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4:04

Hello,

4:04

boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim

4:06

Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss

4:08

show. I'm going to keep my intro spiel as

4:11

short as possible because my guest today is someone

4:13

I want to ask many, many questions. Danny Meyer, you can find

4:16

him on Twitter at DH Meyer, M

4:18

E Y E R, is the founder and

4:20

chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group,

4:23

USHG, which comprises some of

4:25

New York's most beloved and acclaimed restaurants,

4:27

including Gramercy Tavern, the Modern, Myelino,

4:30

and more. I've been to most of them. As

4:33

a strong island native, I

4:34

have made the trek several times. Danny and

4:36

USHG also founded Shake Shack, which

4:39

you may have heard of, the Modern Day Roadside

4:41

Burger Restaurant, which became a public company in 2015. Danny

4:45

is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, Setting the Table,

4:47

which articulates a set of signature business and

4:49

life principles that translate to a wide range

4:52

of industries. We'll be digging into that. He

4:54

is the recipient of the 2017 Julia Child Award and

4:57

was named by Time magazine as one of 2015's 100 most

5:00

influential people. Danny and a USHG's

5:02

restaurants and individuals together have won an unprecedented 28

5:06

James Beard Awards. Think of those as the Oscars

5:09

of food, including Outstanding Restaurant

5:11

Tour in 2005.

5:14

Danny, so nice to finally connect.

5:17

I know, it's about time. It's great to see

5:19

you and to be with you, Tim. I

5:21

have so many pages in

5:23

front of me and so many questions. because it's really

5:25

just been a challenge, an embarrassment of riches

5:27

in terms of where to start. I thought I

5:30

would start with my Alino. So,

5:33

little pig, little piglet. What

5:35

is the backstory on the name?

5:38

I think I was about 20 years old. I

5:40

got to work for my dad who was in the travel

5:42

business and he was selling

5:44

these group tours to airline employees

5:47

and their families. It was this crazy idea he

5:49

had, that he had this niche market and

5:51

he was gonna aggregate all of the

5:54

benefits discounts that you would get as

5:56

an airline employee and package them all

5:58

together to create these

6:00

tours. And so by the time my

6:03

brother, sister and I each turned 20, we were each invited

6:06

by my dad to go work as a tour guide

6:09

in the city of our choice. And my sister

6:11

had picked Denmark,

6:13

Copenhagen, I picked Rome, my brother would later

6:15

pick Paris. So I'm in Rome and

6:18

this was one of the most pivotal parts

6:21

of my entire life

6:23

experience that would probably direct where

6:25

I ended up in my career. And

6:28

so I was the guy that would wake up every single

6:30

morning early, go pick up these cranky

6:33

tourists. They were pilots, flight

6:35

attendants, baggage handlers, because keep in mind,

6:37

they were all airline employees. And

6:39

pick them up at the Rome airport,

6:41

collect all their luggage, get them on the tour

6:43

bus. I'd get on the microphone as a 20-year-old,

6:46

tell them all about what the next three days were going

6:49

to be like.

6:50

Here's how you got to hold your purse so you don't get it

6:52

stolen by someone on a motorcycle.

6:55

Here's what you should or should, blah, blah, blah, blah. So

6:57

anyway, I was supposed to be taking

6:59

these tours to

7:01

all the typical places like the

7:03

Cameo factories and the Vatican

7:06

Museum, all the stuff that was on their itinerary.

7:10

But

7:10

instead, I was looking at this as

7:12

an opportunity to get an education in food.

7:14

So I kept going to these trotterias.

7:17

I found three different trotterias that

7:19

would actually pay me a thousand

7:22

lira per head of every guest I

7:24

brought in. So I'd

7:26

go get free food at these really

7:28

good restaurants and I'd end up with 25,000 lira

7:32

in my pocket afterwards. Well, so

7:34

one of the restaurants, which was called La Taverna

7:36

da Giovanni,

7:38

started calling me Mayorino, little

7:40

Meyer, because they knew it was my dad's company.

7:43

And I

7:44

thought that was kind of cute

7:47

and somehow over the course of that summer

7:49

without my inexperienced ear

7:52

really picking it up Maya Reno,

7:54

little Meyer, had somehow changed

7:57

to Maya Lino, which means little pig.

7:59

And the reason they did that,

8:02

and the joke was on me, but every single

8:04

time I went to this restaurant, my

8:06

favorite thing to order was the mayolino,

8:09

the roast suckling pig. And

8:11

so fast forward many, many

8:13

years later, on my

8:15

50th birthday, my wife Audrey,

8:18

she knows I hate surprises, so the party

8:20

was not a surprise, but what

8:22

was a surprise to me is that

8:24

she had co-created co-created

8:27

a logo for my birthday, which

8:30

was Myelino. And she had

8:32

my picture as a

8:34

little kid with a pig underneath

8:36

it, and made these stickers

8:38

for bottles of wine that everybody was

8:40

drinking that night. And it was such a damn

8:42

good logo that

8:44

when it was time to open a new restaurant,

8:47

I couldn't come up with a better name or

8:49

logo. So we ended up naming a restaurant Myelino

8:52

after this whole experience. So you can call

8:54

me Little Pig or Little Meyer. I'll answer

8:56

to either one. Now

8:59

in the course of doing homework for this conversation,

9:02

I spotted, and this is true for, I suppose, everyone

9:04

on some level, but sliding door

9:06

moments. You've had so many different sliding

9:09

door moments where your life could have cut one

9:11

way or it was headed one direction and

9:14

then seemed to pull a right or a

9:16

left turn at 90

9:17

degrees. But before I get to

9:20

asking about one of those, specifically

9:22

your uncle and prepping for

9:25

the LSATs. You mentioned you hate

9:27

surprises. Why do you hate surprises?

9:30

Or how do you think about surprises? I think

9:32

underneath it, I'm a little bit of a control

9:34

freak. And I realized that

9:37

there's

9:37

this great expression my grandfather taught

9:40

me many times, which is

9:43

man plans and God laughs. So

9:46

as much as you think that you're planning for

9:49

success or planning for the stuff that's

9:51

gonna work out,

9:52

The world usually has another idea

9:54

for you. So

9:56

on the other hand, look,

9:57

if we're driving, I like to be behind the wheel.

10:00

It's just, it's my wiring.

10:02

So I never mind

10:04

not knowing where the story's gonna end,

10:07

but I like to have some at least,

10:10

it may be a false sense, but I like

10:12

to have some sense

10:14

that at least I had some say in the matter.

10:17

So I mean, I'll be flying on an airplane

10:19

and it's not that I need to get in the cockpit

10:21

with a pilot, but

10:22

for example, I'm the absolute world's worst

10:25

sleeper on airplanes. I've

10:27

got the window open. It's almost as if I'm

10:29

afraid I'm going to miss one of the clouds outside the

10:31

window if I don't keep paying attention. I

10:35

think I share some similar programming.

10:38

And it brings to mind for me this metaphor

10:40

that a novelist once shared with me, which was

10:43

writing a novel is like driving a car

10:46

cross country with the headlights

10:48

on. You can't see where you're going, but you

10:50

see enough in front of you. You know, you're headed in the right

10:52

direction.

10:54

So coming back to what I alluded to

10:56

a little bit earlier, I know that we're establishing,

10:59

setting the table, as it were, for people listening

11:01

who may not have a whole lot of background. You

11:03

studied

11:05

political science, if I'm getting my facts

11:07

straight.

11:08

Then at one point you were preparing for the

11:10

LSAT, so you're thinking of pursuing law

11:13

education, perhaps becoming a lawyer, and

11:15

you had a conversation with your

11:18

uncle. Could you describe that conversation, and then

11:20

I have a few follow-ups?

11:21

With a poli sci degree, and the reason

11:23

that I did study political science is as

11:26

a child of pretty much the 1970s,

11:29

middle child of three in the middlemost

11:31

state in the country, Missouri,

11:33

Republican dad, Democratic

11:36

mom. Every night at

11:38

the dinner table, there was a quote

11:40

unquote discussion about politics.

11:43

It could have been Watergate, it could have been Vietnam.

11:46

And the dinner table was

11:49

where our family, we could agree

11:51

on what we wanted to eat and that was kind of about it.

11:54

The food was the comfort

11:56

and I as a middle child, I was the one who

11:58

wanted to make everybody feel good. and

12:00

bring everybody together and keep the

12:02

family together. And on the other

12:04

hand, as

12:05

much as my dad and I were best pals,

12:08

played a lot of sports together, we cooked

12:10

together all the time, it was the time

12:12

I spent with my mom hanging out watching

12:15

the news every night that I

12:18

found most interesting. So

12:20

I knew I loved what we used to call

12:22

current events. I just was

12:24

taken by it. And so after I graduated with my poli

12:26

sci degree,

12:28

I was either going to be interested in going into

12:30

politics, because what else do you do with

12:32

that kind of degree, or maybe I was

12:34

going to go into journalism.

12:36

I just liked either writing about or

12:38

impacting

12:39

the events of the day. So

12:42

after I spent a few years being a salesman

12:44

just to make some money selling electronic tags

12:46

to stop shoplifters of all things, I

12:49

said, you know what, that's not what you want to do the

12:51

rest of your life.

12:52

It's been good. You made a bunch of commissions,

12:54

and I

12:55

actually invested all those commissions in

12:57

that company. stock,

12:59

which was a good thing.

13:01

But I said, you got to do something right now.

13:03

So I did take the LSATs. I decided

13:05

law degree instead of journalism degree.

13:08

And first of all,

13:10

I think

13:11

anyone who knows me knows I would have made

13:13

the world's worst lawyer. I don't wake

13:15

up every morning saying, I'm looking for a fight.

13:18

I'm looking to

13:19

prosecute. Kind of the opposite,

13:21

I think hospitality is the opposite, which

13:23

is how do we bring people together. But

13:26

it was on the eve of taking my LSATs.

13:29

I had taken the Kaplan course, preparing

13:31

for them and everything, hated every minute of it. And

13:33

the night before going to take

13:35

this test was a Friday night and

13:38

I was out to dinner with my aunt and uncle and my

13:40

grandmother in New York City at

13:42

an Italian restaurant I still go to called

13:45

Elio's.

13:46

And I was in a foul, just awful mood

13:49

because first of all I didn't want

13:51

to take the test, didn't want to be a lawyer and

13:54

my table mates were all having a great

13:56

time I'm eating good pasta, drinking lots

13:58

of wine, and I couldn't do it. But so

14:01

at a certain point, my uncle,

14:03

Richard, turns to me and he says, what

14:06

the hell is bothering you anyway? And

14:09

I said, I've got to take my LSAT

14:11

tomorrow morning. And he said, of

14:13

course you do. You want to be a lawyer, don't you? And

14:16

I said, actually, no. And

14:19

he basically, he wanted to throw

14:21

his pasta spoon at me at that moment. And

14:24

he asked me what was to this

14:27

day the most impactful question of

14:29

my whole life, which was one I

14:31

was not expecting. He said, do you have any

14:34

idea how long you're gonna be dead anyway?

14:37

And I said, no, I hadn't

14:39

really thought about that, why? And

14:42

he said, I don't know either, but

14:44

I'll tell you one thing, you're gonna be dead a hell

14:46

of a lot longer than you're gonna be alive. Why

14:48

in the world would you do something

14:51

that you have no passion around? And

14:54

I stopped and I said, because

14:57

I guess I don't know what else I could do. And

15:00

within a second, he said, you gotta be kidding

15:03

me, all I've heard you talk about your entire

15:05

life is food and

15:08

restaurants. And I said, so what am I

15:10

supposed to eat in restaurants the rest of my

15:12

life? It was so obvious

15:15

and yet I could not see this. And

15:18

he said, no, you fool, you should go open a restaurant.

15:20

It had never dawned on me that that was a valid

15:23

thing to do Because

15:26

that's not what you ever heard about

15:28

in college back then. You didn't hear about going

15:31

to open a restaurant. Now, I'm really, really

15:33

glad that all these years later,

15:36

being in the food business has become a validated

15:39

entrepreneurial career choice for people with

15:41

an education. But it wasn't back

15:43

then and it's still, well, it's cut to

15:45

the chase. I did take the LSAT

15:47

the next morning. I had already paid for it, for God's sakes,

15:51

never applied to one school. But

15:54

what I did do is the following Monday

15:56

morning,

15:58

I connected with one of my best buddies.

16:00

from Trinity College,

16:02

who I used to go out to eat with all the time. He was

16:04

a fraternity brother.

16:05

And I said, I got this idea. I'm going to open a

16:08

restaurant. You be the money guy. I'll be the food

16:10

guy. What do you think? And he

16:12

was in a bank training program at that point.

16:15

And he said, okay, I'll do it. So

16:17

we enrolled in the New York restaurant school,

16:20

which was all

16:21

you had to do was pay your 150

16:23

bucks and you got in.

16:26

And we took a restaurant management class.

16:29

And he promptly dropped out after two

16:31

sessions because he made the mistake

16:33

of telling his parents that he was

16:36

thinking about leaving banking to go

16:38

into the restaurant business. Bottom

16:40

line is he felt so bad about leaving me all

16:43

alone that he said, look, our bank has

16:45

one restaurant client,

16:47

which was a big deal because mostly banks would

16:49

run the other way if they heard the word restaurant

16:52

back then. And he said, I'll be glad to see if

16:54

I can get you an interview with that. Would you like that?

16:56

So I got the interview.

16:59

The interview pretty much consisted

17:01

of the owner sitting midway down his

17:03

bar. I'm at the front door.

17:07

He waves me down the bar,

17:09

tells me to stop and stand

17:11

right in front of him. He looks me up

17:13

and down from my wallabies up to my Brooks

17:16

Brothers shirt. And he goes, you'll

17:19

do. That was my first job

17:21

interview. I got the job. I

17:26

was assistant lunch manager, which meant

17:28

nothing, which meant I was getting $250

17:30

a week to answer

17:34

reservation lines and

17:35

set up the reservation book for lunch and

17:38

be on the front door.

17:40

Here's

17:40

the good news. Out of that deal, I

17:42

figured out in seven months that

17:44

I love this business. I met

17:47

the woman who would become my wife. She

17:50

was a waitress, an actress.

17:53

She actually left on day two to

17:55

go get an acting job and I couldn't stop

17:57

thinking about having just seen her for one

17:59

second.

18:00

I met the neighborhood in which Union

18:03

Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern and so

18:05

many of our restaurants have been.

18:07

And I met my career. And

18:11

that was a major, major pivot point.

18:14

But it just shows you so many things in life

18:17

are those moments. I mean,

18:19

the fact that none of this ever would have

18:21

happened

18:22

if I had not gone to Trinity College, for

18:24

example, because

18:25

that's where I met my friend.

18:27

And I was 0 for 3. I was

18:29

such a screw-up in high school.

18:32

I applied to only three colleges. I

18:34

was rejected from two

18:37

and waitlisted at Trinity.

18:39

And I had to get down on my hands and knees and write

18:42

the best

18:43

letter of my life to get off the waitlist at Trinity.

18:45

So first of all, that

18:48

had to happen. And the only

18:50

reason that Trinity happened is that when my dad's

18:52

business was in Rome, his travel

18:54

business, he met Trinity

18:57

College's lawyer at dinner one night

18:59

and the lawyer said, hey, your son

19:01

should consider Trinity College, which none of us had

19:03

ever heard of.

19:05

So all that stuff. And then by the way, this friend

19:07

of mine

19:08

who introduced me to his restaurant

19:11

client,

19:13

the only reason we ever met is on the first

19:15

night that I was at Trinity College, there's

19:17

a pickup softball game,

19:19

and there weren't enough baseball gloves to

19:21

go around. And so I lent my glove,

19:24

and I went up to this guy and accused

19:26

him of stealing my baseball glove.

19:28

And somehow we became friends after that. So

19:30

you just... All these moments

19:33

that didn't have to happen, and that it happens

19:35

in life every day, and you just got to pay

19:37

attention and

19:38

just be grateful if

19:40

you're fortunate enough to have a good choice

19:42

based on stuff that

19:44

never should have happened in the first place.

19:47

Yeah, it's so wild. So I have

19:49

a number of follow-up questions, which we'll

19:52

dig a bit more into a few of these bits

19:54

and pieces. So the

19:56

first is, and this will lead to a question about

19:59

not

19:59

a... applying to law school, when

20:01

you were

20:03

working in Rome and you would say

20:05

have a group of four or five people, you

20:07

pick the crankiest and they become your,

20:10

not mark, but your objectives in

20:12

the sense that you're gonna turn them into a happy,

20:15

raving fan by the end,

20:18

what were the keys or techniques,

20:20

what did you learn over time as

20:23

most reliable for doing that for that person?

20:26

I was probably in five different

20:28

schools

20:30

growing up in St. Louis. So there

20:32

was a nursery school, then there was a public school,

20:35

then we moved, so there was another public school.

20:37

Then I went to an all-boys school because

20:39

I wanted to play football on their team. And

20:42

then 10th grade came and I wanted to go to school with

20:44

girls, so I went to a co-ed school

20:46

after that. So that was five schools.

20:50

And then by the time I was 18, now

20:52

I'm going to college, So now

20:54

I'm in six schools by the time I'm 18,

20:57

you gotta learn a lot of social

20:59

cues along the way. And I just

21:02

found that I was really good

21:04

at kind of understanding

21:07

what made people tick and a really good observer

21:10

of body

21:12

language, moods, et cetera. And it's

21:14

not that I didn't have a sense of myself.

21:17

I wasn't like Zellig or a chameleon

21:20

changing who I was,

21:21

but I knew what people needed.

21:23

And kind of a blessing to have found

21:26

a career where that is a really useful

21:29

thing to be able to do. And as I said, even

21:31

before going into the restaurant business for three years,

21:33

I

21:34

was the top salesman in this company. You

21:36

know, as a young 20-year-old selling

21:39

against

21:40

hardened salesmen from around the country.

21:43

I loved it. I loved getting into my little

21:46

blue rabbit

21:47

and traveling to the worst neighborhoods in New

21:49

York where there was the worst amount of shoplifting.

21:52

In meeting these people, these shopkeepers

21:55

who own drug stores,

21:57

bookstores, clothing

21:59

stores. first stores supermarkets

22:03

and learning to speak their language

22:05

and making the sale ads i just loved

22:08

it so i just think that

22:10

i'm cut out to do this and the fact that i happen

22:12

to love food and wine as much as i do

22:14

has certainly helped a lot i would

22:17

agree for sure that you are well

22:20

cut to excel

22:22

in these various areas and their

22:24

been various points where you've had to

22:26

for lack of better term maybe operationalize

22:29

or externalize yourself

22:31

so that you could say

22:34

expand and the restaurant business i'm curious

22:36

when you mention making ends meet i was gonna say

22:38

that was checkpoint am i going the right or moines

22:40

system as i took my systems if you had

22:42

to try to break

22:44

down what you did let's just say and sales

22:46

at checkpoints systems that made you so

22:48

successful so that you could teach somebody

22:51

else does anything come to mind

22:53

that you think somebody

22:54

else could emulate or

22:56

principles perhaps they could attempt

22:58

implement if they were in

23:00

that same job while

23:02

the first thing is keep in mind this

23:04

was before we had the internet but i would

23:06

still do a lot of research and

23:08

i would still learn as much as i could possibly

23:11

learn not only about

23:13

the

23:13

business that i was trying to sell but the

23:15

person who i'd be meeting with and

23:18

when i came to learn very very quickly

23:21

in the new york retail world

23:24

and keep in mind i was primarily selling

23:26

a retailers because that's who had the

23:28

shoplifting issues is

23:30

that many many many of them

23:32

he were either related to each other

23:35

there was a huge syrian jew population

23:38

that

23:38

was not the only population but i

23:40

started to develop a sense

23:42

for the family trees

23:44

have either real families

23:46

are relationships and i got

23:48

to know who knew who and

23:50

i would take that as far as

23:53

i could possibly take it so i learned

23:55

early on something that has been

23:58

something that i teach our teams even in the restroom

24:00

We call it ABCD so you can ABCD.

24:03

Always be collecting dots so you can always be

24:05

connecting dots.

24:06

And I learned early on that people will

24:08

take exactly as much interest in you as

24:11

they believe you're taking in them. No

24:13

more and no less.

24:15

And so I don't want to give away all

24:17

my trade secrets here, Tim, but I've

24:19

listened to your show for a long time,

24:21

but I listened to a couple

24:23

more segments much more recently

24:26

because I really want to understand more

24:29

about what makes you I don't look

24:31

at it as gaming the system. I think it's

24:33

genuinely

24:34

being curious and being interested.

24:37

And so if you're looking for one tip, it's curiosity.

24:40

And I throw in one other thing.

24:42

The real trick was that I would pick

24:44

my –

24:45

since I was largely cold calling people

24:48

or often cold calling people,

24:50

I would actually make my own schedule

24:53

for where I was going to go that day based

24:55

on a restaurant that I

24:57

wanted to try in that particular borough

25:00

or neighborhood of New York.

25:01

And I would organize my day around

25:04

my lunch. I even organized it around

25:06

some guy who would bring in lobsters in

25:09

Brooklyn at exactly two in

25:11

the afternoon and I'd go get his lobsters and bring

25:13

him home to cook. But

25:15

in a weird way, I was developing two careers

25:17

at the same time without even thinking about it.

25:20

you were collecting dots in a few different

25:22

areas at the same time. And also

25:24

giving yourself, it seems like,

25:26

small rewards which would probably

25:29

give you more endurance in doing what you were doing

25:31

in terms of gathering or organizing

25:33

your schedule around those lunch spots.

25:35

How did you navigate

25:37

the conversation and how did your

25:39

parents respond to the conversation

25:43

related to not applying to law school?

25:46

Well, it was easy at first because

25:48

I didn't tell them. I

25:50

kind of sidetracked and sidestepped

25:53

and I finally at one day

25:56

got the courage to to

25:59

say that I want wanted

26:00

to be a chef.

26:02

They knew I loved to cook. Now you may say,

26:04

well, how would you get the courage to say you want

26:06

to be a chef but not to be a restaurateur? Well,

26:09

in fact, I thought I did want to be a chef.

26:12

And I had seen at that point, there

26:14

were a number of really

26:16

well-educated people who

26:19

had gone into the culinary profession and

26:21

chefs were starting to become kind of

26:24

well-known. Keep in mind, this

26:26

was way before the Food Network,

26:28

But you had people like Alice Waters,

26:31

who had gone to Berkeley, you had

26:33

Jeremiah Tower, who had gone to Harvard,

26:35

Joyce Goldstein on the west coast,

26:38

Mark Miller, on and on and

26:40

on. There's probably like 15 of them. And

26:43

Wolfgang Puck had become a household name.

26:46

Paul Prudome in New Orleans had become

26:48

a household name. So I finally

26:50

gathered the courage to say, I think I wanna

26:52

be a chef.

26:54

And by the way, I was, in these

26:56

days,

26:57

I spent almost all of my time walking

27:00

around the city looking at menus

27:02

on restaurants. I memorized every menu.

27:05

I ate at many of the restaurants.

27:08

I would go back to Italy many, many times,

27:10

not just when I was a tour guide working for my dad,

27:12

but

27:13

till I was 21 years old, I could travel

27:16

anywhere panamflue for $44 around trip thanks

27:19

to my dad's travel business.

27:21

And so I was constantly

27:24

going to restaurants and learning and learning and

27:26

learning.

27:27

I finally said I'm gonna be a chef. And so

27:29

my dad was kind of open to

27:31

it. My mom, maybe a little bit less so, but

27:34

you know, I went for it. My dad actually

27:36

connected me

27:37

with two of the

27:40

Relay and Chateau colleagues

27:42

of his in Bordeaux. He said,

27:44

look, I know you wanna go to Italy, but

27:47

in Italy, they basically cook food

27:49

with three ingredients, and that's the genius of

27:51

Italian cooking. But if you

27:53

really, really wanna learn to cook, you gotta go to

27:55

France. So I said, well, let me do both.

27:58

So I spent time in Rome.

28:00

Bologna,

28:01

Sardinia, Milan.

28:03

And then my dad did

28:05

connect me with a restaurateur in Bordeaux

28:07

named Roland Fleurant.

28:11

And he had two restaurants

28:13

in Bordeaux.

28:14

One was called La Reserve.

28:17

The other restaurant was called Du Bairn, D-U-B-E-R-N.

28:20

The day before I got to La Reserve,

28:22

they had lost their second Michelin star. Now,

28:25

chefs have actually

28:27

gone off the deep end for less

28:29

because

28:29

Michelin stars were everything for

28:31

the French.

28:33

And so I get there and everybody in

28:35

the kitchen is completely dejected.

28:37

And I'm this guy who doesn't know anything about

28:39

cooking and

28:40

who is he and how did he get in our kitchen

28:42

and why are they letting him live with the chef.

28:46

The good news was that after a couple

28:48

of days, a bunch of people in that kitchen left

28:50

because they did not want their resume

28:52

to say one star.

28:54

So they figured if they left with two stars on

28:56

the resume, they'd be fine.

28:58

And so all of a sudden I started to get some

29:01

opportunities, some really big opportunities

29:03

like

29:04

chopping shallots and opening oysters

29:06

and pulling feathers out of pigeons to

29:08

prepare them. And here was the big

29:10

one. I got to cook family meal. That's

29:12

a big deal to get to cook for all the other cooks.

29:15

And I was doing some of my family's favorite

29:17

recipes. I'll never forget when I made barbecue

29:20

ribs, they didn't even know how to eat these things,

29:23

cotelette de pork, you know. It

29:25

was just a great, great experience. They took me

29:28

to oyster beds. They took me

29:30

to chateaus in Bordeaux. They

29:33

took me to places where they made sausage. They

29:35

took me on like one of my favorite days of

29:37

my life,

29:38

a day that the restaurant was closed to go hunting

29:41

for wild pigeons called Palom. Just

29:44

a great life experience. Just

29:49

a quick thanks to to one of our sponsors and we'll be right

29:51

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31:07

I thought that it might be

31:09

helpful to people listening and I'd certainly love

31:11

to hear your thoughts on for lack of a better

31:14

way to put it free work. So

31:16

in the food world, you have people who

31:18

will staj and maybe you could describe

31:20

what that means. But my understanding

31:22

based on Bill Gurley's, our mutual friend Bill Gurley's

31:25

speech at UT. I think it's called Running

31:27

Down a Dream. It might have a slightly different

31:29

title to it, but I recommend everybody see it. There's a 10 minute

31:32

segment on your arc and

31:35

he presents it really well. And he talks

31:37

about how you went from star salesman

31:40

at checkpoint systems

31:42

and then over time got to zero

31:45

and then kind of went upside down because I think some

31:47

of these restaurants asked you to pay them

31:49

for the privilege of working there. Could

31:52

you just speak to the logic

31:54

or thinking behind that? Maybe it's as simple as,

31:56

hey, I didn't have a choice and I really wanted to do this,

31:58

but it seems to me

32:00

that a lot of younger generations

32:02

now have the impulse to say,

32:04

I want to be paid what I'm worth. And

32:07

I see a lot of wisdom and value

32:10

in the secret weapon that a lot of young people

32:13

have when they don't have a lot of money, but they have a lot

32:15

of time, which is working for free

32:17

and learning a lot. Would you be able to share

32:19

any thoughts that you have on that?

32:22

In our industry, there's a sense

32:24

that if you really want to

32:27

dig your roots and build a career, career,

32:29

you should learn from the best and how do you get

32:31

your foot in the door with the best so

32:33

you were willing to work for nothing.

32:36

The only time I ever had to pay anybody

32:38

was this cooking teacher in Milan

32:41

who told me that she was the Julia Child of

32:43

Italy, which she certainly was

32:45

not the Julia Child of Italy. I

32:47

paid her my money and moved on, but I

32:50

did many, many stages where I was not paid

32:52

anything. And as I told you, the one that I did

32:54

in New York City, I was paid 250 bucks

32:57

a week, which is kind of laughable.

33:00

That's what a waiter makes in half of a night in New

33:02

York City these days. So

33:04

I just think that

33:06

it took me 10 years to open a second restaurant.

33:10

And today we'll probably open two

33:12

ShakeShacks somewhere in the world. If I've

33:14

learned any one thing is that there's a benefit

33:16

to being a little bit patient and

33:19

try to grow where you're planted.

33:21

And I think that

33:23

as life is accelerated for so many

33:25

reasons, technology being primary

33:29

amongst those, I think that people

33:32

feel like there has to be a beginning, middle,

33:34

and an end that all gets resolved within

33:37

a 30-minute sitcom.

33:39

And that's just not how life works. And I think that

33:42

if you can do time paid or not,

33:45

but

33:45

really learn what it is you're trying

33:47

to do and not scratch the service

33:49

and move on too quickly, it really

33:51

pays big dividends. Now

33:53

there were reasons it took me 10 years to open a

33:55

second restaurant.

33:57

Primary one was I didn't

33:59

want to go bank.

34:00

And since I had seen my dad

34:02

go through two different bankruptcies, one in

34:04

my teens and one when I was about 20

34:06

something, I forget how old I was, and

34:09

I always associated his bankruptcies with

34:11

expansion. And I assumed that that was

34:13

the business thing he wanted to avoid, was expansion.

34:16

And I didn't want

34:17

to end up like my dad. I

34:19

just said, there's no way I'm ever going to open a second

34:21

restaurant. I don't want that to happen. to happen. The

34:24

silver lining in that,

34:26

even though I eventually after my dad

34:28

died, I got some therapy and I first

34:30

thing I learned was, hey, guess what? You're not your dad.

34:33

And number two, there's a whole lot of businesses that

34:35

have expanded and

34:37

that wasn't the reason they went bankrupt. In fact,

34:39

they didn't go bankrupt.

34:41

But the silver lining was I really

34:43

learned my business. I really learned it.

34:45

You know, that was probably the reason

34:47

it took us five years to open a second Shake Shack.

34:50

I didn't I want to expand too quickly, and I did

34:52

not want anything bad to happen, but guess what? We

34:55

learned our business.

34:56

This might seem like a naive question, but what does learning

34:58

the business look like? Because

35:00

there's experience, and then there's developing

35:03

expertise. Like some people can repeat the same mistakes

35:05

for every year, for 20 years straight, and

35:07

then there's learning a lot.

35:10

Every business is made up of five stakeholders.

35:12

And so when I say learning the business,

35:15

it's learning as much as you possibly can

35:17

about

35:18

how to motivate all five of your

35:20

stakeholders to root for your success. That's

35:23

what you want. And so the

35:25

best way to motivate all five of those stakeholders

35:27

to root for your success is to make

35:29

sure that they believe you're on their side first. So

35:32

it was learning, who's our staff?

35:35

That was our first stakeholder. Who are

35:37

they? Who are the best staff we could possibly

35:39

have? Who are our guests?

35:42

And I mean really learning about them.

35:44

And to this day, to this very day,

35:47

I end every single night

35:50

reading all the reservation reports

35:53

for all of our restaurants, so I know who's

35:55

dining in our restaurants tomorrow.

35:58

And then, I either, if I stay...

36:00

really late i

36:01

read all day after

36:02

service reports

36:05

more

36:05

out i'll do that first thing in the morning to find

36:07

out in how did all those experiences go and

36:09

i weigh in into this day i'm connecting

36:11

dots because

36:12

i care about your guest star this

36:14

one knows that one seat them near each other

36:17

this one has just published a book make

36:19

sure to go

36:20

by that book and have it on the maitre d's dancer

36:22

they can sign it i

36:24

care about that stuff is much as i've

36:26

ever cared about it but it also

36:28

means you know getting to know the community in which

36:30

you do business because why

36:32

should your community root for your success if

36:34

you're not investing in your community same

36:37

thing goes true of our suppliers get

36:39

to know your suppliers you want the best

36:41

product you can have the best business if you're

36:43

raw products are no good

36:45

i learned that lesson by the way from my grandmother

36:47

very very important i love

36:50

the cooking and her home and

36:52

i'll never forget when i ask for heard

36:54

tomato

36:54

sauce recipe and she said

36:57

i'll give you the recipe but

36:59

i'll tell you one thing right now it's never going to be

37:01

any better than the worst ingredients

37:03

you put into it and

37:05

number two those ingredients themselves

37:08

won't be any better than how will you treat them

37:10

after you buy them you

37:11

better get the best tomatoes

37:13

which in new york is like a two months season

37:17

right it's like august

37:18

and september

37:20

and

37:20

even if you get the best tomatoes

37:23

you

37:23

better not throw them in them back corner

37:25

of the walking refrigerator and bruised them so

37:27

that they lose their the sugar treat

37:30

them the right way well guess what same

37:32

thing goes for people

37:34

you can have the best recipe in the world for how

37:36

you hire people that you better pick

37:38

the best tomatoes he vet or treat him

37:40

the right way if you want the best sauce

37:44

so

37:44

i just learned so many lessons

37:46

it's

37:47

amazing how many life lessons actually

37:49

applied to learning your business another

37:51

great one that my grandmother taught me

37:53

more

37:54

i was a little kid growing

37:56

up in st louis my favorite

37:58

moment was March and April

38:01

because spring came kind

38:03

of early to St. Louis. And that's

38:05

when my grandmother would plant her flower garden.

38:08

She had an amazing green thumb. Well,

38:10

keep in mind she lived in an urban apartment

38:13

building. It was a skyscraper in

38:15

St. Louis at six stories tall. And

38:18

her apartment building gave her

38:20

a plot of land in the parking lot

38:23

that was probably 20

38:25

feet long by about

38:28

four feet wide. And

38:31

she called it carbon monoxide gardens. And

38:34

so every spring she would invite me to come

38:37

help her plant her garden for

38:39

the summer.

38:41

And this would always be probably late March,

38:43

something like that.

38:45

And, you know, this probably

38:47

started when I was six years old or something like that.

38:49

And she gave me my gardening gloves.

38:52

and she taught me early on to

38:55

figure out which were the weeds,

38:57

and I kind of like that scene from

39:00

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. She was basically

39:02

having me do all of her free labor, weeding the

39:04

garden. So I learned to pick all

39:06

the weeds.

39:07

So now by the time I'm about nine, I

39:10

go down there for my annual spring

39:12

visit,

39:13

and

39:14

now it's probably

39:16

April or May, because I would this as

39:18

the garden would keep growing. And

39:20

she said, now I'm going to teach you the real secret

39:22

to how you have a great garden.

39:24

So I go for the weeds dutifully

39:26

and she said, nope.

39:28

She takes my hand gently, pulls it off the

39:30

weeds,

39:32

and she hands me a watering

39:34

bucket with something in it. I

39:37

have no idea what was in it. And

39:38

she said, I'm going to teach you how to water the flowers

39:41

because

39:41

if you really want to get rid of the weeds,

39:43

the best thing you need to do is water the flowers

39:45

because the flowers will provide

39:47

a canopy that will

39:50

actually prevent the weeds

39:52

from getting the sunlight that they

39:54

actually need. So voila,

39:57

best business lesson ever because I

39:59

spend the first 10 years of my career almost

40:03

exclusively focused on trying to motivate

40:06

problem employees

40:08

to be better,

40:10

like the weeds, right? And

40:12

what I learned was that

40:14

our employees are like sunflowers. They

40:16

will turn wherever the sun is. And if I'm

40:18

spending all of my attention on the weeds,

40:21

I'm actually pulling the gravitational force

40:23

that way. My grandmother's

40:25

lesson was right. If I water the flowers and

40:27

spend more time with the people

40:30

who maybe I've taken for granted because they're

40:32

doing such a great job,

40:34

they actually crowd out the weeds and the weeds take

40:36

care of themselves.

40:37

I'm definitely going to ask you more questions about

40:40

hiring with some hypothetical situations.

40:42

But before I move on, the five stakeholders,

40:45

did you list them, and I think it was employees, guests,

40:47

community, suppliers, investors, in

40:50

roughly the order that

40:52

you would or did weigh them

40:54

in your

40:56

restaurants? Exactly, exactly

40:58

that order. It took a long time to

41:00

figure that out. Every business has those same

41:02

stakeholders. You get to pick in

41:05

which order you're going to prioritize them.

41:08

When I went to

41:10

college, I took exactly one econ

41:12

course, econ 101. Of course,

41:15

you learn about Adam Smith.

41:17

We studied Milton Friedman, the guy from University

41:19

of Chicago. and he was like, take care of

41:21

the investor and everything else takes care of itself.

41:24

So I had that

41:25

voice on my shoulder.

41:27

But I also, you know, one of the first jobs I had

41:29

after college,

41:31

I was the Cook County field

41:33

coordinator for John Anderson's independent

41:36

run at the presidency in 1980. He didn't believe

41:38

it to me to work for the independent

41:41

guy, not the Republican, not the the Democrat, but 100%

41:45

of the people who reported

41:47

to me, that job, by the way, I got 214

41:49

bucks a week, but 100%

41:52

of the people who reported to me were volunteers. Most

41:56

of them were older than I was because I was only 22. I

41:59

didn't have any way to motivate them with money.

42:02

I couldn't give them a raise, couldn't dock them their pay.

42:05

So I learned such a crucial lesson, which

42:07

is that if someone's volunteering, the

42:10

only way to motivate them is to have

42:12

a higher purpose. We're all doing this because

42:14

we agree with this bigger idea.

42:17

And so basically took

42:19

that idea to work with

42:21

me when I first became a restaurateur. And

42:24

again, everybody was getting paid, but at

42:26

least half the people were older than I was and I was

42:28

learning

42:29

what it was like to be a leader, to

42:31

be the boss. And

42:35

I basically to this day treat

42:37

all of our employees as if they are volunteers,

42:39

which is not in the real sense you're going to get

42:42

paid, but

42:43

if you're working for me, it

42:45

means you're probably

42:47

good enough to have gotten another 25 job

42:50

offers at least. And

42:52

so as far as I'm concerned, you're volunteering

42:54

to share your gifts with us. I better give

42:56

you a higher purpose and reason

42:59

for wanting to be here. And that's when it became clear

43:01

to me that our first stakeholder

43:04

had to be our own employees. And

43:07

by the way, I look at this, Tim, like it's a virtuous

43:09

cycle. It's not a totem pole where

43:11

the employees on the top

43:14

and the investors on the very bottom. It's

43:16

a virtuous cycle where one input

43:18

leads to something even better. So if

43:21

you want to have really happy customers,

43:23

they shouldn't be the input. you should have really

43:25

happy employees, which I think then

43:28

leads to a greater chance you're going to have really happy

43:30

customers. If you want to have really happy investors,

43:34

you wouldn't want that to be the input, Mr. Milton

43:36

Friedman.

43:37

You'd want that to be the outcome.

43:39

And by the way, what's ultimately

43:42

the best way to have happy employees? Have

43:44

really happy investors because that's the

43:46

only way people are going to get promotions and raises.

43:49

And I've run a business where

43:51

nobody was getting promotions and raises and

43:53

it was not happy.

43:55

We had to go out of business when that happened. I'd

43:57

like to ask you a question about...

44:00

writing. And I'm going to begin with

44:02

a blast from the past, which I've kept for

44:04

a very, very long time, because

44:06

I think it's so masterfully crafted and it's

44:08

something that you crafted. And this is a

44:11

polite decline.

44:13

I'm not going to say rejection,

44:15

a polite decline when

44:17

I via a mutual acquaintance,

44:21

close friend of mine, Jeffrey Zirovsky reached

44:24

out to see if, if you would participate

44:26

in my book, Tribe of Mentors.

44:29

And the beauty was your response

44:32

ended up being incredibly valuable

44:35

as a polite decline. So

44:38

I'm going to be paraphrasing a bit,

44:40

but this is what I received. And

44:44

it was via Jeffrey who was acting as the Yenta slash intermediary.

44:48

Jeffrey, greetings and thanks for writing. I'm grateful

44:51

for the invitation to participate in Tim's next book project,

44:53

but I'm struggling at this moment including

44:55

my ongoing procrastination with my own writing projects.

44:58

I thought carefully about this and it's clearly

45:00

a wonderful opportunity, but I'm going to decline with

45:02

gratitude. Know the book will be a big success!

45:06

Thanks again, Danny.

45:07

So this is so

45:11

noteworthy for me because there

45:13

are many ways you can decline something

45:16

that are likely to upset

45:18

someone or don't do anything to offset the

45:20

potential for someone being upset. I

45:22

came away from receiving this,

45:25

just laughing and wanting to get better

45:27

at writing polite to clients because I felt better

45:30

about you. I respected you more

45:33

after receiving that.

45:34

How did you learn to write?

45:37

How did you improve or develop

45:40

your written communication? I

45:43

can't believe you pulled that letter out. That's

45:45

wild. And

45:48

you know what, I do that almost every

45:50

day. But I wouldn't do

45:52

it if it weren't genuine. I wouldn't have gone to the trouble

45:55

of saying all that stuff if it weren't genuine.

45:57

I've I've always loved writing.

46:00

Dad was an amazing

46:02

editor. He was actually the managing editor

46:05

of the newspaper

46:07

at Princeton, The Daily Princetonian,

46:09

and he took great pride in

46:12

marking up anything I ever wrote. And

46:14

I care. I love writing. I love expressing

46:17

myself.

46:18

But I also, I think more to your

46:20

point, it's not the quality of the writing

46:22

as much as it is the sentiment behind it, which

46:25

is that it gets back to what we were saying earlier. Somebody

46:28

cared enough to reach out their hand

46:30

and say I want to shake hands with you That's

46:32

what that was or they reach out to give you

46:34

a hug What

46:36

are you gonna do just become a tree and not

46:38

hug them back? And

46:39

I think that I've learned a very

46:41

very important lesson. In fact, I'd be curious

46:43

and you'll probably know I

46:45

care so much about

46:47

Letting someone know if I do appreciate

46:49

an invitation, but I just genuinely can't

46:51

do it I care that they know that

46:54

their invitation mattered to me so much so

46:56

that I sometimes procrastinate writing

46:58

that note. And I've learned the hard way

47:01

that sometimes my mind and my

47:03

heart are at war with each other.

47:06

My mind knows I shouldn't do it. My

47:08

heart really wants to do it.

47:10

And if that translates to making

47:13

you or Jeffrey wait too long to

47:15

get that response, it doesn't really matter

47:17

what I wrote. So I'm really curious

47:19

to know when Jeff's invitation came

47:21

and how many days went by before I responded.

47:24

My bet is more days than there should have been. I

47:27

don't have the dates, but I'll take a look.

47:30

Has your approach to that type

47:32

of plight decline changed over time? Do

47:34

you have other language that you like to use?

47:37

And again, this is not to imply to your

47:39

point earlier that this is disingenuous.

47:41

No, it's not. The assumption is made and I believe

47:43

that it's genuine. And it's really hard. Have

47:46

you found? Yeah.

47:47

It's really hard. It takes time

47:49

because what most people do,

47:51

sadly, is they just delete the invitation

47:54

or they just ignore it. And

47:56

I

47:57

think it kind of falls into a couple of camps here.

47:59

So number one.

48:00

is, is this something

48:02

I really want to do?

48:04

Number two, if I really want to do it,

48:06

can I do it?

48:08

So that's easy. Look at your calendar.

48:10

And number three, is this

48:12

something that I feel like I should

48:14

do? And then of the shoulds,

48:17

there's another couple of buckets, which is, is

48:20

it a should because I have

48:22

to or is it because a should

48:25

because it's good?

48:27

I've gotten into most trouble on the shoulds.

48:30

If I really, really want to do something, like

48:32

I really wanted to have this conversation with you today. I'm

48:34

the guy that reached out to you.

48:36

I love when I get a spark of something

48:38

that I really want to do.

48:40

But many, many times the

48:42

invitations come in, I get a lot

48:44

from politicians, we support this

48:47

or that. I get a lot from, you

48:49

know, speaking opportunities, etc.

48:52

And I'm not complaining. I'm very, very fortunate.

48:55

But if it's a should, I

48:58

learned this lesson from the restaurateur Jeremy

49:00

King, who's in London, great guy.

49:03

He said, the shoulds are what have gotten me

49:05

in the most trouble. And I asked myself

49:07

a simple question.

49:09

If this thing were tonight,

49:12

because

49:12

it's generally something, you know, four, five,

49:14

six months from now, but if this thing were tonight,

49:17

is this something I would be excited to do

49:19

or would I roll my eyes and go, oh

49:21

man, look what I have to do tonight.

49:23

And so by making it in the very present, that's

49:25

really helped me a lot with the shoulds.

49:28

And then

49:29

I just feel like it's not my obligation to

49:31

say yes to everybody, but I do care, I

49:34

genuinely care if somebody had the courtesy

49:37

to invite me to do something,

49:39

they

49:39

deserve the courtesy of a gracious

49:41

response. All they're guilty of is saying,

49:43

I'm interested in you. How

49:45

bad is that? That's a compliment. It

49:48

can be really challenging and I just want to give

49:50

you kudos again for an incredibly

49:53

beautifully crafted polite decline that I

49:55

was might sound bizarre but

49:57

thrilled to receive. I really admire it.

50:00

it so much that I've kept it on hand. And

50:04

I asked about writing because I find that

50:06

you seem to pay a lot of attention to language

50:09

and communication and

50:11

clarity. And

50:13

my attention was drawn

50:15

in doing homework

50:16

for this conversation to questions.

50:19

Now you can't believe everything that you read on the internet. So

50:21

I do want to fact check this, but I found a

50:23

list of of six qualities Danny Meyer looks for

50:26

when hiring that is.

50:28

And the first is, I'm just

50:30

gonna read through these and then you can correct

50:33

as needed or expand as needed. But I'm gonna get to

50:35

a few at the end, there are only six that have

50:37

questions associated. So number one, kind

50:39

eyes, eyes don't lie, kind eyes, say hello,

50:42

start curiosity, does this person see themselves

50:45

as a finished product or are they looking to continually

50:47

learn? Three, work ethic, you can

50:49

teach someone how to can't a bottle of wine, but you can't

50:51

teach them to see opportunities to do more.

50:54

Now we're gonna get into some questions. So four,

50:56

empathy. Is this the kind of person

50:59

the entire team is gonna wanna be around? Ask on a

51:01

scale of one to 10, tell me how lucky you are.

51:05

So I'm curious about that. Self-awareness. Can

51:07

this person read their own weather report? Ask what is the

51:09

single biggest misconception people have about

51:11

you? And then integrity trust. Ask,

51:14

name something that happened to you before the age of 12 that has

51:16

changed your life forever. If you were hiring

51:18

for your first restaurant today, would you

51:20

ask some of these questions, look

51:23

for these six things, or would

51:25

you modify this?

51:26

I would absolutely look for those things.

51:29

In fact,

51:30

I've checked them with myself year after

51:32

year, and there's

51:33

not one of them I would take off the list.

51:35

I wanna work with people who are

51:38

kind people, who genuinely

51:40

are optimistic people.

51:42

I'm not really excited working with skeptics,

51:45

who just

51:46

see what could go wrong all the time. You

51:49

do need to surround yourself with,

51:51

I'm a cock-eyed optimist, I'm

51:53

so damn optimist, I basically see

51:55

the wine glass is half full before i pulled the

51:58

court on a bottle but

51:59

incident. Important

52:00

for me to surround myself with people who

52:02

at least ask me some tough questions. So

52:04

I want kind optimists I definitely

52:06

want

52:07

curious people. I don't want know-it-alls.

52:09

I want learn-it-alls. I don't want someone

52:12

who's already a finished product It's

52:13

not fun, especially if you're trying to make your

52:15

business better every day. I

52:17

Definitely want people who have an excellent work

52:19

ethic I

52:20

don't mean to the point of being sick

52:23

because we can all push it too far But

52:25

it's not fun to be on a team where

52:27

everybody's really bringing their best and there's

52:29

a couple people just putting in a C-level

52:32

effort

52:33

that doesn't work. And I definitely

52:35

want empathetic people, people who

52:37

understand the wake they leave in their path,

52:40

who care about how they make other people

52:42

feel, just as much as they care how other

52:44

people feel. And definitely I want

52:46

self-aware people and I want people with integrity.

52:48

So 100% of those, the

52:51

one thing I would add that

52:53

has really, really come to light

52:56

for me,

52:56

I want people who just

52:59

love to win because that's not really

53:01

captured in any of the six that I mentioned

53:03

earlier. Wanting to be a champion,

53:06

you look at the best athletes in sports.

53:09

Sure, they have God-given physical

53:12

ability,

53:13

but they also had to train like crazy.

53:15

You don't get to be

53:17

the Kentucky Derby winner without, you

53:19

got your bloodlines, but you also had to train

53:22

like crazy. You don't get to be

53:24

Serena Williams

53:26

without the bloodlines, but you don't also

53:28

get to be Serena Williams without working incredibly

53:31

hard,

53:32

or Michael Jordan, whoever it is you wanna talk about.

53:35

So I look for that,

53:37

I'm really interested to know

53:39

the motivation behind what makes someone

53:41

competitive. And I basically have four

53:43

buckets. First of all, there's a competitive

53:46

people.

53:47

They're great people. They

53:48

just don't wake up every day saying, I

53:50

gotta win, I'm dying to win. Tim

53:53

Ferriss did not get to be Tim Ferriss

53:55

without desiring to

53:56

be the best. I know that.

53:58

and that doesn't necessarily come cross,

54:00

but

54:01

you're not a-competitive, I can tell you that. Then

54:04

the other three buckets I look for,

54:06

and this helps me with someone's self-awareness

54:08

as well, is to

54:10

understand, assuming that

54:12

you are motivated to be a champion at what you

54:14

do,

54:16

what is your primary motivation

54:18

for wanting to compete to win? And

54:20

I find there's basically three buckets.

54:22

Sometimes people have a little bit of each.

54:25

You know that picture of Muhammad Ali standing

54:27

triumphantly over Sonny Liston, whose

54:30

back is on the mat with his fist

54:32

up in the air?

54:33

So

54:34

I can pretty much tell you that

54:35

Muhammad Ali was primarily

54:38

motivated by a love for beating someone

54:40

else. That felt really good to him.

54:43

It's not a bad thing or a good thing, just is what it is.

54:45

Then you got,

54:46

imagine this photograph of John

54:48

McEnroe

54:50

with his headband on and his long curly

54:52

hair yelling

54:53

at him, the umpire.

54:56

You've got to be kidding me. That

54:59

man hated to lose. It wasn't

55:01

so much I'm motivated by

55:04

who I'm going to be. It's like

55:06

I will not be seen

55:08

losing. The

55:09

third image I would have would be

55:12

a great Olympian, let's say Usain

55:14

Bolt, and his leg is

55:17

outstretched with the veins

55:19

popping, trying to get that extra

55:21

inch or that extra half second

55:24

off of his time or whatever. And

55:26

that guy is out there, his primary

55:28

motivation, he wants to exceed his own personal

55:30

best. He's competing with himself.

55:33

So by knowing these

55:35

questions, this is

55:37

something that I would absolutely want to add

55:39

today because I know that I

55:41

want to be the best

55:43

and I can't do it by myself. So

55:45

I got to stock my team with

55:47

people who look at every day as an opportunity,

55:50

not for perfection, because I think perfection

55:52

is stupid,

55:53

it's impossible, it's a recipe

55:56

for unhappiness, but I do look

55:58

for people who look at it.

56:00

every day as an opportunity to honor

56:02

whatever they did yesterday and figure out how to do

56:04

a a bit better today that's the journey of excellence

56:06

how

56:07

do you assess this might sound

56:09

silly work ethic is it by trialing

56:11

someone because everyone's gonna be on best behavior

56:13

and saying ah my biggest flaws i

56:16

just work too hard you know that type of

56:18

college application nonsense and a job interview

56:20

do you have particular ways that you would approach

56:22

assessing that proactive

56:25

work ethic not just doing what you give them

56:27

but thinking about what else they could do

56:29

how do you think about assessing their

56:32

i

56:32

basically to find it is you've

56:34

now learned how to do the job but

56:36

only you can determine if it matters

56:39

to you to do it as well as

56:41

it can be done and

56:42

you can see it in people there's

56:44

so many ways we can all take shortcuts

56:47

the obvious things are did

56:48

you show up did you show up on time

56:51

did

56:51

you show up shaven

56:52

if that's what your job is

56:54

in the dining room would say did

56:56

you pressure shirt or just take it easy

56:58

and get that extra third use out

57:00

of your shirt where you don't really care

57:02

what it looks like and

57:04

you see this in sports all the

57:06

time and i think sports has so much to

57:08

teach us number one is i think hospitality

57:10

is a team sport we rely on

57:12

each other it

57:13

doesn't matter whether you had a bad night

57:15

or not you're not expected to go strike out of

57:17

you're baseball player it doesn't matter where

57:20

the woke up on the wrong side of the better not

57:22

you not expected to lead a ball

57:24

roll through your legs at shortstop was

57:26

the same thing in my business your

57:28

job is

57:29

to make the rest of your team better

57:32

and your job is to make the rest

57:34

of your team better whether you're on the field or in the

57:36

dog out and i

57:38

got a quick story that i learned so much

57:40

from other people are probably heard of theo epstein

57:43

fact maybe even interviewed him at some point

57:45

i have not actually i'm going to plead ignorance

57:47

well so theo epstein is

57:49

the youngest general manager

57:52

in

57:52

i think the history of major league baseball

57:55

and he was hired in

57:56

a very very young age to take over being

57:58

the general manager of the Austin Red Sox, who

58:01

had not won anything for

58:03

decades and decades and decades.

58:06

And they talked about the Yankee

58:08

curse or whatever the hell it was, but for whatever

58:10

reason they couldn't win. He comes, he's

58:12

the general manager, revamps the team,

58:15

and of course they win their first title.

58:17

I want to say it was in 2004. Actually,

58:21

I don't want to say that because if that's the case, it was

58:23

against my St. Louis Cardinals. But

58:25

he then went on to go win a couple others for them.

58:28

And then

58:28

he leaves to go to the Chicago Cubs. And

58:31

the Chicago Cubs, guess what?

58:33

They have not won a World Series forever.

58:35

He revamps their team.

58:37

Chicago Cubs win a World Series

58:39

for the first time in all these years.

58:41

So now this wonder, can Theo Epstein

58:44

is asked by a lot of people,

58:46

basically, what's the secret here? And

58:49

you got to understand, baseball

58:51

is a game of statistics. They measure everything.

58:53

There's statistics I don't even begin to understand.

58:57

But 100% of those statistics are what's

58:59

happening on the field.

59:00

So running,

59:02

caught stealing, your

59:04

fielding percentage, your batting percentage, your

59:06

batting percentage with runners on base, your

59:08

batting percentage against left

59:10

handers, right handers, on and on and on and on.

59:13

Half the game of baseball is played while you're

59:15

sitting on the bench.

59:17

Your team is in the field, you're on the field.

59:19

When your team is at bat, you're on the bench.

59:21

And so the real question is how do you measure

59:24

what your impact is on the rest

59:26

of the team when you're in the dugout.

59:29

Did you help the rest of your teammates get

59:31

better?

59:32

So I've been watching this guy Theo Epstein trying

59:34

to learn from him, and finally I have the chance

59:36

to meet him once.

59:38

And he

59:39

had given a talk at a conference I attended.

59:42

It was the year that there was a big hurricane

59:45

in Houston.

59:47

I want to say it was Hurricane Maria, but I'm probably wrong

59:49

about that. And this

59:51

was like a week after the World Series. Houston

59:55

won the World Series that year, beating the

59:57

Los Angeles Dodgers. and he was still

59:59

with. the club's the cubs had lost to the dodgers

1:00:02

in the championship series that year so

1:00:05

the team that the cubs last you went

1:00:07

on into the world series and lost a houston

1:00:10

so

1:00:10

i got to theo epstein i finally

1:00:12

get a chance to talk to this guy who i've

1:00:14

been learning from from afar

1:00:16

and i asked him the stupidest question world

1:00:19

and i go who

1:00:20

are you rooting for i gotta know who are you rooting

1:00:22

for in the world series re rooting for houston

1:00:24

because you felt bad for the city because they just

1:00:26

had this hurricane and

1:00:28

your wanted to see something nice happened for houston

1:00:31

or

1:00:31

are you rooting for the dodgers because they

1:00:33

would make the cubs look better if the team they lost

1:00:35

to went on to become a champion and

1:00:38

he looks faith i come from more recently

1:00:40

goes actually very

1:00:42

politely goes actually neither one of those things

1:00:45

i was absolutely rooting for the dodgers

1:00:47

to win but

1:00:48

not because it would make the cubs look better

1:00:51

it's

1:00:51

because if the dodgers when the world

1:00:53

series i

1:00:54

know that the cubs have to face them eight

1:00:56

times next year during the season in

1:00:58

if they win the world series they're

1:01:00

going to be like every other team that wins the

1:01:03

championship and they're not going do

1:01:05

the things they need and the off season to improve

1:01:07

their team and

1:01:08

that's gonna make them easier for us to compete

1:01:10

with next year

1:01:12

our shit that is such a great

1:01:14

lesson because it's like

1:01:16

when you think you're doing well you think

1:01:18

you're on top of whatever profession that's

1:01:21

a time you gotta break the glass and

1:01:23

you gotta start over and that's when

1:01:25

when i think most of us and

1:01:27

it's not just laziness and it's not just

1:01:29

sitting on your laurels it's you think

1:01:32

it's great the world keeps moving

1:01:34

and if you don't keep moving with it you will definitely

1:01:36

not keep up there was a great story i'd

1:01:38

be cursed i'm he did you dig in have a chance

1:01:41

to study how

1:01:43

he assessed things

1:01:45

that were not captured and the usual stats

1:01:47

people showing up early to practice may be

1:01:49

staying later practicing

1:01:51

a beer see were there any other

1:01:54

particular approaches that

1:01:56

you've gleaned from studying hammer speaking

1:01:58

with him

1:02:00

it was all intuitive to him and it's

1:02:02

the stuff i was looking out on our team in

1:02:04

my business is going to sound really tried but

1:02:07

our

1:02:07

staff the cooks and the server

1:02:09

sit down and and have what's called family

1:02:11

meal for every lunch service

1:02:14

and for readers serves and

1:02:16

it's an opportunity for people

1:02:18

to

1:02:19

come together stop we caught family

1:02:21

meal we are a business on family

1:02:23

but you

1:02:24

can watch during that time

1:02:27

you can just watch who's green

1:02:30

motivating thought to the table who's

1:02:33

actually brain outside ideas

1:02:35

to the table who's asking questions you

1:02:39

can tell whose brain the conversation down

1:02:41

there's always someone on every team whose the

1:02:43

ain't it bad person that's

1:02:45

not someone we really want my dog out

1:02:47

i want people who are like just

1:02:49

imagine if we i want

1:02:51

that person just imagine if we could do

1:02:54

this kind of person

1:02:56

but

1:02:56

i didn't study that in theo except

1:02:58

i've watched how

1:03:00

before theo epstein of the most famous

1:03:02

general manager was a guy named billy beane

1:03:04

who famously

1:03:05

rebuild the oakland a's

1:03:08

hundred and ten or his tire stuff moneyball

1:03:10

for people who might right exactly and

1:03:13

i think what theo did was he added

1:03:15

the emotional

1:03:17

aspect

1:03:17

to the technical aspect

1:03:19

so let's say you have some will on your team

1:03:22

you don't want the dugout and let's

1:03:24

say there's a reality tv show where you

1:03:26

put on a groucho marx make up

1:03:28

kit and you go and you're

1:03:30

starting a new restaurant you can use all the

1:03:32

knowledge you have that you can't use the contacts

1:03:34

you can't use the bankers and the finance

1:03:36

years or whatever you might have had access

1:03:39

to before and you have to let somebody

1:03:41

go how do you make that decision

1:03:43

is it made quickly if set rules

1:03:45

for yourself as to how to go about doing that

1:03:47

in than what is the language or

1:03:49

approach that you might use

1:03:52

well

1:03:52

i got much much better at it as

1:03:54

the years around by i mean on never forget the first

1:03:56

people i had to fire when i was twenty seven

1:03:58

twenty eight

1:04:00

I'd lose sleep for days, literally

1:04:03

days. I even went on my honeymoon

1:04:05

knowing that I was going to have to fire someone when I came back

1:04:07

from my honeymoon.

1:04:08

I really regret that. I really regret that I hadn't

1:04:10

done it ahead of time because that's not something that

1:04:13

I should have been thinking about on the honeymoon. The

1:04:15

early days, I really looked at our businesses

1:04:17

if it were a family.

1:04:19

And again, the way I grew up, it's like my job was

1:04:21

to keep the family together.

1:04:23

I'd be great at...

1:04:25

Somebody wasn't working out at one position,

1:04:27

I'd find a different position to move them to

1:04:30

anything to keep them because it felt like

1:04:32

I had somehow failed if someone was leaving

1:04:35

our company.

1:04:37

And I was really, really good on the other

1:04:39

hand at rewarding

1:04:41

great performance, but I was pretty

1:04:43

damn bad and or slow

1:04:45

at exiting people

1:04:47

who shouldn't have been on the team.

1:04:49

So a big thing happened

1:04:51

over time and

1:04:54

not too far on the rearview

1:04:56

mirror either. And that was this

1:04:58

thing that I've already alluded to, which is that,

1:05:01

number one,

1:05:02

it's a business, not a family. One of the great

1:05:05

things about the restaurant business is that

1:05:07

it

1:05:08

does feel family-ish

1:05:11

to people because you spend so many damn hours

1:05:13

working with each other. But it's

1:05:16

not a family.

1:05:17

So it's a good thing, but it's a double-edged

1:05:19

sword because

1:05:21

when you fire somebody from the family,

1:05:24

also known as your restaurant,

1:05:27

you have to ask yourself, what will this do to the

1:05:29

fabric of that group, that troop

1:05:31

that's working together? So I

1:05:34

was able to come up with the help of

1:05:36

some restaurateurs in California.

1:05:40

They gave me this model that I just absolutely

1:05:42

love,

1:05:43

and we've turned it into something that we do.

1:05:46

They basically created a

1:05:48

four quadrant thing.

1:05:50

You've seen these axes many time with a y-axis

1:05:52

and an x-axis. And

1:05:55

in one of the

1:05:57

quadrants, there's the word can. Let's

1:06:01

say the upper left hand, it says can, and

1:06:03

then in the upper right, it says can't. And

1:06:07

then in the bottom left, it

1:06:09

says will, and in the bottom right,

1:06:11

it says won't. So you basically

1:06:14

have someone's technical abilities,

1:06:16

the can and can't, and then you have somebody's

1:06:19

emotional

1:06:20

willingness or aptitude, and

1:06:22

that's will and won't.

1:06:24

And so what we've been able to do, we've

1:06:26

actually created mirrors,

1:06:29

which we put in the lock locker rooms of our restaurants,

1:06:31

because we're not trying to keep this a secret. And

1:06:35

the mirror has all four quadrants. And

1:06:38

so when you go put on your uniform every day,

1:06:41

you get to look at yourself in the mirror if you so choose

1:06:43

and see this quadrant.

1:06:45

And so

1:06:47

basically,

1:06:49

if you have someone who will,

1:06:51

but can't,

1:06:54

that's a very different thing than someone who

1:06:57

won't and can. I

1:06:59

could go through all of them, but what we've basically

1:07:01

done, Tim, is that we have an

1:07:04

action point

1:07:06

and a time frame for each one of those.

1:07:08

So if you've got somebody

1:07:11

who can

1:07:13

and will, I want to celebrate

1:07:15

that person. I want to replicate that.

1:07:18

Those are my flowers. I really want to water them.

1:07:21

Too often we ignore those people because, oh,

1:07:23

that's easy. We don't have to worry about Johnny because he always

1:07:25

gets it right. but you really want to water those

1:07:28

flowers and celebrate them.

1:07:30

If you have someone who

1:07:32

can't but will, I'm

1:07:34

going to coach them.

1:07:35

And I

1:07:36

don't mind saying this, but the wick

1:07:39

on my candle is pretty long for someone

1:07:41

who will. Because if

1:07:44

you can teach them how to do the thing, and

1:07:47

they're willing to do it, and they've got the right approach,

1:07:49

the right hospitality attitude, once

1:07:53

they learn how to do it, you're going to have a loyal

1:07:55

employee for life because you stuck with them. Now

1:07:58

on the other hand, so let's say that's a...

1:08:00

six month wick on my candle.

1:08:02

But

1:08:02

let's say you've got someone

1:08:04

who can't and

1:08:06

won't. I'm gonna put the candle

1:08:08

underneath their rear end and

1:08:11

they're gonna have to learn that

1:08:14

this isn't working. And that's gonna be a very,

1:08:16

very short, that's gotta be a short window. Because

1:08:19

the longer that person stays on the team,

1:08:21

everyone else on the team says,

1:08:24

why should I try if they keep

1:08:26

batting that person in the lineup instead

1:08:28

of benching them same to the minor leagues, why

1:08:31

should I try? The

1:08:32

hardest one I find is the

1:08:35

can but won't.

1:08:38

That's the person where you just go, you know, you're

1:08:40

way better than this, but for some reason, you're just

1:08:42

choosing not to bring it here.

1:08:44

And so that's

1:08:46

going to have a pretty short life as well. But

1:08:48

by actually naming all four of those things,

1:08:51

it really, really helps us to have these conversations.

1:08:53

And we tell people up front, they

1:08:55

see that mirror. So it's

1:08:58

not the first time you're having this conversation. It gives

1:09:00

you a language to say, here's

1:09:02

where you are right now and it's not working. And I'll say

1:09:04

probably the greatest lesson I've learned about

1:09:08

anything has been really

1:09:10

trying to understand how do you scale

1:09:13

culture. And I've

1:09:14

kind of come up with this equation

1:09:16

in my own mind that took me a long time to

1:09:19

get to. I used to think that

1:09:21

by

1:09:21

rewarding the behaviors

1:09:23

I wanted, that

1:09:24

was the best way to fuel the culture I wanted.

1:09:27

And now I look at it a little bit differently because

1:09:30

that's

1:09:31

turning a blind eye sometimes to

1:09:33

the behaviors I don't want.

1:09:36

So I've now learned that the culture

1:09:38

you have in your organization

1:09:41

is the sum of

1:09:43

all the wanted behaviors that

1:09:46

you celebrate minus all

1:09:48

the unwanted behaviors that that you tolerate.

1:09:52

And I've learned that the hard

1:09:54

way because people think I'm

1:09:56

full of crap. They can read anything I

1:09:58

write about about our culture, et cetera.

1:10:01

But if I'm tolerating behaviors that

1:10:04

don't promote either the excellence

1:10:06

or wellbeing of the team,

1:10:08

then everything I've done on the positive side

1:10:11

should be called into question. How might

1:10:13

you, these days having had much

1:10:16

more practice since your

1:10:18

honeymoon, if you had to let somebody go

1:10:20

or you wanted to maybe suggest language that

1:10:22

someone might use, but you could make it personal, how

1:10:25

might you phrase that

1:10:27

conversation?

1:10:28

Well, the first thing is it shouldn't be the first time you've

1:10:30

had the conversation. There's

1:10:33

nothing worse than

1:10:34

when somebody feels like I got whacked in the back

1:10:36

of the head and they're just shocked because you

1:10:39

had never had the conversation. You hadn't had the tough

1:10:41

conversation that said

1:10:43

either your performance or your behavior, it's one

1:10:45

of the two, are not measuring

1:10:47

up. And that's another

1:10:50

reason that we have to be really clear about what excellent

1:10:52

performance looks like and what they

1:10:54

wanted behaviors are, which we're very,

1:10:56

very clear about. And by

1:10:58

being upfront with people and

1:11:01

not having this be the first time you're having the conversation

1:11:03

takes a lot of the emotion out of

1:11:06

it. It doesn't mean someone's gonna be happy, but

1:11:08

it basically sounds like

1:11:10

actually something that

1:11:12

I've said on a few occasions,

1:11:15

not in the time I'm actually exiting

1:11:17

somebody, but in the time leading up to it, is

1:11:20

I use what I call the jigsaw puzzle

1:11:22

analogy. We've

1:11:25

all done jigsaw puzzles, and the

1:11:27

more challenging they are, you get to this point

1:11:29

where it's starting to take

1:11:31

some shape, but you still have a lot

1:11:34

more pieces

1:11:36

that you haven't put together than what you

1:11:38

have in your little shape there.

1:11:40

And invariably, you're gonna come up with a piece

1:11:43

that looks like it's right, and

1:11:46

you put it down, and it's

1:11:48

almost right. It's

1:11:51

so almost right that you keep kind of

1:11:53

jiggering it around to

1:11:55

make it right, even though you know it's not

1:11:57

right, and the peace knows it's not right.

1:12:00

And what starts to happen is the

1:12:02

paper on top of the jigsaw piece

1:12:05

starts to fray a little bit.

1:12:07

And in fact, the jigsaw puzzle, if

1:12:09

you keep trying, starts to fray. Well,

1:12:12

that's what we do too often with employees

1:12:15

that are almost right, but

1:12:17

they're not really the right fit. And it ends

1:12:19

up not being good for the puzzle or for the puzzle

1:12:21

piece. So I try

1:12:24

to explain that to people.

1:12:28

If you get that conversation with me, chances

1:12:30

are probably 80% that the next conversation

1:12:33

is

1:12:34

you're a beautiful jigsaw piece, but you should probably

1:12:36

be part of a different puzzle.

1:12:38

It doesn't make you wrong. It doesn't make you bad.

1:12:40

Now, if it's someone who actually did

1:12:42

something bad, that's a very different conversation.

1:12:45

It's like you cannot work here. You've

1:12:47

betrayed integrity.

1:12:50

You've betrayed someone on our team. You've

1:12:52

betrayed one of our guests. You've

1:12:54

betrayed our investors. If you cross

1:12:56

any one of our stakeholders, that's a

1:12:58

very different conversation, lack of integrity.

1:13:00

But if it's just not the right fit, number

1:13:03

one, it shouldn't be the first time they've heard about it. And

1:13:06

they may not love the conversation, who

1:13:08

in the world wants to be exited. But

1:13:12

I'll tell you one thing I feel really good about is

1:13:14

that we have a pretty small industry

1:13:17

and invariably if you're someone

1:13:20

who left our business on your

1:13:22

terms or on our terms

1:13:24

you're probably going to be serving me in a restaurant sometime

1:13:26

in New York and I feel

1:13:28

really good that I never mind seeing these

1:13:30

people it just feels like as long as

1:13:32

it's clean and we were honest with each other

1:13:35

it tends to work out in the end.

1:13:37

Reading your bio looking

1:13:40

at the highlights, you've had so many

1:13:42

successes, I

1:13:44

would imagine beyond your wildest

1:13:47

dreams or expectations that you could have had in

1:13:49

your say late 20s.

1:13:52

What are some of your

1:13:53

favorite failures or any favorite

1:13:56

failures that come to mind? My favorite failure is, I mean,

1:13:58

a failure that you...

1:14:00

learned a lot from, that set you up

1:14:02

unexpectedly for later success. Anything

1:14:04

that sticks out comes to mind

1:14:06

as a seminal moment,

1:14:09

a teaching moment.

1:14:11

Many, many, many.

1:14:13

Every day we have micro failures. There's

1:14:15

a really good movie called The Best Exotic

1:14:18

Marigold Hotel. I don't know if you've ever seen

1:14:20

it.

1:14:21

So it's a terrible title because I can almost

1:14:23

never remember it. I want to say Carnation,

1:14:25

Chrysanthemum, but it's The Best Exotic Marigold

1:14:28

Hotel. takes place in India.

1:14:30

There's two great lessons from that, one of

1:14:32

which I think answers, there's probably more

1:14:34

than two, but

1:14:36

one of my favorite lessons

1:14:38

is that the only real failure is the failure

1:14:40

to try

1:14:42

and that the measure of success is how we cope

1:14:44

with the disappointment.

1:14:48

I'd say that I was probably

1:14:51

the first most pivotal

1:14:54

experience for me was

1:14:56

closing the first restaurant I ever closed,

1:14:58

which was Tabla, an Indian restaurant.

1:15:00

Interesting that I'm using an Indian film to

1:15:03

talk about this. But

1:15:05

Tabla was about 13 years

1:15:08

old. And if I

1:15:10

regret one thing that I wrote in setting

1:15:12

the table, it was actually in the very first paragraph

1:15:14

of the book.

1:15:16

And I proudly stated, at this

1:15:18

point, we had been in business for about 20 years.

1:15:20

And I proudly stated how many

1:15:22

restaurants we had opened.

1:15:25

And then I super proudly stated,

1:15:27

and

1:15:28

in all that time we've never closed one,

1:15:31

as if closing a restaurant is failure.

1:15:34

And it was the stupidest thing I could have possibly

1:15:36

written because

1:15:38

closing a restaurant is not failing

1:15:40

and it's also nothing to be ashamed of and

1:15:44

nothing to be proud of to keep a restaurant

1:15:46

open forever. it either it is or

1:15:48

it isn't. So, Tabla,

1:15:51

I guarantee you, I was so falsely

1:15:54

proud with what I had written that

1:15:57

I kept tableau and I was so afraid. of

1:16:00

my dad's, you know, I didn't want to go down the path

1:16:02

of being my dad. Are you telling me that something,

1:16:04

I couldn't make something work here? Tabla

1:16:07

was a great

1:16:09

Indian

1:16:11

expression in a very groundbreaking

1:16:13

way in New York City using fresh

1:16:16

green market ingredients. We had a fantastic

1:16:18

chef

1:16:19

who sadly died during COVID, Floyd

1:16:21

Cardoz.

1:16:23

Groundbreaking restaurant, lived for 13

1:16:25

years, probably should have

1:16:27

closed it at year 11. We

1:16:30

had just hit the Great Recession and

1:16:33

we started to lose money.

1:16:36

It was our biggest restaurant

1:16:38

in terms of numbers of seats. We had 283 seats

1:16:41

on three different

1:16:42

dining rooms, two different levels.

1:16:45

I was so afraid of closing it, so

1:16:47

afraid of talking to the team and saying we

1:16:49

couldn't make the restaurant work that I kept it open for

1:16:52

two years longer than I should have.

1:16:54

And that was the restaurant where

1:16:56

for two years we had people working

1:16:58

out of loyalty. No

1:17:01

one was making a raise, no one was getting a promotion.

1:17:04

And I finally gathered the courage to

1:17:06

do what I should have done two years sooner.

1:17:10

I'll never forget the day I said, look,

1:17:12

what if we could distinguish ourselves as

1:17:14

much based on

1:17:16

how well we closed a restaurant

1:17:19

as we had with how well we had opened the restaurant?

1:17:22

And so we started writing a list of, all

1:17:24

right, what are all the ways that we could look

1:17:26

back on this and say we did it

1:17:28

the right way.

1:17:30

And first thing was we

1:17:33

told our whole staff, now that sounds,

1:17:35

well, why is that such a big deal? Well,

1:17:37

sadly in our business,

1:17:39

sometimes the first time a staff learns a

1:17:41

restaurant's going out of business is the day they go

1:17:43

to work and see a padlock on the door because

1:17:46

the restaurant is dead afraid

1:17:48

that no one will work there.

1:17:50

No one wants to stay on a sinking ship.

1:17:52

So we told our staff a quarter of a

1:17:54

year ahead of time,

1:17:57

told our landlord, told the community.

1:18:00

We invited all of the alumni

1:18:03

of the restaurant in to come cook with us.

1:18:06

So we celebrated the restaurant.

1:18:09

We hosted job fairs

1:18:11

for all of our team members,

1:18:13

not just with us teaching them how to interview

1:18:15

and working potentially in our other restaurants,

1:18:18

but again, inviting

1:18:20

famous chefs who had once cooked with us,

1:18:23

or general managers who had once worked with

1:18:25

us to come in and hire our staff.

1:18:28

We hosted three fundraisers.

1:18:30

We brought in Indian chefs from around the country

1:18:33

to do a fundraiser

1:18:35

for earthquake victims in India. We

1:18:37

did a fundraiser for Madison Square Park. So

1:18:40

by the time this was done, we paid our landlord

1:18:42

everything. We

1:18:43

actually even paid our investors, I

1:18:46

think they got a 0.1% return

1:18:49

on their original invest. They got all their money back plus

1:18:51

a couple pennies. So if

1:18:53

you're gonna close a place, at least

1:18:56

that was the way to do it. And the biggest learning I

1:18:58

had was there's no shame in closing.

1:19:02

Since closing Tabla, I

1:19:05

would say we've probably opened 15 restaurants

1:19:07

and we've probably closed another

1:19:09

six. And

1:19:12

we had to close about three of them during COVID.

1:19:15

And I think that learning to fail fast

1:19:18

and realize that if you hadn't tried the thing

1:19:20

in the first place, there

1:19:22

would neither have been success or failure. So

1:19:24

the real failure would have been not in trying,

1:19:27

but not everything has to go

1:19:29

on forever. The late restaurateur, Joe Baum,

1:19:32

had this great expression that

1:19:34

I love and I don't

1:19:36

love. But he used to say that

1:19:39

the definition of a classic restaurant is one

1:19:41

that can outlive its original lease. That

1:19:44

was a goal of mine for a long, long time.

1:19:47

And we've, frankly, we've done that with almost all

1:19:49

of our restaurants.

1:19:51

I now have a different goal of my

1:19:53

own, which is I want our restaurants

1:19:56

and I think your podcast is this as

1:19:58

well. and we all have songs.

1:20:00

in our lives that are like this, or pieces of

1:20:02

art, or movies, or

1:20:03

books. But I want our restaurants to become

1:20:06

essential in people's lives. I want people to say,

1:20:08

my life got better because that restaurant

1:20:11

existed.

1:20:12

Doesn't matter how long.

1:20:14

And God forbid the restaurant goes out of business.

1:20:16

I want people to say, I

1:20:18

just lost a little something when that restaurant

1:20:20

closed. There's so many restaurants,

1:20:22

dry cleaners, whatever, that come

1:20:25

and go. And it's like, who cares? There's so many

1:20:27

songs. I never heard it again, I'd

1:20:29

be fine. But there's those handful of

1:20:31

songs that when I listen to them,

1:20:34

I'm grateful for the person who wrote it. I'm

1:20:36

grateful for their life.

1:20:38

My life got better because that song existed

1:20:41

and I can't even imagine my life if that song

1:20:43

had never been written. That's my more

1:20:45

than longevity.

1:20:46

It's a sensuality that I think matters.

1:20:49

You know, I haven't thought about this in a really

1:20:52

long time, but I still remember every

1:20:54

restaurant and coffee shop

1:20:57

in which I wrote my books because

1:21:00

these locations and I took great

1:21:03

pains to find the right spot became

1:21:06

my surrogate family for a period

1:21:08

of time. While I worked on these things

1:21:10

that of course became a huge

1:21:13

part of my life, continue to be a huge part of my

1:21:15

life. Even though some of them

1:21:17

have gone out of business or I shouldn't

1:21:19

say gone

1:21:19

out of business, maybe they were just closed, maybe the decision

1:21:22

was made to close, they still

1:21:24

have left this indelible mark

1:21:26

in my mind.

1:21:28

And I just brought all of these memories

1:21:30

rushing back like the Pixar movie

1:21:32

Ratatouille. The similar effect just

1:21:34

now as you're talking about that. And I

1:21:37

admire you for being

1:21:38

in my mind an experimentalist,

1:21:41

running experiments, being willing

1:21:44

to try in terms of testing things. And

1:21:46

I remember this

1:21:48

was some time ago, you could probably place

1:21:51

the timestamp effectively, but when

1:21:53

you experimented with no

1:21:55

tipping. And I would love

1:21:58

for you to speak to that and just...

1:22:00

discuss lessons learned through

1:22:02

that. And this ties into

1:22:05

something we were talking about a little bit before I recorded, which

1:22:07

was time in Japan, where tipping is not a thing

1:22:10

as an example. It's just not really part of the culture.

1:22:13

But could you describe what you did and

1:22:15

what you learned?

1:22:17

Yeah, we had faced a major,

1:22:19

major shortage in

1:22:22

really good cooks. This was probably starting

1:22:24

in about 2012, 2013, 2014. And

1:22:29

I'll never forget, I went to

1:22:31

one of the restaurants we closed, which was

1:22:33

a really good restaurant, but I think we got a

1:22:36

subpar location for it. It was called North

1:22:38

End Grill.

1:22:39

And I'll never forget going into the

1:22:41

restaurant one night. And I said to

1:22:43

our general manager, Kevin,

1:22:46

I said, God, I'm,

1:22:47

service has gotten really good here. I'm so

1:22:50

proud.

1:22:50

I spoke to four different servers, and they

1:22:53

all told me that they had graduated

1:22:55

from the Culinary Institute of America. And

1:22:57

I said, how

1:22:58

are we getting so many

1:23:00

people who want to be professional servers?

1:23:03

This is great. And he goes, boss,

1:23:05

I wish I could tell you that was the truth. He

1:23:08

said, these

1:23:09

are all people who wanted to be cooks,

1:23:11

but they can't afford to be cooks.

1:23:13

And there's like three of them living

1:23:15

in a studio apartment, commuting

1:23:18

all the way from Queens. And

1:23:20

we can't pay them any more money because we don't have

1:23:23

any more money to pay them. trying

1:23:25

to give them free Metro cards,

1:23:27

but that's not going to keep them. So the only way

1:23:29

they can make a living is to be waiters.

1:23:31

And something I'd been thinking

1:23:33

about for many, many years was how

1:23:36

much I did not like the tipping system.

1:23:38

Initially in the early part of my career,

1:23:41

I didn't like the tipping system because there

1:23:43

would always be a situation

1:23:45

in these early days of Union Square Cafe or

1:23:47

Gramercy Tavern when a

1:23:50

tourist from Japan or

1:23:52

from France or Great Britain where

1:23:54

there's not a big tipping culture

1:23:56

would either leave no tip or they'd leave a

1:23:58

pretty shitty tip. And it would

1:24:01

be so demoralizing for the waiter.

1:24:03

There was one occasion where

1:24:05

one of our waiters actually chased

1:24:07

somebody out onto the sidewalk

1:24:09

and I was mortified. It's like, you cannot do

1:24:11

that. And yet here I was

1:24:13

because of the tipping system

1:24:15

where they were getting the adjusted

1:24:17

tip minimum wage back then, which was $2.21. And

1:24:22

if they didn't get a tip, they weren't gonna be able to pay their rent.

1:24:24

So I understood it, but it was just, I

1:24:26

hated it. But

1:24:27

then later, now bringing

1:24:29

it up to the mid 2015

1:24:30

time,

1:24:32

I said, you know what?

1:24:34

I'm so tired of this system where

1:24:37

we are legally prohibited from

1:24:40

allowing tips to be shared between

1:24:42

waiters and cooks. Cooks

1:24:45

work at least as hard as waiters. The

1:24:47

guy who made the risotto, stirring

1:24:49

the risotto like crazy didn't work any less

1:24:51

hard than the guy that brought it to the table. And

1:24:54

by the way, if somebody's gonna have truffle

1:24:56

shaved on that risotto, and

1:24:59

therefore the price is going to go way up. The waiter is

1:25:01

going to make a whole lot more money, and the cook's going to

1:25:03

make zero more money. And what

1:25:05

I had noticed was that every year, the

1:25:08

waiters were making increasingly more money.

1:25:11

Why? Well, because menu prices only go up,

1:25:13

and what's a tip if not a multiplier

1:25:16

of the menu price?

1:25:17

And cook's hourly wages had

1:25:19

remained stagnant. And

1:25:22

so you may say, well, why don't you just raise the cook's

1:25:24

wage? Great. I

1:25:26

raised the cook's wage, I have to increase

1:25:28

the menu prices,

1:25:29

which only increases the disparity because now

1:25:32

the tipped employee makes more.

1:25:35

So I was really tired

1:25:37

of trying to argue that New

1:25:39

York state or many, many other states

1:25:41

should change their laws so the tips

1:25:43

can be shared.

1:25:45

And so I said, screw it, I'm just going

1:25:47

to take this into my own hands. And I came

1:25:49

to a meeting one day with my senior leaders,

1:25:52

and I played one of the worst

1:25:54

John Lennon songs I've ever heard called

1:25:57

Cold Turkey and I said

1:26:00

I am now declaring tips to be a

1:26:02

drug and we've got to get off this drug.

1:26:05

And if we can't change the rules, we're

1:26:07

just going to stop taking tips. And we came

1:26:09

up with this idea called hospitality included.

1:26:12

And my goal was that we would

1:26:15

narrow the gap between

1:26:17

what a cook could not make and what a

1:26:20

server could make. I didn't want to punish our servers,

1:26:22

but I wanted our cooks to get to make more

1:26:24

money so we could attract more cooks. Because

1:26:28

New York City as the preeminent dining capital

1:26:30

in America was

1:26:32

definitely going to be threatened. So

1:26:35

we established this idea,

1:26:38

did some really, really hard math, and

1:26:40

I'm telling you it's incredibly hard because

1:26:44

you've got

1:26:45

three legs on the stool. You've got the

1:26:47

consumer who's looking at menu prices

1:26:50

that now include everything.

1:26:51

So if you go to a typical restaurant in America,

1:26:54

the menu price

1:26:56

has to include the cost of whatever

1:26:58

it is that menu item is, right? The

1:27:00

chicken and everything that came with it. It's

1:27:02

got to include the cost of the linen, the flowers,

1:27:05

the rent, the insurance.

1:27:08

It includes everything except paying the person who

1:27:10

brought it to your table. You're going to pay

1:27:12

that

1:27:13

two and a half hours after you start your meal. You're

1:27:16

going to get your bill and

1:27:17

then you're going to go into your other pocket

1:27:19

and add I had 20% to that,

1:27:22

but you're gonna do it. So with

1:27:24

hospitality included, I said, everything's

1:27:27

included. And I purposely called

1:27:29

it hospitality, not service, because

1:27:32

the way I look at it is, I

1:27:34

want you to feel like you're paying for how we made you

1:27:37

feel. I want the food to

1:27:39

be free, the drink to be free,

1:27:41

and when you look at that big number at the bottom of your

1:27:43

thing, you gotta feel like,

1:27:45

man, I just got a $350 hug. And

1:27:49

so that's why I wanted to call it hospitality included

1:27:51

and I wanted our staff to understand that and

1:27:53

so So the

1:27:54

math was really hard because by the time

1:27:56

I included everything on the menu price,

1:27:59

I don't want to. bring our waiters down, I just want

1:28:01

to bring our cooks up by 20 percent. Oh, by

1:28:03

the way, I also wanted to bring our

1:28:06

starting manager salary up

1:28:09

because one of the worst things about the tipping system

1:28:12

is that you cannot afford,

1:28:14

in most cases,

1:28:16

to promote yourself from being a great server

1:28:19

to being a manager without taking a 25 percent

1:28:21

pay cut. That's really screwed up, that that

1:28:23

there's

1:28:24

nowhere to grow. It's a dead end

1:28:26

for waiters.

1:28:28

We're gonna raise our manager's wage.

1:28:30

Oh, by the way, we're also gonna put in a retirement

1:28:33

plan for our team. We're gonna put in a

1:28:35

family leave policy so that when

1:28:37

people are pregnant, or

1:28:40

people have a baby, both the birth mother and

1:28:43

the birth father

1:28:44

can get up to eight weeks of paid time

1:28:46

off.

1:28:47

We wanted to put all that in the price.

1:28:50

And we didn't wanna scare people away from dying

1:28:52

at our restaurants.

1:28:53

And we wanted to leave some money for our investors.

1:28:57

So we tried it at one restaurant, the

1:28:59

modern, really hard, but it worked pretty

1:29:01

damn well.

1:29:03

Amazingly, the guests did not

1:29:05

balk.

1:29:06

They loved not having to buy their coat

1:29:08

back from the coat check at the end of the meal

1:29:11

because everything was included.

1:29:13

And then every four or five months, we'd roll

1:29:16

it out at another restaurant.

1:29:17

And we started to see our

1:29:19

profits started to erode little

1:29:21

bit, but damn it, I was gung-ho on making

1:29:24

this thing work because the good news was we were getting

1:29:26

better cooks

1:29:27

and I

1:29:28

knew we were doing the right thing.

1:29:30

There's another thing that I should add is that in

1:29:32

making this choice, we actually

1:29:35

had to forego a million

1:29:37

dollars in federal tax

1:29:39

credits, like real money that they pay us. The

1:29:43

federal government pays you to accept

1:29:45

tips. Does that seem crazy or what?

1:29:48

And once we eliminated tipping, we

1:29:50

had to forego those. And the reason they did

1:29:52

that is that probably 15 years ago,

1:29:55

when the government realized They were not

1:29:57

collecting a

1:29:58

lot of

1:30:00

taxes based on tips because people were

1:30:02

hiding what they are making.

1:30:04

They actually brought the restaurant industry

1:30:07

under their cloak and they said.

1:30:09

For every tip dollar tip you report

1:30:11

to us that your service are making

1:30:14

we will pay you back a certain

1:30:16

percentage and so that's why they

1:30:18

pay restaurant to take tips because

1:30:20

they want to reported. But

1:30:22

so we gave up a million bucks in making

1:30:24

this choice. I just wanted to do the right thing.

1:30:27

So now all of a sudden

1:30:28

COVID happens, we're basically

1:30:31

brought to our knees with no revenues at all

1:30:33

for four months, could

1:30:34

have gone out of business and

1:30:37

had to lay off a huge number

1:30:39

of our team members. So finally in

1:30:42

the summer of 2020, New

1:30:44

York made it legal to

1:30:47

open your restaurant with a certain

1:30:49

number of outdoor tables.

1:30:51

weren't going to make any money, but

1:30:53

it was going to helpfully get the city back

1:30:55

up on its feet. And

1:30:57

I was a big proponent for the city, for

1:30:59

our whole industry. And

1:31:01

I saw this really amazing dynamic

1:31:04

happen to him.

1:31:05

The New Yorkers who had been

1:31:08

locked up in their apartments for all these months,

1:31:10

unable to go to restaurants, they could only get curbside

1:31:13

pickup and, you know, delivering that kind of thing.

1:31:16

We're so incredibly grateful

1:31:18

for our servers who who were willing to come out

1:31:20

and serve them on the sidewalk,

1:31:22

that they were literally throwing $20 bills

1:31:24

at our servers, $50, $100 bills

1:31:27

to say thank you. And

1:31:30

now I'm telling our servers,

1:31:32

not only can you not accept that,

1:31:35

but you have to tell our guests, you may not

1:31:37

say thank you to me.

1:31:39

After about two weeks of this, I said,

1:31:42

and by the way, we had no vaccine at this point. So

1:31:44

any server working there, serving someone

1:31:47

who's not wearing a mask while they're eating, this

1:31:49

was a dangerous time in

1:31:51

New York. And I finally said, this

1:31:53

is inhumane, this is not being on

1:31:55

our employees' side.

1:31:57

And so I said, guess what?

1:31:59

to resume tipping,

1:32:01

but

1:32:02

in so doing,

1:32:04

we as a company will start to pay

1:32:07

a percentage of

1:32:09

our revenue every night to

1:32:11

our cooks who are tip ineligible.

1:32:14

I don't think that should be our responsibility, but I did

1:32:17

not want to erode the gains we had made. And

1:32:19

so now that's where we are. So our servers

1:32:22

are making tips, and if

1:32:25

we have a really busy night, our cooks are

1:32:27

really happy. They're benefiting. They're not just Because

1:32:29

like in so many restaurants where on a busy

1:32:31

night, you're

1:32:33

watching the waiters counting their tips

1:32:35

and the cooks just perspired more. That's

1:32:38

not right. Yeah. I

1:32:41

grew up earning my keep on

1:32:44

Long Island as a kid. I probably started really young.

1:32:46

God, I was 14 or 15 working as a busboy.

1:32:50

And occasionally,

1:32:53

if the moment presented itself a server

1:32:56

at restaurants on Eastern in Long

1:32:58

Island. So I grew up as a townie in the Hamptons, which

1:33:01

has this whole set of stories for another time.

1:33:03

But I'm wondering as

1:33:05

we think about the four

1:33:07

quadrants that you described earlier,

1:33:09

the Ken and Will, the Cant and Won't, and

1:33:12

the other permutations,

1:33:13

did you run into or how did you handle

1:33:15

a

1:33:16

dynamic where

1:33:19

people who in the previous paradigm

1:33:21

– so now I'm talking about in the hospitality

1:33:23

included transition, you're already there

1:33:26

but people who in the tipping environment

1:33:29

had been top

1:33:30

performers

1:33:32

contending with that. So

1:33:35

the sunflowers that you want to water,

1:33:37

how did you contend with, if you did, the dynamic

1:33:40

of

1:33:41

maybe prior top performers feeling

1:33:43

like they were not going to earn

1:33:45

their fair share? It

1:33:47

was really tough and

1:33:49

you want to take a communications lesson, just

1:33:52

try rolling out hospitality included

1:33:54

at your restaurants because tipping

1:33:57

is such a deeply held...

1:34:00

American way of life, both

1:34:02

for the people providing the service and for

1:34:04

the people on the receiving end. This was

1:34:07

a really tough thing to break and not many

1:34:09

restaurants joined us in this. A couple

1:34:11

tried and a lot of

1:34:13

them folded their hand well before we did on

1:34:16

the whole thing. But what we did do,

1:34:18

and I feel really good about this, was

1:34:20

to do the same thing we do with our cooks. So

1:34:23

you get a raise based on merit if you're a cook.

1:34:25

If you're a server, you're

1:34:28

getting the same adjusted minimum wage no

1:34:30

matter what you do. And so

1:34:33

we created learning opportunities with our teams

1:34:36

and we had several tiers of learning

1:34:39

opportunities. And if you got to a different tier, you

1:34:41

got a higher base

1:34:44

wage. Obviously, we were not

1:34:46

doing tipping. So you could actually get a raise

1:34:48

through the whole thing. So if you look at our staff,

1:34:51

we factored in longevity, but

1:34:53

sometimes the longest serving servers

1:34:56

are the ones that most

1:34:57

need to go because

1:34:58

they're just overripe and they've

1:35:01

lost their smog. But we definitely factored

1:35:03

in longevity because here's the

1:35:05

thing, the

1:35:06

way you make the most tips in a restaurant

1:35:09

is generally through longevity because you get

1:35:11

the

1:35:12

classically the Thursday, Friday, Saturday

1:35:15

shifts and classically you don't get the Monday, Tuesday

1:35:17

lunch

1:35:18

kind of thing. What was great and

1:35:20

this was a win for everybody

1:35:22

was that while longevity

1:35:24

would factor into your base

1:35:27

rate, it did

1:35:29

not factor into your schedule. And so a

1:35:31

lot of people who in order to make their

1:35:33

money had to work weekends, sometimes

1:35:35

away from their family,

1:35:37

they could actually have a schedule

1:35:39

that was a much better balance of life. So

1:35:42

there were some wins in this. But

1:35:44

at the end of the day we just couldn't make the math

1:35:47

work and it just didn't seem right to

1:35:49

tell our staff, stop. You

1:35:51