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Danny Meyer built Union Square Hospitality Group by putting people first. Through his approach to hospitality, he builds trust with guests and empowers employees while sharing lessons on leadership, entrepreneurship and creating experiences people remember.
Watch now to learn how Danny Meyer builds trust through hospitality, empowers employees to care for guests, and turns small details into lasting connections.
Restaurant Influencers is sponsored by:
• Toast All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://entm.ag/ToastRI
• PepsiCo Foodservice: https://entm.ag/RIPepsico
Watch now to learn how Danny Meyer builds trust through hospitality, empowers employees to care for guests, and turns small details into lasting connections.
Restaurant Influencers is sponsored by:
• Toast All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://entm.ag/ToastRI
• PepsiCo Foodservice: https://entm.ag/RIPepsico
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NewsTranscript
00:00I spent nine years earning this interview, and I brought something Danny Meyer wasn't expecting.
00:04The sun's rising over the bay as we drive from our Airbnb near SFO into the city.
00:10Then, the interview I'd imagined since putting Danny's name on our whiteboard in 2017.
00:15Nine years of preparation, over 1,500 interviews, doing the work to earn this opportunity.
00:21And I brought a gift. What could possibly go right?
00:31Welcome to Restaurant Influencers, presented by Entrepreneur.
00:34I'm your host, Sean Walchef. This is a Cali BBQ Media production.
00:38We are filming at Bourbon Steak in Union Square, San Francisco.
00:43Thank you to Chef Michael Mina for opening up this incredible space for today's conversation.
00:48In life, in the restaurant business, and in the new creator economy, we learn through lessons and stories.
00:56This has been nine years in the making.
00:58Today's guest is a father. He's a husband. He's the founder of Shake Shack.
01:03He is the chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group, none other than Danny Meyer.
01:08Danny, welcome to the show.
01:09Thank you, Sean. Nice to see you.
01:12It is an honor to have you on the show.
01:14I'm going to start with my favorite random question, which is,
01:17where in the world is your favorite stadium, stage, or venue?
01:24One of each?
01:25Just one.
01:28I'd say my favorite stadium is Bush Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri.
01:33Okay.
01:33I'm always happy when I'm there, even when the Cardinals don't win.
01:37Beautiful.
01:38We're going to go to Bush Stadium, and we're honored that Toast, our title sponsor of the show, and Pepsi,
01:43they help us put this on.
01:45But we're going to get them to fill Bush Stadium with entrepreneurs, business owners, restaurant tours,
01:51and we're going to bring you to the pitcher's mound.
01:53I'm there. I can't wait.
01:54And the first question that I'm going to ask you with all of these hospitality enthusiasts is,
02:00Danny, you have written, setting the table.
02:04You have now published a New York Times best-selling, what could possibly go right.
02:10You have done media interviews with the biggest legends in the media and storytelling space.
02:17What has the media, what is the misperception that the media has of Danny Meyer?
02:27You'd have to ask them.
02:28I don't really know what their misperception is, but I do think that one of the things that I really
02:34wanted to address
02:35when I wrote What Could Possibly Go Right is that there's no such thing as a straight line between point
02:40A and point B.
02:42And I think a lot of people look at what we've done over the years, and they go,
02:48oh my gosh, those guys are so successful.
02:51And I don't think they realize that there are a lot of downs to go with the ups.
02:55And the very cover of this book kind of tells that story.
02:59And I wanted to be as candid and transparent as I could that the downs do go back up as
03:08long as you learn lessons from them.
03:09But it's not a straight line.
03:12We're in San Francisco.
03:14The opening of the book is dedicated to R.C., the man that collects the dots and connects the dots.
03:22One of the most powerful lessons in setting the table that I've taken away is A, B, C, D, so
03:29that you can A, B, C, D.
03:31Always be collecting the dots so that you can always be connecting the dots.
03:36The reason why I'm sitting here with my media team today is because we've collected lots of dots
03:41to be able to make this magical opportunity happen for us and our audience, the restaurant owners,
03:47the business owners that are going to listen to this.
03:49Tell me about Richard.
03:50Tell me about why is he so good at finding the dots and then bringing you the right dots.
03:56Well, I love that you're asking about R.C. while we're sitting here in San Francisco because that's when I
04:02first met him.
04:03He was the general manager of Wolfgang Puck's restaurant Post Trio, which is probably, you know, less than a 10
04:11-minute walk from here.
04:12Oh, wow.
04:12And Post Trio, back in its day, which was the early 1990s, was the number one favorite restaurant of San
04:22Franciscans in the Zagat Survey.
04:24Wow.
04:24And at that same time, over in New York, my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, was the number one favorite restaurant
04:31in the Zagat Survey.
04:34And what was happening was that a lot of our regular guests, whenever they'd go to San Francisco, would ask
04:40me to help them get a table at Post Trio.
04:42And his regulars would ask him to help them get a table.
04:46So we developed a phone relationship.
04:48This was before we were, you know, doing anything online or anything like that.
04:53And I came to meet him at Post Trio, had a fantastic lunch.
04:58I still remember it.
04:59Yeah.
04:59Half bottle of Bielkar Salmon Rosé, lamb's tongue salad with mosh, lamb's lettuce, with mint sauce.
05:11I can still remember that meal like it was yesterday.
05:13But we developed a friendship.
05:15And then there came a point when Richard had opened his own restaurant here called Hawthorne Lane.
05:21And I just was saying, Richard, you've got to come to New York.
05:24You've got to come to New York.
05:26We need you.
05:27And he helped me very soon after I opened Gramercy Tavern.
05:31So this was 1994.
05:34And he was on the team for just shy of 30 years.
05:38And he was and is one of the greatest dot collectors of all time.
05:43He cares.
05:44To be a dot collector, you just, it's like a game.
05:47And I don't say that as if it's not genuine.
05:49But the people who are greatest at the game are the people who care the most about making human connections.
05:56Because when we say dots, we're talking about pieces of information about people.
06:02Who just wrote a book.
06:04Who just got a big new job.
06:07Who just got married.
06:09Who just got divorced.
06:10Right.
06:10And he, Richard, is the kind of person that reads everything he possibly can.
06:17Looking for dots that he can connect to make somebody feel better.
06:23And he's great at it.
06:24Did you know that Toast powers over 180,000 locations across the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia?
06:34It's the operating system for restaurants.
06:37And now with Toast IQ, it's putting AI to work for operators like us.
06:41From marketing to scheduling to the numbers that actually run our business.
06:46I'm on the Toast customer advisory board.
06:48Toast powers our barbecue restaurants in San Diego.
06:51And they are proud sponsors of this show, Restaurant Influencers.
06:55We couldn't do it without their support.
06:57If you'd like the local Toast rep to get in touch with you, you can reach out at www.betheshow
07:02.media.toast.
07:04Or you can reach out to me directly at Sean P. Walchef on Instagram.
07:10Now back to the show.
07:13My grandfather taught me to stay curious, to get involved, and to ask for help.
07:19Curious people will go and collect the dots.
07:21But Richard seems to be somebody that is not only going to collect the dots,
07:26but he's actually going to get involved and put that information into action.
07:30Absolutely.
07:31For the purpose of making people feel better.
07:33Yeah.
07:34It's incredible.
07:39So we own Cali Barbecue, my wife and I, in San Diego.
07:43We have three locations.
07:44We've closed four locations.
07:45We closed three ghost kitchens during the pandemic.
07:48We closed a stadium location.
07:49I now have the courage to talk about that in our content.
07:53Because of someone like you that took the time, the effort, and the humanity to go through failures.
08:04Eight restaurants, you talk about, that closed in this book.
08:07You talk about Tabla.
08:09I know you've spoken a lot about Tabla.
08:11But I'd like to talk about Blue Smoke.
08:14And before we talk about Blue Smoke, I'm going to tell you a quick story.
08:18We started doing barbecue on the West Coast in San Diego, low and slow, thanks to my barbecue mentor, Gene
08:24Goykachea.
08:25But four years into the barbecue game, we got on the National Barbecue Association, came to visit, and they put
08:31on a conference.
08:32And they did a barbecue bus tour.
08:34And on that barbecue bus tour, they came to our little barbecue restaurant.
08:37And off of the bus came Mike Mills of 17th Street Barbecue.
08:42The legend.
08:42The legend.
08:43Came off the bus, and he got to try our slow smoke tri-tip.
08:48I got to ask him questions about the game of barbecue, the restaurant business, and he was so gracious with
08:54his time and his effort.
08:55Fast forward 2017, when we started our first podcast, Behind the Smoke, we went to another National Barbecue Association show.
09:02And I asked, would you be willing to share your story, Mike?
09:06And he said yes.
09:07So I got to sit down with Mike Mills and Amy Mills.
09:10And I have a clip that I'd like to show you.
09:17Tell us about Danny Meyer.
09:18How did this whole project happen?
09:20Danny Meyer is just an incredible individual.
09:24His mind and the way he thinks and the way he talks to people and the way he treats people,
09:29it's incredible.
09:31It's, you know, did anybody ever think or did he even ever think that he'd be doing that, you know,
09:38building this shake shack, for example.
09:40I was there at the same time he was, you know, putting this shake shack in it.
09:44I mean, it was a great concept, but nobody ever thought it was going to be what it is.
09:55Thank you for bringing him back.
10:00What does Mike mean to you?
10:07Hey, you're the guy who went there.
10:12Mike is about sticking.
10:14He just sticks with it.
10:17What you do in barbecue, and I know it, is what Mike did.
10:21You do the same thing every day.
10:22You're not out trying to create some invention that people are going to write about.
10:27You're trying to go deeper into one topic and stick at it and ask yourself, how can we do this
10:34thing even just a little bit better tomorrow?
10:36And what a beautiful human being.
10:40And thank you for.
10:41Of course.
10:42Thank you for that.
10:43He made an incredible impact on my life.
10:46And to be able to hear him talk about you.
10:48I know you wrote the foreword to Peace, Love and Barbecue.
10:52And I know what kind of an impact Blue Smoke had on you and your journey.
10:57Can you share the sacred pig that you had to kill in order to grow the profitable business that Union
11:05Square Hospitality needed to become?
11:07Well, we didn't have to kill Blue Smoke.
11:09We didn't want to kill Blue Smoke.
11:12I think we.
11:14That was that was a restaurant that.
11:18Could not survive the pandemic.
11:20Yeah, most.
11:21Well, there's really two reasons.
11:23It was the one landlord we had who would not cut us a break because we had to lay off
11:28everybody.
11:29We had no revenue for five months.
11:32And all of our other landlords gave us the opportunity to make it up to them afterwards.
11:37And these guys were like, no, not doing it.
11:41That space remains empty seven years later to this day.
11:45Wow.
11:45But yeah, so we closed the restaurant and it was just it was horrible because, as you know, the barbecue
11:55community and we got to know so many people through the Big Apple barbecue block party.
11:59That's the sacred cow is talking about, which, yeah, which we hosted for, I think it was about a decade
12:04or so, maybe more.
12:08Yeah, but that got that was a really hard event.
12:10You know, we're a restaurant company.
12:12We're not an event company.
12:13And we were funding it every single year.
12:17And if we had had, you know, massively bad weather or something like that, we could have lost our entire
12:24shirts over that.
12:25So that's what you meant by that question.
12:27Yeah.
12:28Yeah.
12:28We ended up having to sell the Big Apple barbecue party during the Great Recession.
12:33Oh, and we sold it to a private equity company who brought in a barbecue guy from somewhere else in
12:41the country and kind of I don't think it lasted a year and a half after that.
12:46So we put on the Spring Valley Tailgate and Barbecue Festival in front of my restaurant for 10 years.
12:51And we, too, had to stop that because of the pandemic.
12:54I also put on a professional barbecue contest.
12:57But to your point, we're a restaurant and not an event company.
13:00And when you look at one of the things that I truly appreciated that you share in this book is
13:06going from hospitality to profitability and how those things can live together.
13:11But oftentimes, they're antitheses of each other.
13:15But they're not.
13:16And that's, I think, one of the things I've learned is that you can offer so much more hospitality when
13:23you're profitable.
13:24You can do better things for your team.
13:27You can do better things for your guests, for your community.
13:30For your suppliers.
13:32And it's a false choice to say, since I want hospitality, I can't be profitable.
13:39Let's just start with the most basic thing, smiling.
13:42Did you ever once in your life, in your career, go to an end-of-the-month P&L meeting
13:50and have your controller say, you know what, we need to stop smiling as much around here.
13:55It's costing us too much money.
13:58It's, I just don't think that they're antithetical to one another.
14:01Yeah.
14:02But I did for a while.
14:03I used to think, I used to think that focusing on profitability was somehow getting in the way of hospitality.
14:13Now, if you focus on profitability and start cutting things from your guests or start cutting things that don't make
14:23your staff able to serve your guests, then you're going to get in trouble.
14:28You don't get more profitable by cutting muscle.
14:31Yeah.
14:32You get there by strengthening your muscle.
14:35The stories that you share in the book for the business owners and the entrepreneurs that are listening to this,
14:41one of the things that resonated deeply with me was the honesty that you talk about with failed business partnerships,
14:49with closed restaurants.
14:51But the level of detail that you go into, you're not telling me through the book or the reader through
14:58the book, do this, don't do this.
15:00You're just sharing lessons and stories, but specificity, the specificity took work.
15:07And I know you had a collaborator in this process that helped you do essentially business therapy to get that
15:15out of your heart and onto those pages.
15:18Yeah.
15:18I had a great collaborator and I can't tell you how many times we would stop these conversations.
15:24And I would just say, I just learned something new about myself or I got to stop doing that.
15:31Or I feel like I've told that same story three times.
15:35When was I ever going to learn?
15:37And, and you know what, that the process of writing this book was therapeutic.
15:42And I hope, I hope I'll be smart enough to learn from it.
15:47You know, it's one thing to write it down and go through it in the moment.
15:51I want to go back and read this book.
15:53I brought it with me so I could read it on the airplane home.
15:55So the, I listened to the Tim Ferriss podcast when it came out and I remember you speaking specifically about
16:03Tabla and saying that that was your biggest regret.
16:06And now you obviously wrote the book about many restaurants that you closed.
16:12Can you talk a little bit about when you had that interview and then the work that you went in
16:18to go, okay, it's been 20 years literally since setting the table.
16:23Now is the time and the process, the slow process that you did to actually put the love and care
16:29and to get this book out.
16:31Well, you got to live life to have stories to tell.
16:35True.
16:36You got to make mistakes to have lessons to learn.
16:41And if you could see how many of the mistakes and lessons didn't make it to this book, because my
16:48amazing editor, Andy Ward said, that's a great story, but you got to keep the reader turning the page.
16:56And if you include every story, it's just not going to work.
17:00Um, yeah, I mean, it, it, it's a great experience to write a book, but you got to have content.
17:09And I said a lot of what I wanted to say in setting the table.
17:14I gave a lot of my own personal story in setting the table.
17:17I also, um, really explored and shared what I had learned about hospitality.
17:23I didn't really feel like I had to say more about either of those two things.
17:28Um, and so it took me a long time to say, all right, well, what else do you have to
17:33say that is useful to people?
17:35Why should someone want to read this book?
17:39And it just took me a while to come around to learning.
17:44Well, the thing, the biggest thing, if I could just say, take the 20 years, take all these stories and
17:49say, what did they all ladder up to?
17:51They laddered up to this, um, journey that I've been on to try to figure out now that you've put
17:59hospitality to work so effectively, you've grown.
18:04Now, what do you do?
18:05Because you got to make sure that as you grow, you don't lose the thing that made you special in
18:10the first place.
18:11It's, you know, for the first 10 years of my career, I was the guy on the front door greeting
18:16every guest, seating many of those guests, um, fussing over the wording on our menu, fussing over the order that
18:25we listed wines on the wine list.
18:26Yeah, just crazy stuff.
18:31And with two restaurants, once Gramercy Tavern opened, I couldn't, I can only be at each restaurant half as much.
18:37And then when there were four restaurants, a quarter as much and so on and so forth.
18:43And, and, and then it really became trying to learn a new language so that I could make it so
18:51that when I'm not in a restaurant, it still feels like it's one of my restaurants.
18:57And that's not easy.
18:58It's not easy to do that.
19:00And yet I wanted to do it because I wanted to see people on my team grow and people want
19:07to grow.
19:08And I wanted to see people grow, but I didn't want to lose what made us special.
19:12And so I spent, you know, the last 20 years trying to figure out how to do that.
19:17And then the last four years trying to figure out how to write about what I'd learned by doing that.
19:22What was the, I think there's some good lessons in here.
19:24Amazing lessons.
19:25What was the turning point for you five years in where you decided that Union Square Hospitality employees needed to
19:33read Setting the Table?
19:34You made it mandatory, but it took five years.
19:37Yeah, it took five years.
19:38I, you know, it was a, it was a bad call on my part.
19:43It was kind of humility.
19:45And I was just like, I wrote this book.
19:48You can read it if you want to.
19:51And it was basically hearing from a whole lot of other companies, not just restaurants either, who said, we, we
19:57use this book.
19:59This is required reading.
20:00And I'm going like, that would be like a chef writing a cookbook and not teaching the recipes to her
20:08own cooks.
20:08Yeah.
20:09Right.
20:10Who wants to do that?
20:12And so that was kind of insane.
20:14And when you think about it, both Setting the Table and What Could Possibly Go Right are a kind of
20:19cookbook.
20:20They don't lead to food, but they lead to culture.
20:22So it's a cookbook for, we're in a real restaurant right here, aren't we?
20:25That's why we love filming in restaurants.
20:28These are cookbooks for culture.
20:30Yeah.
20:30And I hope people will cook from the book, but I'll be damned if we don't cook from this book
20:36at least as well as everybody else.
20:39And so I've changed that this time around.
20:41So you've changed it.
20:41So now are they both required reading?
20:44I sure hope so.
20:46When I get off this book tour and go back and check that out.
20:49But we distributed the book to all of our leaders about three weeks before it came out publicly.
20:56And we're going to start to have book groups.
20:58And I can't wait to get back and talk to my own team about what they've learned from this.
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22:16Let's keep that momentum going.
22:22Can you talk to the business owner leader that's listening, watching, about the process of storytelling?
22:28You said repeating stories.
22:30And I know as my own self, I've learned that repeating a story is worth repeating.
22:37But you actually have to do more work to get to the details to make the story better every time
22:42that you tell it.
22:43What did you learn by repeating the stories in this book?
22:47And what are the stories now that it's out into the wild that are surprising to you that you didn't
22:53think would resonate maybe the way that they're resonating?
22:55Well, I haven't had the chance really to see how it's resonating yet because the book is so new.
22:59It is very new.
23:00And in fact, the most fun I'm having as I bring this book to various parts of the country, more
23:10and more people will have read it by the time we meet.
23:13Yeah.
23:14And I'm really enjoying hearing what is resonating with people because you don't, when you're writing, you don't know, you're
23:23like, I, this was a story from which I learned a big lesson, but I don't know if someone else
23:27is going to feel the same way.
23:30So I'm finding, I'm fine.
23:32I don't work at telling stories.
23:35I, I, they're in me.
23:36Um, I try my best not to fabricate the stories.
23:40Yeah.
23:41In fact, I had a really wonderful network of, of people who 20 years is a long time.
23:49Yeah.
23:49And I had a wonderful network of, of colleagues and I would text them as I was writing this book
23:55saying, is this how you remember this thing?
23:57What, what am I missing here?
23:59What really happened?
24:00And, and, and it's kind of amazing that you could, I never had anything that was untrue, but I had
24:10a lot of things that were not complete in terms of my memory.
24:15And what's remarkable to me is that three of us can live the exact same story and we are three
24:21different human beings experiencing the same thing differently.
24:26And so it was really helpful for me to have a group of people who were all too willing.
24:31And I'll tell you something else interesting.
24:33Just today, I've gotten, uh, three, either texts or emails from people whose names are in this book with stories
24:43who are saying, thank you.
24:46That's a good thing.
24:48Um, no one, no one has said, screw you, but they've said, you know, thank you for that.
24:55And I'd love to have a talk at some point so I can tell you more about where I was
25:00at that point in my life.
25:01Um, so it's, it's pretty cool how it's kind of scratching a lot of people's itches context.
25:09Yep.
25:11There's a story that resonates deeply with me about, and I think will help business owners listening, watching about the
25:20power of sunflowers.
25:23Can you talk about sunflowers about, especially in the restaurant business?
25:28I mean, I, it's funny cause I was reading the book and we had our manager meeting.
25:31And I was listening to the manager meeting.
25:33And then a lot of the times we're talking about the staff that aren't performing the way that they should
25:38be performing.
25:39And instead of celebrating the staff that are doing amazing and your sunflower story, it's very powerful to help business
25:49owners understand.
25:51Can you share that with us?
25:52Sure.
25:53Um, in a, in a way it kind of came from a story I remembered from when I was very
25:59young and I went to go visit my grandmother in, uh, downtown St. Louis.
26:05And she taught me to garden.
26:07She had an amazing green thumb, grandma Louise.
26:11And you know, the first couple of years, I don't, I really don't know how old I was.
26:15Let's say I was five or six.
26:17She gave me the gardening gloves and that would have been a, not just putting on gloves, a big pair
26:21of gloves.
26:22Um, but she taught me to identify the weeds to pick and before she was planting, uh, the seeds for
26:30the next year.
26:31And as I got a little bit older, I would, the season would go on and the flowers were already
26:39starting to grow and I would go right for the weeds.
26:42And she gently said, you know what, I'm going to teach you the real secret to gardening.
26:47And the real secret is let's not waste our time on the weeds.
26:52Let's feed the flowers because when the, and I'm going to show you how to feed the flowers.
26:58When the flowers are flourishing, they are going to create so much shade that the weeds are going to die
27:05anyway.
27:06So I thought about that at some point in my career, when I realized I was spending way too much
27:13time on the employees who were problems, trying to convert them and not nearly enough time.
27:21Um, spending my time with employees who were not only excellent at what they did, but excellent at who they
27:27were for the rest of the team.
27:29And then that led me to the sunflower theory, which is very similar to what my grandmother taught me about
27:36flowers.
27:37Cause I was looking at a big field of sunflowers one day.
27:40And, and if you've ever seen that, they just completely turn wherever the sun is.
27:47Um, and, and I realized that leaders are the sun.
27:54We are, we are the sun.
27:57And if every time we spend our time on the sunflowers that don't turn properly, there's always, by the way,
28:05if you look at a good sunflower field, there's always a few that always.
28:09They forgot to put the batteries in, they actually don't turn with the rest of the sunflowers.
28:14If we spend all of our time shining our light on those, we're missing the whole point.
28:20We want the gravitational pull for all the sunflowers to be in the, in the right direction.
28:26So that's where we need to shine our light.
28:30Hospitality quotient for the parents watching and listening.
28:34You have a toll house cookie story in the book recipe, if you will.
28:40Um, can you share it?
28:40Because, uh, it made an impact on my little wolves.
28:43I have Mila and Colleen.
28:45And while I was reading the book, it was the first time I've ever baked anything.
28:49And, uh, I went to the store and got the toll house cookies and we made, maybe I'll get a
28:54cut from Nestle on this.
28:55Hopefully toll house sponsorship.
28:57I hadn't thought about that.
28:58Let's, let's, let's, let's loop, let's loop them in.
29:00I mean, we should, we need more people making cookies with their kids.
29:03Can you share why'd you, why'd you put it in and what is it?
29:06I put the story in, um, and it's just my theory who knows if it's true or not, but I
29:14think about, um, how, how we can always improve the job we do of hiring, not just for how good
29:24of a cook someone is, but what their emotional skills are.
29:27What's their motivation while they're cooking, if their motivation is, I really want to cook good food because I can't
29:36wait to see the smile it puts on your face.
29:38I want to hire that person.
29:39Yeah.
29:40There's also people who say, I want to cook good food to show off what a great cook I am.
29:45And when we had our jazz club beneath jazz standard, uh, beneath, uh, blue smoke called jazz, it was called
29:51jazz standard.
29:52I would see the exact same thing.
29:54And in some of the jazz musicians that we brought in, there were the jazz musicians who were impresarios.
30:02They could pick up a tenor saxophone and they could bend that read eight times till Sunday.
30:07Yeah.
30:08You know, it almost sounded like your stomach was bad or something and really impressive.
30:13Yeah.
30:13And the audience was not having fun.
30:16They were, that was, that was like a cook who wants to show off what they can do.
30:21And then you had the jazz musicians, um, who every time they played, you could see the audience tapping their
30:28feet.
30:28They were playing for the pleasure of the audience.
30:32So the Toll House Cookie, um, story that I told is if you want to figure out early on in
30:41your career,
30:42if your child has a high HQ, go bake some cookies with them.
30:48And by the way, you don't have to have a high HQ to be an amazing child.
30:52Yes.
30:53I need to hire people with a high HQ for my business, but that has nothing to do with someone's
30:58value as a human being whatsoever.
31:00Um, but the reason I thought that was a good thing, I used to cook with, with our kids all
31:06the time.
31:07And the cool thing about baking chocolate chip cookies is your child learns a lot of stuff.
31:14The first thing is they learn to follow directions.
31:17Yeah.
31:18They also learn a little bit of math.
31:21They also learn patience.
31:23They also learn the power of heat and how you got to be careful with heat.
31:31Um, and they also learned that things could always be a little bit better.
31:35Yeah.
31:35Cause I promise you the first batch that comes out, it's not going to be the best.
31:40And so there's just so many lessons there.
31:42And then when, when you're done with that, you will get a plate of cookies.
31:48Of, you know, not met, maybe not the best cookies you've ever had, but you'll get a plate of cookies.
31:54And of course there's no child on earth that doesn't want to eat one of those cookies and they should.
31:59Yes.
32:00But I'm also really interested.
32:02Then what happens?
32:03Does the child go, look what I made?
32:07Or does the child come up to, to you, their parent and say, look what I made for you.
32:13And those two words for you teach you a whole lot.
32:16They teach you so much.
32:18We, our restaurant is located off the beaten path.
32:22Uh, there's a mantra, location, location, location.
32:26Uh, I didn't follow that mantra.
32:28It was my grandfather's restaurant, but we love our location.
32:31We've learned that not only is every business in the hospitality business, but now with the advance of technology, the
32:39dining room extends beyond the four walls of my restaurant.
32:42People are on Instagram.
32:44They're on Google.
32:46They're on all these different platforms and how I treat them, how I see that person.
32:52From the content that they see on my phone matters.
32:56If they choose to come into my restaurant, we call it digital hospitality.
33:00And this is something that I've noticed a through line in your book and setting the table and what can
33:05possibly go right.
33:06Is that you've always found a way to leverage technology, always to learn more about your guest, to be more
33:13human.
33:13Can you share, what did you read today, this morning about your restaurants that are happening in your restaurants and
33:19what actions did you take?
33:21Um, I haven't taken any actions.
33:24No actions.
33:25No.
33:26You've removed yourself from actions.
33:28No, I have to be as candid as I can.
33:30I mean, I started my day, um, really responding to a lot of really, really nice texts and emails from
33:39people who were, and Instagram notes.
33:42Yes.
33:42From people who were so excited that what could possibly go right, earned a spot right out of the gate
33:48on the New York Times bestseller list.
33:51And I did read our sales, which I always do, but, but I didn't.
33:56And then I had an amazing industry breakfast, um, at the restaurant Quince.
34:02They were kind enough to invite all kinds of restaurant leaders from San Francisco.
34:07Oh, wow.
34:07Including the mayor of San Francisco.
34:09Wow.
34:09So I've been a little bit asleep at the wheel when it comes to doing what I usually do.
34:14I have to keep reminding myself, dude, you're actually still responsible for a business.
34:19But you have a team.
34:20An amazing team.
34:21That's why, that's why you built, how do you, how do you scale culture?
34:24Somebody else was looking at those.
34:26That's right.
34:28And as, as I say all the time, culture is what happens when I'm not in the room.
34:32Yeah.
34:33And there's a whole lot of rooms I'm not in right now.
34:36Yeah.
34:36Uh, and I have to be aware of that, but I so trust my team.
34:42That doesn't mean I don't care though.
34:43And that gets back to that whole idea of micro caring versus no one, no one will ever feel
34:49this week or next week, like, or the week after, like I'm micromanaging them.
34:53Cause I don't physically have the capacity to do that.
34:56Even if I wanted to, and I don't, I don't want to micromanage, but, um, the more things
35:02I know, the better it's, it's good for me to know stuff.
35:07How could you not know?
35:08I know it was one of the most difficult chapters for you to write.
35:13Yeah.
35:13There's, it's an, it's such an important thing as you grow your business, excuse me, I'm
35:19going to use an I statement here.
35:20Um, as I have been responsible for growing our business, um, just a crucially important
35:32thing to know.
35:33What do you need to know?
35:34What do you not need to know?
35:36What should you know?
35:38Right?
35:38Because you've got to give your, if you want your team to grow, you've got to give them
35:44running room to grow.
35:46Um, I can't know everything.
35:48No leader can know everything, but I've kind of have this, this lesson that I've learned
35:53that if not knowing something that happened is the kind of, if that thing could have landed
36:03you on the front page of the wall street journal for all the wrong reasons, you better have
36:08known about it.
36:09Um, I'm picking out the wall street journal, it could be any newspaper and my team has to
36:15know that I feel that way.
36:17I don't want to know everything.
36:19I don't need to know everything, but my team, whether it's the people in HR, whether it's
36:24the people in public relations, um, whether it's our senior, most leaders, um, if something
36:33bad happened and stuff bad happens in every industry.
36:38Um, it's not that I need to know everything, but if that bad thing rises to the level that,
36:46um, it's counter to the values that we espouse in our, in our company, um, I need to know
36:54about it.
36:54And the chapter in this book that you're referring to, which is called, how could you not know
37:00is a catalog of times that I wish I had known something earlier.
37:03And from that lesson, I think we've got much better systems in our company today, uh, to
37:11address things when they don't go right.
37:13So while the title of the book is what could possibly go right, um, as you have now indicated
37:20several times in our conversation, in many cases, things don't go right.
37:25Yeah.
37:25And, um, it's important to, to bring that attitude to the good stuff.
37:32And it's important to bring that attitude to the tough stuff too.
37:35Yeah.
37:35I was talking to Katie before we started recording and we were talking about the success of the
37:40book.
37:40And my thought is the reason why is it's the, the candor and it's the autopsy.
37:48It's the work of how do you go back?
37:51And as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we want to continue to, to the next thing onto
37:55the next restaurant.
37:56Let's forget about what happened with the closure, but you had to go back and actually
37:59do the work and share the work.
38:02And by sharing the work, I think that's what, that's what people want.
38:07First time I've heard the word autopsy used relative to this book.
38:11And I think you're spot on.
38:13Although that indicates that we've got a bunch of dead patients.
38:17We have, it could be a celebration of life, not a funeral.
38:19So there we go.
38:20Well, we have a celebration of some lives and we've got a celebration of some living as
38:24well.
38:24So that feels good.
38:26Yeah.
38:26Um, there's one thing before we wrap up, uh, that you wrote in this book, um, starting
38:36on a hat, finishing a hat, look, I made a hat where there never was a hat.
38:51Oh, my gosh.
38:53To you.
38:54I made you a hat, Danny.
38:57God bless you.
39:01That's incredible.
39:04You're welcome.
39:15There we go.
39:16Not sure if it's going to look good on my head, but.
39:19Looks good.
39:20Okay.
39:21Looks good.
39:22You the man.
39:24I will cherish that.
39:27As always, we appreciate you.
39:29Please read the book.
39:32Please do the work.
39:33Please share the book.
39:34Um, it's been an absolute honor collecting all the dots to connect the dots, to be able
39:39to sit down with you.
39:41Thank you for sharing the stories.
39:42I hope you keep sharing the stories.
39:44Um, we're grateful for you, the audience.
39:46You can always reach out to me.
39:47I'm weirdly available at Sean P.
39:49Walcheff.
39:50Instagram's the fastest.
39:51You can follow Danny on Instagram.
39:52He is doing amazing work, storytelling on all the platforms.
39:56Shout out to his team.
39:57I can't wait to go to New York to visit some of your restaurants.
40:00Um, we didn't even talk about Shake Shack.
40:04It's.
40:04That's fine with me.
40:05We.
40:05I'm sure.
40:06Just go eat there.
40:07I'm sure you've played the hits.
40:08Um, but thank you so much for your time.
40:11And thank you, uh, to bourbon steak, to the Michael Mina group for setting the table for
40:15me and Danny to have this conversation today.
40:18Thank you, chef.
40:18Sean.
40:19I appreciate you.
40:20Thanks.
40:26Thank you for listening.
40:26If you've made it this long, you are part of the community.
40:29You're part of the tribe.
40:30We can't do this alone.
40:32We started, no one was listening.
40:33Now we have a community of digital hospitality leaders all over the globe.
40:37Please check out our new series called Restaurant Technology Substack.
40:42It's a Substack newsletter.
40:43It's free.
40:44It's some of our deep work on the best technology for restaurants.
40:47Also go to YouTube and subscribe to Cali BBQ Media, Cali BBQ Media on YouTube.
40:53We've been putting out a lot of new original content.
40:55Hopefully you guys like that content.
40:57If you want to work with us, go to e the show dot media.
41:00We show up all over the United States, some international countries.
41:04We would love to work with you and your growing brand on digital storytelling.
41:07You can reach out to me anytime at Sean P. Welchef on Instagram.
41:11I'm weirdly available.
41:12Stay curious.
41:14Get involved.
41:14Don't be afraid to ask for help.
41:16We'll catch you next episode.