Setting the Table by Danny Meyer paper

S E T T I N G
T H E TA B L E

T h e Tra n s f o r m i n g P o w e r o f
H o s p i t a l i t y i n B u s i n e s s

D A N N Y M EY E R

For Audrey, Hallie, Charles,

Gretchen, and Peyton

and

For Mary Smith

conte nt s

Introduction 1

1. The First Course 5

2. In 31

3. The Restaurant Takes Root 55

4. Turning Over the Rocks 77

5. Who Ever Wrote the Rule. . . ? 97

6. No Turning Back 111

7. The 51 Percent Solution 139

8. Broadcasting the Message,Tuning in the Feedback 161

9. Constant, Gentle Pressure 187

10. The Road to Success Is Paved 219
with Mistakes Well Handled

11. The Virtuous Cycle of Enlightened Hospitality 237

12. Context, Context, Context 271

13. The Art of Hospitality 291

Acknowledgments 317

About the Author

Other Books by Danny Meyer

Credits

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

i nt roduc t i on

Ove r the cour se of the past twenty-one years I’ve opened
and operated five white-tablecloth restaurants; an urban barbecue
joint; a feel-good jazz club; a neo-roadside stand selling frozen cus-
tard, burgers, and hot dogs; three modern museum cafés; and an off-
premises, restaurant-quality catering company. So far, I haven’t had
the experience of closing any of them, and I pray I never will.

My business is very much in the public eye; it’s highly scrutinized,
and it invites passionate opinions from experts and amateurs alike. A
debate between people about their favorite restaurant can take on the
heat of a political or religious discourse. And if you want to persist
and thrive, you’d better not rest on your laurels. Every time you look
up, there’s another new, eager competitor trying to attract the atten-
tion and affection of the public and the media, each hell-bent on tast-
ing and weighing in on the newest thing.

But there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. I was born to go into
business for myself—and I was destined to find a business that would

1

2 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e

allow me to share with others my enthusiasm for things I fi nd plea-
surable. My craving for the adventures of travel, food, and wine is
what first compelled me to do what I do. In fact, like so many other
entrepreneurs I’ve met, I’m not even sure I had much of a choice: a
career in the restaurant business was going to tap me on the shoulder
even if I hadn’t found it fi rst.

All these years later, the delights of the table continue to stimulate
me as I pursue my career. But what really challenges me to get up and
go to work every day, and has also motivated me to write this book,
is my deep conviction about the intense human drive to provide
and receive hospitality—well beyond the world of restaurants.Within
moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the
first four gifts of life: eye contact, a smile, a hug, and some food. We
receive many other gifts in a lifetime, but few can ever surpass those
first four. That first time may be the purest “hospitality transaction”
we’ll ever have, and it’s not much of a surprise that we’ll crave those
gifts for the rest of our lives. I know I do.

My appreciation of the power of hospitality and my desire to
harness it have been the greatest contributors to whatever success my
restaurants and businesses have had. I’ve learned how crucially impor-
tant it is to put hospitality to work, first for the people who work for
me and subsequently for all the other people and stakeholders who
are in any way affected by our business—in descending order, our
guests, community, suppliers, and investors. I call this way of setting
priorities “enlightened hospitality.” It stands some more traditional
business approaches on their head, but it’s the foundation of every
business decision and every success we’ve had.

Since the beginning, people have told me that in going into the
restaurant business, I chose one of the hardest businesses in the world.
True, a restaurant has all kinds of moving parts that make it particu-
larly challenging. In order to succeed, you need to apply—simultane-
ously—exceptional skills in selecting real estate, negotiating, hiring,
training, motivating, purchasing, budgeting, designing, manufactur-

3 In t r o d u c t i o n

ing, cooking, tasting, pricing, selling, servicing, marketing, and host-
ing.And the purpose of all this is a product that provides pleasure and
that people trust is safe to ingest into their bodies.Also, unlike almost
any other manufacturer, you are actually present while the goods are
being consumed and experienced, so that you can gauge your cus-
tomers’ reactions in real time.That’s pretty complex, emotional stuff.

This is not a typical business book, and it’s certainly not a how-to
book. I don’t enjoy being told how—or that—I ought to do some-
thing; and I’m equally uncomfortable doling out advice without
having been asked for it. What follows is a series of life experiences
that led to a career in restaurants, which has, in turn, taught me vol-
umes about business and life. Along the way, I’ve learned powerful
lessons and language that have allowed me to lead with intention
rather than by intuition. In the process of writing the book, I’ve done
no research, gathered no evidence, and interviewed no one else. But
I hope that admission won’t stop you from enjoying it.

You may think, as I once did, that I’m primarily in the business of
serving good food. Actually, though, food is secondary to something
that matters even more. In the end, what’s most meaningful is creat-
ing positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and human
relationships. , like life, is all about how you make people feel.
It’s that simple, and it’s that hard.

c hap te r 1

Th e Fi r s t Co u r s e

I’ve learne d more of what I know about life from people than
from books, and I’ve learned much of what I know about people
from the food they eat. I’m on the road a number of days each year,
solo, or with my family, buddies, or colleagues—and when I travel,
the first thing I do in my first free moments in a town is visit its
food markets, pastry shops, butchers, and grocery stores. I read menus
posted outside restaurants. I watch the residents argue back and forth
with the merchants over the virtues of their wares. When I meet
people who look like locals, I ask them where they’d eat if they had
only one or two days in town, as I do. Cultures that care deeply about
food often care about life, history, and tradition. I’m constantly on
the lookout for local idiosyncrasies, ways of eating that exist nowhere
else. And I’m always energized by a hunt for the best version of any
local specialty.

In towns throughout Italy’s Piedmont I’ve tasted a meringue-
hazelnut cookie called brutti ma buoni (“ugly but good”). In Siena
I’ve searched for the supreme panforte, a sweet cake. In New York’s

5

6 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e

Chinatown I walk into butcher shops—not necessarily to buy, but
to observe how people select their cuts of meat and and sausage. In
Maine, of course, I cherish tiny wild blueberries. In northern Wis-
consin I’m unable to resist perch, bass, pike, and Native American
fry bread. In Miami, I look for Cuban counter restaurants. In Texas,
there isn’t time enough to visit all the Mexican taquerias for breakfast.
And the barbecue—within a thirty-five-mile radius of Austin in the
Texas Hill Country lie five towns I revere, each with a distinctly dif-
ferent style of barbecue. The elements of barbecue are limited—ribs,
brisket, pulled pork, chopped pork, minced pork, sausage, chicken,
cole slaw, beans, and a handful of side dishes—but it has become an
American culinary language with thousands of dialects and accents.
I try to understand each variation. During one thirty-six-hour road
trip through North Carolina, I tasted fourteen variations on chopped
pork, each defined by subtle and dramatic differences in texture, the
degree and type of smoke used, the amount of tomato or vinegar in
the sauce, how much heat was applied to the meat, as well as how
much or how little crackling got chopped up and tossed in. And
that’s in addition to checking out the many styles of fried chicken,
Brunswick stew, and hush puppies on offer.

From as far back as I can remember, I’ve been eating with my eyes,
nose, and mouth.When I was four I fell in love with stone crab at the
Lagoon restaurant in Miami Beach. I couldn’t stop eating it (and ap-
parently I couldn’t stop talking to anyone who would listen about the

“cwacked cwab”). Over the next years I remember savoring variations
of key lime pie in Key West; eating my first roadside cheeseburger
somewhere in the hills outside Santa Barbara; trying Dungeness crab
and saline abalone at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf; and having a
lobster roll in Ogunquit, Maine. I devoured my first custardy quiche
lorraine as a seven-year-old when my parents took us to the city of
Nancy in France. I tasted bottled water (Evian and Vittel) for the fi rst
time in the town of Talloires, and I can also remember exactly how
the water of Lake Annecy tasted as I swam in it. I discovered fraises

7 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e

des bois (wild strawberries) and crème fraîche at La Colombe d’Or in
Saint-Paul de Vence; I tasted a baguette with saucisson and pungent
moutarde in Paris’s Jardin des Tuilieries. My writing improved because
my mother insisted that I keep a diary of our trip.At the time, I hated
doing this. But the diary turned out to be one of the greatest gifts she
ever gave me. I wasn’t writing about the museums and churches we’d
seen. Instead I chose to write about food.

Back in my hometown, St. Louis, I was no less curious about
what people ate. When I brought my lunch from home to elemen-
tary school, I swapped and shared sandwiches, not because the other
kids’ lunches were better, but because this was the best way I knew
of to learn about another family. I had never heard of Miracle Whip
until I traded my braunschweiger on rye with another kid for his
baloney sandwich (one slice of Oscar Mayer and Miracle Whip on
Tastee white bread). It tasted nothing like the Hellmann’s mayonnaise
we used at home, and I began to understand something about fami-
lies, solely on the basis of their preference for Hellmann’s or Miracle
Whip. I was fascinated to discover that the household across the street
used Maull’s, the thin, tangy classic St. Louis barbecue sauce, whereas
my family was in the more mainstream Open Pit camp, using it as
a base to be doctored with other ingredients. I learned that various
brands of peanut butter tasted better with certain brands of jelly. I
observed that some families chose Heinz ketchup, while others used
Hunt’s or Brooks. I got to know and cared about the differences in
the flavors of these ketchups.

These explorations of food not only taught me about myself
and others but were central factors in how and why I chose to go
into the restaurant business, and perhaps even in why the restau-
rants have fared so well. My discoveries have also convinced me that
there’s always someone out there who has figured out how to make
something taste just a little bit better. And I am inspired by both the
search and the discovery.The restaurants and other businesses I have
opened in New York City—Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern,

Rosie Ramos

Rosie Ramos

Rosie Ramos

8 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e

Eleven Madison Park,Tabla, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, Shake Shack,
The Modern, Cafe 2, and Terrace 5 (our cafés for visitors within
the Museum of Modern Art), plus Hudson Yards Catering—were all
conceived and are all driven by a passion to add something new and
compelling to what I call a dialogue between what already exists and
what could be. When I decided to create Tabla, our Indian-inspired
restaurant, I wrote a list of ten things that one could ordinarily expect
of an Indian restaurant in New York—they included a predictable
menu; ornate décor with background sitar music; and austere service
and hospitality.Then I asked myself what Tabla might add to these ex-
pectations—what it could perhaps add to the dialogue New Yorkers
already had with Indian restaurants. Although its earliest years were
rather rocky—perhaps because we were trying to learn and educate
at the same time—Tabla has more than exceeded my goals for it, pio-
neering “new Indian” cooking in America and building a solid foun-
dation of loyal customers. Perhaps the surest sign of its success is that
it has inspired derivative restaurants in New York and beyond.

Whether the subject is Indian spices, new American cuisine, the
neighborhood bistro, barbecue, luxe dining, a big-league jazz club, the
traditional museum cafeteria, or hamburgers and milk shakes, my pas-
sion is always to explore the object of my interest in depth, and then
to combine the best of what I’ve found with something unexpected
to create a fresh context. I then look at the result and ask myself and
my colleagues what it would take to do this even better. Creating
restaurants or even recipes is like composing music: there are only so
many notes in the scale from which all melodies and harmonies are
created. The trick is to put those notes together in a way not heard
before. For us, the ongoing challenge has been to combine the best
elements of fine dining with accessibility—in other words, with open
arms. This was once a radical concept in my business, where excel-
lent cuisine was almost always paired with stiff arm’s-length service.
Sometimes, we’ve moved in the other direction, beginning with the
casual atmosphere of a barbecue joint or a shakes-and-burgers stand,

9 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e

and then attempting to exceed expectations by employing a caring
staff and using the fi nest ingredients. Our formula is a lot tougher to
achieve than it sounds, but it can be applied successfully to virtually
any business you can name.

Whe re doe s my hunge r for good food served with thoughtful
care and consistency come from? Why am I so energized by seek-
ing to uncover the best? The answer is my family, though its various
influences on me have often been at odds. My three most important
male role models were businessmen with profoundly different busi-
ness philosophies, personalities, and styles.

My parents, Roxanne and Morton Louis Meyer, had spent the
first two years of their youthful marriage in the early 1950s living in
the city of Nancy, capital of the French province of Lorraine, where
my dad was posted as an army intelligence officer. He was the son of
Morton Meyer, a St. Louis businessman who had been educated at
Princeton and ran a chemical company called Thompson-Hayward.
Grandpa Morton was a visionary civic leader and a die-hard Re-
publican—but one who understood the importance of working ef-
fectively with Democrats. For instance, he collaborated with Senator
Stuart Symington to raise the funds and forge the coalitions necessary
to build the St. Louis flood wall. He was a stoic member of the city’s
establishment, and rarely talked to his family about his work, though
he often talked to me about baseball and horse racing. There were
no surprises with Grandpa Morton, and I loved him for that. He was
in many ways the opposite of his flamboyant, entrepreneurial son,
my dad, who also attended Princeton, where he demonstrated a fl air
for languages, having mastered French, Italian, and Latin (and, as the
managing editor of the Daily Princetonian, English).

My mother too was the child of a privileged midwestern family.
Her father, Irving B. Harris, was a singular man whose combining of
social consciousness with business acumen was an enormous infl u-

10 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e

ence on me as a human being, and ultimately as a restaurateur. He
graduated from Yale, and he made his first fortune before he was forty
years old, having cofounded the Toni Home Permanent Company
with his brother Neison. They sold it to the Gillette Safety Razor
Company in 1948 for what was then an enormous sum: $20 million.

Grandpa Irving’s piercing analytical business mind was radically
different from my father’s intuitive entrepreneurialism. Morty, as my
dad was known, always had an abundance of new, imaginative ideas
for companies that he would run—or try to run—by himself. Irving,
on the other hand, invested in or acquired other peoples’ businesses,
especially when the ideas that defined these companies were compel-
ling to him. His passion wasn’t to operate the companies, but rather
to bet on the quality of their senior leadership. Evaluating human
potential was every bit as important to him as any business idea.

I adored Grandpa Irving, and I was awed by his otherworldly
business success. Through him I became aware of my own com-
petitive zeal and began to believe in my own potential for winning.
But for many years I suppressed my love for him and also muffl ed
my own self-actualization, out of misguided deference to my father.
Irving and Morty may have once loved each other, but as the years
went by they grew to dislike each other intensely. If pressed for his
true opinion, Irving would have described Morty as an unpredict-
able, irresponsible riverboat gambler. For his part, my dad considered
his father-in-law an overbearing tyrant who couldn’t loosen his all-
controlling grip on his daughter, or for that matter on anyone else in
the family. Morty called Irving “the boss.”Their adversarial relation-
ship turned out to be detrimental to my parents’ marriage, which
would end twenty-fi ve years after it began.

In 1955, at the conclusion of my dad’s overseas military service,
my parents were still very much in love with each other and with
Europe.Their knowledge of and fondness for France in particular was
a powerful bond between them. From a very young age I was lucky
to be taken abroad on family vacations, and it was on those trips that

11 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e

I was first immersed in the unaffected, timeless culture of gracious
hospitality represented by European restaurateurs and innkeepers. In
France we usually stayed in low-key, family-run inns where the wel-
come felt loving and the gastronomy was exceptional.Those trips left
a lasting impression. The hug that came with the food made it taste
even better! That realization would gradually evolve into my own
well-defined business strategy—the core of which is hospitality, or
being on the guests’ side.

Hospitality is the foundation of my business philosophy. Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made
to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you

believe the other person is on your side. The converse is just as

true. Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It

is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple

prepositions—for and to—express it all.

In St. Louis my father parlayed his love of all things French into a
career as an innovative and successful travel agent. Among his prized
collections were what must have been every back issue of Gourmet,
Holiday, and later Travel and Leisure; he also built on a wide range of
friendships he and my mother had established with French innkeep-
ers. His agency, Open Road Tours, packaged customized driving trips,
often in conjunction with Relais de Campagne, a network of lovely
family-operated inns around France. (Relais de Campagne later evolved
into Relais et Châteaux, now a prestigious international network of
small luxury hotels. My dad remained active with Relais et Châteaux
for years; he was enormously proud when his own small hotel in St.
Louis, the Seven Gables Inn, became affi liated with Relais et Châ-

12 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e

teaux in the late 1980s.) This was long before such excursions off the
beaten path became common in the travel industry. Dad exulted in
planning these driving tours of the countryside; he’d note exactly
where travelers would stumble upon a certain vineyard, a worthwhile
museum, or a particularly good bistro. His clients loved his attention
to detail, his business thrived and I was bursting with pride when I
told people my dad had become president of the American Society of
Travel Agents (ASTA), an important trade organization.

At home, too, he and my mom were Eurocentric: They often
hosted cocktail parties and dinner parties for friends and business col-
leagues from France, Italy, and Denmark, who either were in town on
business or had made a detour to St. Louis just to see us. For several
years our house was home to the grown children of French innkeep-
ers. By day these young people would help out in Dad’s offi ce with
translations and administrative tasks, and by night they would act as au
pairs for my sister, Nancy; my brother,Tommy; and me.They became,
for me, informal cultural ambassadors from a wondrous place called
France. French was always being spoken around the house, either by
our guests or by my parents (who used it at the dinner table espe-
cially when they wanted to discuss something not meant for our ears).
Our neurotic, inbred French poodle, Ratatouille, was named after
my dad’s favorite Provençal dish. To this day the pungent smell and
sound of garlic, olive oil, and eggplant sizzling in a skillet will evoke
powerful memories in me. There was always a bottle of Beaujolais-
Villages on the table, and when dad and I cooked a chateaubriand
on the grill and the fat-induced flames shot too high, he brought
them under control in his own idiosyncratic fashion—by dousing the
steaks with whatever bottle of red wine he happened to be drinking
at that moment.Which, of course, caused more fl ames.

My father was unquestionably my childhood hero: a hedonist, a
gastronome, and a man who cherished and passionately savored life.
He loved the excitement and risk of the racetrack and gave me a taste
for it, even when I was too young to place bets legally. Going to the

13 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e

track was a Meyer family tradition of long standing; my dad’s parents
spent most of every August in Saratoga, New York, going to the track
six days a week for nearly a month. Dad also took risks as a business-
man. He was always coming up with exciting new ideas based on his
love of travel and food, and on his constant drive to share his fi nds
with others. At one point Open Road Tours had offices and staffs in
Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Paris. Later, it opened offi ces
all over Europe; and I’ll never forget the day he proudly showed off
an Open Road stock certificate bearing the name of Ava Gardner as
an investor. He had a publicist in New York named Ethel Aaron who
promoted his business in fascinating ways, like having my dad cast as
an imposter on To Tell the Truth. As an eight-year-old I was proud to
boast to my friends that my dad was an imposter on television.

I never fully understood how or why, but sometime in the late
1960s, when I was still a young boy, Open Road Tours went bank-
rupt. I remember abundant tears and shame, but few details. I heard
comments like, “We expanded too quickly”; and I had thoughts
like,“My hero failed.” My paternal grandparents were torn apart too:
their only two sons had been in business together—my father as
president and his younger brother, my uncle “Bo,” as vice president.
Whatever events had led to the bankruptcy had also driven a sharp
wedge between the two brothers. I was crushed when my Aunt Lois,
my Uncle Bo, and my first cousins—whom I loved dearly—moved
from St. Louis to rebuild their lives in Washington, D.C.This was an-
other confusing and painful consequence of the failed business. My
mother was anguished, and her disappointment and disapproval were
apparent. details were not openly discussed, but the family’s
bruises were deeply felt.

In 1970, when I was twelve, my father leaped into the hotel
business, in Italy. Despite the pleas of my mother and with Irving’s
begrudging help in the form of a $1 million loan, he committed
himself to long leases on one hotel in Rome and another in Milan. He
was certain that becoming a hotelier would be his ticket to fortune.

14 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e

My mom—correctly—maintained that it promised nothing more than
protracted absences from home.There was always some reason my dad
had to go to Italy. Each time the hotel workers went on strike, he fl ew
to Rome or Milan to help make beds. flagged and lagged, and
although he was spending half a month at a time away from his family
to address problems, it inevitably proved impossible for him to operate
a hotel business across two continents. At an enormous fi nancial cost
and an even greater emotional cost, my father finally found a buyer for
his two leases. He then went on to his next idea.

In 1972, still irrepressibly optimistic, my father created another
new business, called Caesar Associates.This new company would sell
packaged group tours at a deep discount for a very narrow niche of
travelers known as “interliners”—airline employees and their families.
As members of the International Air Transport Association (IATA)—
an industry trade group—interliners could fly standby at unbelievably
low rates. Dad’s business model was simple but original. He aggre-
gated all the discounts to which members of IATA were entitled and
packaged trips lasting up to two weeks. In addition to low airfares, he
negotiated rock-bottom rates for hotels, ground transport, sightseeing,
shopping, and dining. The value he added was to offer highly imagi-
native itineraries and use the underlying buying power of group travel
to create an extraordinary rapport between price and quality. He hired
sparkling young tour guides at each destination, and he kept his cli-
ents informed of travel opportunities by writing an endless stream of
marketing collaterals. He was a terrific writer and editor, and his direct
mailings inspired me—years later—to create my own newsletter as a
way to reach out to and widen our base at Union Square Cafe. He was
always after me to correct every grammatical mistake I made or delete
every superfluous word I used in the USC Newsletter. (Doubtless
he’d have some editorial comments about this book as well!)

Caesar Associates actually thrived for many years, with outposts
in London, Paris, Copenhagen, Madrid, and Rome. But this success
wasn’t enough for my father. Having failed to learn some critical

15 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e

lessons from his earlier business failures in the 1960s and 1970s, he
gambled the fortunes of his entire business on another new one, in-
volving risky and questionable real estate and hotel deals back in St.
Louis. He eventually owned two hotels in St. Louis, one of which—
the Seven Gables Inn, with its French restaurant, Chez Louis—met
with critical acclaim. But the other hotel—the Daniele Hilton, with
its mediocre London Grill—was a failure on every count. My father
had leveraged his entire company to purchase these hotels, and also to
purchase a medical building in Clayton, Missouri, which he planned
to reimagine and redevelop into something big. However, by the
time he had emptied the building of its existing rent-paying tenants,
the bottom had fallen out of the economy. His funders dropped out,
but not before suing him. Although Dad may have been an inven-
tive entrepreneur, he did not have the necessary emotional skills or
discipline, and he failed to surround himself with enough competent,
loyal, trustworthy colleagues whose skills and strengths would have
compensated for his own weaknesses. By 1990, shortly before he died
of lung cancer at the age of fifty-nine, he was once again bankrupt.
Once again, he had to inform his family—his second wife, Vivian,
and his three children and their spouses—about a failure.We all had
a painful sense of déjà vu.

Looking back, I realiz e that gambling is a metaphor for how
my father ran his businesses, and my deep fear of repeating his mis-
takes has always colored the way I run mine. Because each of his
doomed experiences was marked by overly rapid expansion, I have
always been afraid to expand my business too quickly. I’m not risk-
averse, but I have tight self-control, and I am not ordinarily a gambler.
I go to Saratoga one weekend a year, and losing even a $10 bet at the
track there bothers me enormously. Still, I’ve been willing to make a
$1 million bet on a new restaurant. I’m far more inclined to take risks
when I’m essentially betting on myself, but I can do that …