a brother named frank who we called Frankie for all the time he was growing up. My dad was very happy when when he got the nod. Oh how nice I bet he was. Is that the first grandchild for him? It's his first grandchild. That's lovely and it was great see Christina. Christina, by the way, is the founder of the Milk Bar,

famous for her really unusual cookies. Uh. And she was partnered originally with David Chang. Are they still partners. They're not partners anymore. I mean they're like brothers and sisters. Yeah, But Milk Bar is kind of blossomed into its own thing, going cool, cool life and very I did very well on the wife. I feel pretty good about that. Yeah, you've had a really storied career so far. You went to Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, and you interned

in Spain. We're in Spain. I was in the north of Spain and in a town called San paul Um. I went there right after I graduated college. I had so much fun at college that I never wanted to do a study abroad program, and then graduation was nearing

and I started to regret that a little bit. So, you know, I just went to a hotel school in the north of Spain and chopped vegetables effectively in exchange for room and board, and was there for about three months before four months before going back to New York and working with Danny Meyer. So for you started right off with Danny Meyer, the legendary Danny Meyer. Legendary Danny who has made such an amazing career of hospitality and restaurants and now, uh, the humblest of all his operations

is the Shake Shack. One of my favorite haunts. I love hot dogs. I have this crazy love of hot dogs. I think I got it from my mom, who also loved hot dogs. Growing up, we had Rudd's Hut in New Jersey. Three Yeah, they had really good hot dogs, and so every now and then Mom and I would

go and get a hot dog at Rhod's Hut. So my whole family is from New England, and so the way that they would make hot dogs back in the day was like butter searing the hot dogs, and then like the the buns where it's not crusted all the way around, it's like a split cut, yes, yes, and then steering that and butter just mustard, and then what about the baked beans, and then we have the baked beans on the side, on the side. That's how we

had them in our house too. And although sometimes maybe the hot dogs were boiled, my mother like boiled if they were really good hot dogs. But then I discovered the fried hot dog at there's a fabulous hot dog place in fair Field right on right on Root one and fair Field called Rawley's. And they made, uh, they fried their hot dogs. First, they boiled them, then they threw them into into hot oil and they burst a little bit, and then they put them on buttered toasted buns.

With with they don't. They didn't have souer Kraus, so weird because I love sour cry, but they had relish mustard and bacon, and we could just spend this entire podcast talking about hot dogs. I just love that that that you worked for Danny Meyer when he was developed Well, no, he had developed that after you left, right because you were you then went to whe Cuisine. Well, yeah, I mean when I went to eleven Madison Park to take over as the general manager, shake Shack was open in

the park. It was just that one, just the one, and we were in the burgers were still the burger patties were being formed in the private dining room kitchen at eleven Medicals they were, and so literally in the middle of the lunch service you would be carrying out carrying out trays of raw burger me through the front door. So you went as general manager right from right from

working as a trainee at at Jenny's. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, no, so my journey was I went from Spain, started with Danny Meyer at Tabla, working with the late Floyd car does Um, which you know, I still think bread barr at Tabla back in the day was one of the

greatest restaurants. It was so delicious. Absolutely. Then I went to work at a place called Restaurant Associates, which I'm sure you know that's a big corporate catering and andspital everything from the US Open to Lincoln Center to the met Opera, where I was doing purchasing and accounting. My dad's in the restaurant business, and he always wanted me to learn kind of every element of the business before

I one day did my own thing. And from there I opened all the restaurants again with Danny Meyer at the Museum of Modern Art, so delicious. I love that restaurant. I loved it was a special place. It is a special um Before eventually in two thousand and six, going to live, I guess that's where I first met you at the Maybe that was when I first met you.

Probably at Moment. I was the first person to actually have an office at Moment because they had closed the museum to do the big renovation, and the restaurant people

were the first to go in. And when I first went to MoMA, my office was on the fifth floor, about three thousand square feet, overlook in the sculpture garden until all the museum staff started moving back in and then I got subsequently bumped down until I ended up in the subseller where where my office was for the rest of my time there, and then from there and

then from there to eleven Madisone Park. So that was already a brosery that was a broserate and was that Danielle was he running the brosery at that time, So yeah, he had just been hired about six months before I was Danny Meyer who owned it before I bought it from him. Um saw the room and just wanted the restaurant to be like one that could live up to its room because the room is, you know, thirty five foot ceilings, no extraordinary, and that building is which which

what's the name of that building? That was the original MetLife building which one? It was being built, was meant to be the tallest building in the world before the recession hits. So it's only like thirty five stories. But the lobby spaces where the restaurant is are unbelievably ground they are. So you changed that brossery infested you work to get it changed well, So we got there in two thousand and six. I'm glad, you know, your chronology.

So well, this is this is something complicated read in the book helped helps made to restore my memory. Um, I sold the restaurant at the beginning of two thousand twenty. So you owned the physical restaurant. Yes, okay, So I started with Daniel whom we owned it together, partners, we're partners. Got there in two thousand six, bought it in two thousand eleven, um, and then it was in two thousand seventeen that we were named the best restaurant in the world.

So eleven years after eleven years it took to become number one, which is a minuscule amount of time in the restaurant world. Wow, that was some fantastic accomplishment. And I just I just loved eating at eleven Madison Park when you were number one. I mean really, we had the best meals, so so particular each dish, but not so particular that it was like intimidating to eat. Everything was so tasty and so beautifully prepared in that kitchen

with all those fantastic shifts. We had a beautiful kids, did amazing kitchen. So you parted ways with Daniel, whom which was surprising to everybody. Yeah, and then he turned vegan. Then he went vegan. Yeah, why did you have a life change or something? You know, I'm not sure, Like I believe, and you know, with the focus of the book just about like being unreasonable in pursuit of hospitality.

I believe we were the best vegan restaurant out there when we were still serving me because that was always something that was very important to me. Is no matter what people walked into the room with, Like, I don't think you can ever try to be all things to all people, but if you sense that certain people are looking to dine in a certain way, you should be ready to deliver just as good an experience to them as as you are anywhere else. So you started thinking

about that already before you left. Yeah, I mean never, I was never a part of a conversation to go completely vegan. But it was always important to me on the hospitality side that no matter what your dietary restrictions were, that we could give you the best meal that you've had. We will get back to this unreasonable Now, this this is a hard title for a book, because you're not

at all really unreasonable. You are really really encompassing the best tenants of all for for restaurant UM development and restaurant service and restaurant everything. So why did why why did they start calling it hospitality instead of the restaurant business. Well, it's a nice it's a nice way to call it

and to describe it. Yeah, I mean, like my, my whole thing with even the hospitality industry to begin with, I think most people think of the hospitality industry as being restaurants, hotels, cruise lines a few other things like that, UM, and I think, you know, simply put, I think it was called the hospitality industry because those are the businesses where people seem to care about hospitality and taking care of guests, taking care of visitors, taking care of people

who are coming to eat something that's hospitality. Yeah, Well, recognizing that hospitality is not the thing you're serving. It's not how you serve it. It's the way you make people feel when you serve it. Like service is cooking the steak in the right way, delivering it to the right person within the right amount of time. Hospitality is how do you feel at the end of the night when you leave the restaurant. If it's just that you thought the food was delicious and it was an efficient

experience that was not one where you received hospitality. I think hospitality with the ambiance of the place too. I think hospitality, Yeah, I think the ambiance for sure, if the person is thinking about the ambiance with the intention of creating conditions where people can connect. My belief system is that in a restaurant, the food, the service, and the design are simply ingredients and the recipe of human connection.

The restaurants that fully understand hospitality are ones where if you and I go to that restaurant, we're going to feel more connected to one another at the end of that meal than we did when we went into it. Yeah, it's a nice way to put it, and I believe that any business can be in the hospitality industry if they choose to put that type of thinking kind of in the center of how they make decisions. Like if you're in an office and morale is low, don't say, oh,

have a happy hour. Yeah, fix what's making the morale go down right, and and then create the conditions where the people that work there feel like connected, not only to the people they work for. Are you opening a consulting business to help us business owners make sure that we are being hospitable. I mean, I've been doing some consulting in this middle time. Yeah, this is a good idea which has been fun. If we're with medical institutions,

I've worked with luxury retail brands. And the reason it's called unreasonable hospitality. And I appreciate thinking that I'm not an unreasonable person, which I don't think I am. But like when you look at I mean, the people that are most successful are unreasonable in their pursuit of something. Right, You've been unreasonable in your career, in your pursuit of creating everything that you've created. You look at Lebron James, He's been unreasonable and become the basketball player he is,

or Scorsese or Steve Jobs. And I believe that following, especially in the last couple of years, where everyone feels such a lack of connection, that it's time for more people in their lives and as leaders of their businesses to start being just as unreasonable in their pursuit of how they make people feel. So being unreasonable is also being unaccepting of mediocracy, the unaccepting of of serving something that shouldn't be serving. Yes, yeah, I totally get it.

Like unwavering being fiercely dedicated, being willing to do whatever it takes to make the people you serve and those that you work with. Giving this booktual a lot of people, but I'm also going to give this part of the podcast to them. I like having this verbalized like you're doing because it's so important. It really is, Like I'll

give you an example. Actually that comes down to the hot dog because we the whole thing started because we went to the fifty Best the fifty best wards the first year on that list, but we came in last place at a fifty at a fifty, which there's a good result, but I felt demoralized, haven't Okay, so you felt demoralized, Yeah, a little bit, were motivated in the top fifty. Yeah, but in that room we were last.

Oh yeah, but guess what you know, room for improvement. Well, and my my dad always says, adversity is a terrible thing to waste, and you know, there's there's no there's no way around. It was just embarrassing to come in last place in that room because you're like, you're like, all right, we're on the list now. And then that was eleven Madison Park, So you're just a brasserie. Then yeah, we're just a bras were. We're on our way, but we hadn't arrived yet. But that whole number one thing.

Every restaurant that topped that list did so because they made some impact, right front, Adrea at El Belie with molecular guests. This was this was worldwide fifty restaurants. You should have been so proud of yourself when we got there. We really were. But you know, fron Adrea pioneer molecular gastronomy,

Renee red zepiet Noma pioneered foraging and local. And the impact that I wanted to make was all the chefs on that list were unreasonable with what they put on the plate, and I wanted to be the restaurant that started to be just as unreasonable and how we served that food and York, Yeah, and so we I got back to the restaurant and I had this idea of unreasonable hospitality in my head, but I didn't know what it meant. So you name that. This is way back

in two thousand and ten. You were already thinking about unreasonably this idea. That's great. Um, so it's taken you twelve years to write the book to get the book out. Great. I started at a few different times, but it wasn't until COVID that you got you got to do it. You know, sometimes you need the world to slow down enough for things to come into focus a little bit, and yourself to slow down. Yeah, exactly. And your baby

gave you enough free time. My baby, my baby thankfully was born when I was about eighty percent of the way through it. Um. But I was in the dinning room one day and there was a table of four Europeans who were on vacation to New York. There were foodies who are leaving to go back to the airport to head home after their lunch, and I overheard them talking. They're like, what an amazing trip We've been to all the best restaurants per se Danielle Le Bernadine Mamofuku now

at the Medicine Park. And then another one jumped in. So the only thing we haven't had is in New York City street hot dog And so you know those moments in a cartoon or the light bulb. Yeah, So I walked as calmly as I could back to the kitchen and then sprint it out the front door of the restaurant down the block to the hot dog cart it.

I got a hot dog, brought it in, talk about ten minutes to convince Daniel to serve it, and then we cut it into four perfect pieces, putting on four plates a little swish of ketchup, a swish of mustard, a cannell of sauerkraut, and a cannell of relish. And before their final savory course, we brought it out and I said, to make sure you don't go home with

any culinary regrets in New York City hot dog. So you took made the effort, and because you were also very nosey and overhearing, you make a point of you make a point of in the book by the way, that it's not bad to be nosy, not bad to over here. Well, it's I mean being nosy overhearing is I think it's just caring enough about the relationship where you choose to care about what they're saying and then try to serve them in a way that it's unique

to them. For stock chips don't take the stock chips, don't susts or at least do so subtly. Um. But when I served them that hot dog, I had never seen anyone respond to anything I'd served them like they did to that because it was just for them. And that's kind of the ethos of this how because by the way, serving people as individuals, as opposed to just coming up with the thing you want to serve and

serving it to everyone that is unreasonable. It takes a lot of energy, but the look on someone's face when they receive a gift that you're responsible for giving them is one of the most energizing things out there. I think part of unreasonable hospitality is taking what you do seriously without taking yourself so seriously that you don't do the things that will actually make people happy. And you know what, I think your wife is also that way.

She's unreasonable because look at what she's done with corn flakes and milk. If you don't know who Christina Tosi is, you should all look her up every because she took corn flakes, soaked them in milk, and then used that corn flake milk in her cookies or cakes. Cake that was a cake. And I, you know, I couldn't believe it when I first read the recipe. And what did

she do with the corn flakes? She threw them away, gave him to the pigs, but it was interesting to start breaking them up here to your animals, my chickens were love but but fun. You know, it's it's it's fun and unreasonable and unexpected and successful all at the same time. Well, and she has the very definition of that. I mean, my wife is very hard working, very disciplined.

She takes what she does very seriously, but she doesn't take herself so seriously that she can't see the beautiful opportunities for creativity and innovation that sometimes sit right in front of our faces. It's so great. So when you were back at eleven Madison Park and changing into the number one restaurant, what did you have to change? You change a lot? Was it you? Was it service? Was it ambiance? Was it the plates? We changed absolutely everything

slowly over time. You know, we didn't close it, do a big renovation and reopen it. It was. It was so incremental that at a certain point it started to feel almost inevitable. Right. It started with uniforms, plates, the menu, it stopped being in all the cart and then became a price fixed before it became a tasting menu. You know, we went from big brasso replates with the red line

around the rim to the beautiful Bernadoux. Until we finally moved into custom made porcelain from a local manufacturer, it got more and more and more the number one. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's kind of one of the beautiful things if you allow the business you're running to start, if you start treating it like a living, breathing organism, then you can just slowly make it better and better and better. Educating a trial, yeah, giving them

more and more opportunities to learn. Yeah, if you recognize that you're never there's no there's no concept of being done. It's just a beautiful journey that continues in perpetuity, and there's inflection points along that. So how did you separate yourself from your baby? You know? Was it hard? That was definitely hard. It was definitely hard. But were you brought out? I was bought out, so that that helped. Being brought out, that helped um and my baby actually

having a real baby helped. I think when you do something your entire life and you're very celebrated for doing it, it starts to become your identity, right, And so when when I sold that company, I almost started frantically going to open new restaurants, and when COVID started on March whatever fift, I was one week away, this is not hyperbole from signing three new restaurant leases in the city.

And then I moved up to the country and for what I thought was going to be a couple of months, and then I was like, you know what this is? This is the life I want to live. So is there a difference between service and hospitality? I mean, you touched on it a little bit, but is there a difference? There must be, yeah. So one of the things in the book that back in the day when I was at TABLEA, I wasn't, you know, a confident manager yet I was a fresh out of college, and so I

always wrote interview questions when I sat down with someone. Now, I just believe in letting a conversation flow and seeing if it's someone I want to spend time with. But that was the question I always used to ask new people, what's the difference between service and hospitality? The best answer I ever got was from a woman who said, services black and white and hospitality is color. Service of the

things that we do. Hospitality is the way that we engage with people when we do those things services putting a plate down, Hospitality is the eye contact and the connection you established with the person you're giving the plate to when you put it down. When I was coming up people, I was talking about excellence in hospitality. You hire for hospitality, you train excellence. I think you can train both. I think hospitality is just as much of a craft as cooking or service or anything is, and

therefore you can teach a craft. I think one of the best ways to teach it, though, is to encourage it. I think it's much easier to know how good it feels to give hospitality to extend graciousness to other people once you first experience how good it feels to receive it, and then I think is a part of the leader's job is to encourage hospitality by delivering it to the people that you hope will then turn around and deliver

it to your guests. There's this quote which I've come to learn is misattributed to my Angelou, which is people will forget what you say, they'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget how you made them feel like in in five years. When you're describing that meal, the thing you're going to remember is how you felt, especially the next day when you were texting with your friend. And that has nothing to do with anything except for hospital exactly. Go back to Cornell. You took a class

cold guest Chefs. Well, that's actually a really good segue. Tell us that class inspire you and what did you learn from that? Well, there's a classic Cornell called Guest Chefs. They bring up a famous chef every semester and the classes split up into three groups, management, dining room, employees,

in kitchen, and plays. I was in the management team when Daniel Ballud came up and cooked at Cornell, and my role was marketing the event now was Daniel Balloud, which meant that it was going to sell out no matter what. So I decided that my role was entertaining the chef. And it was an amazing event, obviously, and I brought Daniel Blood and his Sioux chefs and everyone down to my house at one thirty College Avenue, where I treated him to the best form of hospitality I

understood at the time, which was a keg party. Daniel and I became close through that experience, So you had a keg of beer, We had a keg of beer Milwaukee's best, and Daniel made scrambled eggs and truffles for all of the students. The reason the story is relevant is because we became close enough that my mom passed away the day after I graduated college. She had been sick for a long time, and because of that, I

almost didn't go to Spain as planned. But my dad encouraged me too, and by the time I went to buy my ticket to Spain, he lived in Boston at the time, I can only find one leaving from New York. So he drove me to the airport and it felt like the right time to call Daniel Balloud. Remember I'm twenty one years old, but he gave me his number. He goes anything you ever need, and so I said, hey, I'd like to bring my dad to Danielle And so he set us up in the sky box, which is

ere my grandchildren. There isn't that a special treat? And so for anyone listening, the sky box is a room that sits with a window overlooking the kitchen, and it's amazing and your food is brought up to from from all those fabulous stoves and you're watching it being cooked and the whole thing. And this was a night where I mean my dad's wife, my mother had just passed away.

It should have been one of our saddest nights, but because of the warmth and the graciousness, the hospitality that Danielle and his team extended to us became one of our best nights. And your father will never forget it, and I'll never forget you. You were taking care of him. It was my first time taking him out to dinner.

Danielle was taking care of you both. Yeah, And it's like one of the things I talked about in the book is that in restaurants and really any customer service business, we have an opportunity to create our own magical worlds in a world that needs more magic, simply by virtue

of how we invest in the people around us. And that night was the first time I recognized how powerful the gifts you give through hospitality can be because you can you can always help people celebrate moments, but sometimes you can give people the grace, if only for a few hours, to forget about the really hard moments. I think that's a really beautiful thing that I hope more

people are inspired to want to do. I hope a lot of restaurant terms, or but I, but I genuinely believe that it could happen at a car dealership or at a barbershop, or when you go to rent a car on vacation or on the plane on your way. Like, I just think it would be a beautiful world if more people recognize that it's not just good on the receiving end, it feels really damn good on the giving end too. At the end, it was impossible to get

a table into leven Madison Park. The people that that did get a table, I'm sure considered themselves lucky that they were able to have dinner there. But it was always very important to me that we never became the kind of restaurant that treated them as if they were lucky to be dining with us, and actually the opposite. We always lead with gratitude that people were trusting us

with their time and their money. Why do you say there's nothing more flattering than a guest walking into the restaurant with luggage, well, luggage like suitcase with suitcases, Because that means that they want their experience with you to be either their first or their last memory of their trip. So they're on their way to the airport, or they're just they've just gotten there. They've either they either can't wait to go, or it's the thing that they want

to have as the lasting memory of their trip. Like I'll give you my example, which is not an eleven Madison Park style example, but every time I travel to l A. And I'm sure a lot of people do this as well, based on how busy it is. I get up the plan, I got directly to In and Out Burger. I just knew you were going to do that. In and Out Burger. Everybody, if you haven't been there,

go there double double animal style. No, no, no. And because it's like for me, it signifies that I am now in Los Angeles, and if you can be that, it means that you represent someone's emotional connections so much to a city. I think it's a pretty powerful thing. Yeah, that's that's awfully nice. So you've dined in many restaurants all over the world. Which dining experiences have impressed you

the most? And weird, I mean, there's a lot. The one I'm I'm thinking about right now because out of the corner of my eye, I see your linear cookbook. I love the meals. I've had a line and I love them because, Okay, he is very innovative, right, very forward thinking. Um, but there's also like a deliciousness and a nostalgia to his food that the last time I went there. There are two courses that will never forget. M One was a helium balloon, where the balloon was edible,

and so here's this very serious, important restaurant. It was a dessert and so they literally it's like an apple kind of taffy balloon, and so you'll see blown and then filled with helium, and they bring it over and then the guests inhale the helium and start talking and laughing, and then they eat this delicious thing. So it's engaging, it's experiential, it's funny. And then the way that they finished the course, their final dessert, I think is so brilliant.

Everyone else looks at a table and sees the table and then puts plates on the table. Grant looked at the tables of his restaurant and saw plates. And so they roll out a silicone mat to over the entire table, and they take everything else off, and then they played a giant dessert across the entire table, which I think is brilliant. It's fun, it's entertaining, and then the way

it brings people together. You and I are both our entire table just turned into a giant Willy Wonka style dessert and you just all eat it from this and you're just all digging in and so like the the idea of like creating community around the table. I think I think they do it very very well, as long as it's not that drink where they're straws sticking into it and you're all drinking out of this scene. No, that's taking it too far. That's awful. You always think

who's spitting in? Think after I think that trend is, I think that looks done. I think I won't. I won't. I never did that. You say, many companies focus on products, but I've forgotten about the people. I think that you are remembering the people so nicely in this book and in the work that you have done. Thank you and

the best of luck. This has been a very very nice conversation, and I and I wish you well, and I wish all of us well in all the restaurants that we go to after they read Unreasonable, The remarkable power of giving people more than they expect. Thank you so much, Thank you, I appreciate it.