After finishing this book in June of 2024, I wrote,

 

"This is not the type of book I might normally read. But I am glad I did. Will recounts an amazing story of how he took the restaurant Eleven Madison Park in New York City from a two-star restaurant to be awarded the best restaurant in the world by focusing on unreasonable hospitality. He also suggests that since 77% of all business in the USA is a service business, fundamentals of his approach can transform any of these businesses."

 

My clippings below collapse a 284-page book into nine pages, measured by using 12-point type in Microsoft Word.

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See all my book recommendations.

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Here are the selections I made:

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A Letter from Simon Sinek

 

But when Will Guidara set out to make Eleven Madison Park the best restaurant in the world, he had a crazy idea about how to do it: “ What would happen if we approached hospitality with the same passion, attention to detail, and rigor that we bring to our food? ”

 

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Chapter 1: Welcome to the Hospitality Economy

 

We got on that 50 Best list by pursuing excellence in black and white, attending to every detail, and getting as close to perfection as we could. But we got to number one by going Technicolor — by offering hospitality so bespoke, so over the top, it can be described only as unreasonable.

 

More than three-quarters of our GDP comes from service industries.

 

How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging? How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves? How do you make them feel welcome?

 

When you create a hospitality-first culture, everything about your business improves — whether that means finding and retaining great talent, turning customers into raving fans, or increasing your profitability,

hospitality is a selfish pleasure. It feels great to make other people feel good.

 

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Chapter 2: Making Magic in a World That Could Use More of It

 

MAKING MAGIC IN A WORLD THAT COULD USE MORE OF IT

 

When you work in hospitality — and I believe that whatever you do for a living, you can choose to be in the hospitality business — you have the privilege of joining people as they celebrate the most joyful moments in their lives and the chance to offer them a brief moment of consolation and relief in the midst of their most difficult ones.

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Chapter 3: The Extraordinary Power of Intention

 

Intention means every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters.

 

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Chapter 4: Lessons in Enlightened Hospitality

 

Danny’s partner Richard Coraine would often tell us, “ All it takes for something extraordinary to happen is one person with enthusiasm. ” Randy was that person.

 

Let your energy impact the people you’re talking to, as opposed to the other way around.

 

“ Athletic hospitality ” meant always looking for a win, whether you were playing offense ( making an already great experience even better ) or defense ( apologizing for and fixing an error ).

 

My favorite was “ Make the charitable assumption, ” a reminder to assume the best of people, even when ( or perhaps especially when ) they weren’t behaving particularly well.

 

So, instead of immediately expressing disappointment with an employee who has shown up late and launching into a lecture on how they’ve let down the team, ask first, “ You’re late; is everything okay? ”

 

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Chapter 5: Restaurant-Smart vs. Corporate-Smart

 

Former Navy captain David Marquet says that in too many organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority.

 

This is what I would later call the Rule of 95 / 5: Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent “ foolishly. ”

 

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Chapter 7: Setting Expectations

 

He said: “ I am so excited to be here; I believe in and love this restaurant with all my heart. I’m also clear about what my job is, which is to do what’s best for the restaurant, not to do what’s best for any of you. More often than not, what’s best for the restaurant will include doing what’s best for you. But the only way I can take care of all of you as individuals is by always putting the restaurant first. ”

 

You’re not always going to agree with everything you hear, but you’ve got to start by listening.

 

A leader’s responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be.

 

I still give The One Minute Manager to every person I promote. It’s an amazing resource, in particular on how to give feedback. My biggest takeaways were: Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.

 

We were as thoughtful about criticism as we were about praise. I invited people on the team to come to me if they thought we could be doing something better and to do so well before their frustrations reached a boiling point.

 

At our manager meetings, we talked about how to avoid moments like this. Many of these confrontations could be avoided with early, clear, and drama-free corrections — like pulling that guy with the wrinkled shirt aside on day one to say: “ Hey! Good to see you this morning. That shirt’s looking a little rough; why don’t you head upstairs and give it a once-over with the iron before we sit down for family meal? ”

 

And make those corrections in private.

 

This is the ideal — but let’s be honest: every once in a while, you’re going to mess up. When you do, apologize.

 

But every time, I’ve made sure to apologize — not for the feedback itself, but for the way I delivered it.

 

But it can be much, much more than that: A daily thirty-minute meeting is where a collection of individuals becomes a team.

 

Done right, a pre-meal meeting fills the gas tank of the people who work for you right before you ask them to go out and fill the tanks of the people they’re serving.

 

I finished with my own words: “ We’re going to make the kind of place we want to eat at; we’re going to create the four-star restaurant for the next generation. That’s where we’re going. Will you come? ”

 

 

Chapter 8: Breaking Rules and Building a Team

 

Over the years, though, I came to see my four-star inexperience not as a weakness but as a superpower. My inexperience enabled me to look critically at every step of service and to interrogate the only thing that mattered: the guests ’ experience. Did a rule bring us closer to our ultimate goal, which was connecting with people? Or did it take us further from it?

 

In high school, the cool kids tend to be the underachievers. Cool kids don’t study; they don’t care what the teachers think of them. At that age, it’s slicker to hold back, to keep your cards close to your chest so it never looks like you’re trying too hard. Except that when you grow up a little, you realize the people getting the most out of their lives are the ones who wear their hearts on their sleeves, the ones who allow themselves to be passionate and open and vulnerable, and who approach everything they love at full - throttle, with curiosity and delight and unguarded enthusiasm.

 

 

Chapter 9: Working with Purpose, on Purpose

 

Language is how you give intention to your intuition and how you share your vision with others. Language is how you create a culture.

 

Over the next month or two, I worked with the team to create a list of the words that came up over and over again when critics and other musicians talked about Miles: Cool Endless Reinvention Inspired Forward Moving Fresh Collaborative Spontaneous Vibrant Adventurous Light Innovative

 

We printed a large sign with those words underneath our logo and hung it in our kitchen. That sign became a touchstone, a guiding light, a way to hold ourselves accountable

 

In When More Is Not Better, he argues that leaders should go out of their way to choose conflicting goals. Southwest Airlines, for instance, set out to be both the lowest-cost airline in America and number one in both customer and employee satisfaction. Those goals would seem to be in opposition, and perhaps they are. But much of the time, they’ve succeeded at all three. Certainly, the efforts they’ve made toward those contradictory goals have done wonders for their bottom line: for the last half-century, Southwest has been the most profitable airline in the country.

 

Without exception, no matter what you do, you can make a difference in someone’s life. You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters.

 

 

Chapter 10: Creating a Culture of Collaboration

 

CREATING A CULTURE OF COLLABORATION

 

“ It Might Not Work ” Is a Terrible Reason Not to Try

 

 

Chapter 11: Pushing Toward Excellence

 

It was then that a new mantra at EMP was born: “ Their perception is our reality. ”

 

The customer isn’t always right, and it’s unhealthy for everyone if you don’t have clear and enforced boundaries for yourself and your staff as to what is unacceptable behavior.

 

It’s only demeaning to suck it up if you take it personally. Saying sorry, I reminded the team, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

 

 

Chapter 12: Relationships Are Simple. Simple Is Hard.

 

In my experience, people usually want to be heard more than they want to be agreed with. Even if neither of them managed to change the other’s mind, at the very least they’d have shown each other respect by taking the time to listen.

 

Sometimes, the only way to proceed in pursuit of a good partnership is to decide that whoever cares more about the issue can have their way.

 

There was an unwritten corollary to this rule, which is that neither of us could abuse the “ It’s important to me ” card by pulling it too many times. Mostly, though, we found that the willingness of the other person to relinquish their position helped to build trust between us.

 

Managing staff boils down to two things: how you praise people, and how you criticize them. Praise, I might argue, is the more important of the two. But you cannot establish any standard of excellence without criticism, so a thoughtful approach to how you correct people must be a part of your culture, too.

 

One of Richard Coraine’s most often repeated sayings was “ One size fits one. ” He was referring to the hospitality experience: some guests love it when you hang out at the table and schmooze, while others want you to take their order and disappear. It’s your job to read the guests and to serve them how they want to be served.

 

Gary Chapman saved a lot of romantic relationships with his 1992 book, The Five Love Languages, which delineates the five general ways people show and prefer to experience love. ( They are acts of service, gift-giving, physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation. )

 

Hire Slow, Fire Fast — But Not Too Fast

 

“ But if you want to stay, then take tomorrow off, come back the day after, and apologize to everybody you were working with last night. Tell them what you did, why you realize it’s a mistake, and why you’re sorry. Promise you’ll never do it again — and know that if you do, I’m going to fire you on the spot. ” It wasn’t easy for Ben to have those conversations with his colleagues. He was a tough captain to work for because his standards were high; if you were in his station, he held you accountable. But there is tremendous power in vulnerability. Because

 

A couple of months later, Ben drank again during a shift, and I fired him, as I’d said I would. ( I’m happy to report it served as a wake-up call; he’s in recovery now and has made a notable career for himself in hospitality. ) But I have no regrets about giving him a second chance.

 

If you don’t create room for the people who work for you to feel seen and heard in a team setting, they’ll never be fully known by the people around them.

 

One of my dad’s quotes I love the most is: “ The secret to happiness is always having something to look forward to. ”

 

 

Chapter 14: Restoring Balance

 

The safety instructions the flight attendant delivers before takeoff are clear: “ Put your oxygen mask on first before assisting others. ” But when you’re in the hospitality industry, that instruction can feel counterintuitive. Aren’t we supposed to put others first and attend to them before we attend to ourselves? The answer is no.

 

If adding another element to the experience means you’re going to do everything a little less well, walk it back. Do less, and do it well.

 

Everyone’s oxygen is different, and we have to figure out for ourselves what we need to breathe. For me, relaxation means a night alone on the couch, eating Chinese takeout while binge-watching television too dumb to disclose. My wife’s oxygen is a hike or a long run.

 

He used the silk screens to make a batch of really cool T - shirts with the letters DBC ( Deep Breathing Club ) in block letters across the front. If a kid got through three potential incidents by using deep breathing instead of screaming or getting violent, they’d earn a shirt.

 

In moments of crisis, all we had to do was walk up to an overwhelmed colleague and say, “ DBC. ” They’d stop and take a few deep breaths. What was being communicated was, “ I see you and what you’re going through. We’re in this together, and we’re going to get through it together, so what can I do right now to help? ”

 

Kevin came up with one that changed our culture: if you made eye contact with a colleague and touched your lapel, it meant “ I need help. ”

 

Being able to ask for help is a display of strength and confidence. It shows an understanding of your abilities and an awareness of what’s happening around you. People who refuse to ask for help, who believe they can handle everything on their own, are deceiving themselves and doing a disservice to those around them.

 

 

Chapter 15: The Best Offense Is Offense

 

A leader’s role isn’t only to motivate and uplift; sometimes it’s to earn the trust of your team by being human with them.