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Patrick.
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is invest like the best this show is an open-ended.
Duration of markets ideas methods stories and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money you can learn more and stay up-to-date and investor Field Guide.com Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, all opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied.
Upon as a basis for investment decisions clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, May maintain positions in the Securities discussed in this podcast, I guess today is Danny Meyer the founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, which compromises some of the most acclaimed restaurants in New York City like Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe. Danny is also the founder and chairman of Shake Shack which began in New York City, but is now a publicly traded company with hundreds of locations worldwide our conversation focuses on how great hospitality.
Degree business regardless of the sector that it's in we discuss why hospitality is the starting point for Danny's business philosophy white First Impressions matter Danny's concept of ABCD which stands for always be connecting dots how to scale hospitality and how to build a business with essentialism and soul just the other day when my son went ice skating for the first time and fell a lot. He said to me, well you learn from your mistakes so you try to make as many of them as you can you'll hear Danny say something powerfully similar late in our conversation. It's a lovely thought
Then that I found out that my son my first born was a boy in one of Danny's restaurants in a reveal orchestrated by his incredible team. I hope you enjoyed this wonderful conversation. So Danny I thought of me place to begin this conversation, which will probably go a lot of different directions is to go all the way back to some early experience that you had as a tour guide in Italy and ask what that experience at a very young age taught you about hospitality and then I want to explore the idea of hospitality in as many ways as we can.
I'll start by saying my dad.
I was at that point in the group tour business and he had established footholds in about eight different European cities and interestingly as a summer job by the time my older sister and then I and then my younger brother each turn 20, we got to pick a town in which his tour business was based to be tour guides and work for his on the ground local teams who were always
Essence of whatever that city was I wanted to be in Italy. So when I turned 20, I picked Rome, my dad had picked out an interesting Niche to sell these group tours to they were Airline employees and their families. And the reason he picked them out is that he was able to aggregate these extraordinary discounts that were afforded to Airline employees and their families everything from the travel itself, which usually amounted to about
Hours round trip on an international carrier to additional deep discounts for hotels. He was able to negotiate all kinds of deals with restaurants and sightseeing tour buses a typical airline pilot or flight attendant or baggage handler or gate agent could get a four-day trip to Rome or to London including going to plays and you name it, but they could get a four-day trip.
For some amazingly low number like 499 dollars including their round-trip airfare. I just want to set the stage. So I'm 20 years old I go I want to go to Rome and it was great. I got to live in a hotel where P put up all of his people which happened to be about a block away from the Vatican and it happened to be the summer. The two different popes died Pope Paul and I went to that funeral and then some short
Weeks Later Pope, John Paul the first tide you may remember that was sort of mysterious death and I went to his funeral I said this is kind of interesting in one summer. I get to go to to papal funerals. Most people never get to go to one. I was the guy that they sent every single morning or three or four mornings a week to go pick up a tour at the airport a tour group and you know how it is when you traveled overseas you're groggy the next day and jet-lagged and
A lot of people don't sleep too well and believe me. These people were not flying first class in order to get those rates and everybody was grumpy and I was the guy on the bus after collecting everybody's baggage and getting it on the bus who would get on the loudspeaker the microphone and start talking about the tour that was a head you could just tell I could tell from standing up looking at the people half of them were nodding their heads because they were happy half of them were shaking their heads because they were unhappy
B and maybe the third half I never was good at math were sleeping through the whole thing, but I could just tell knowing that I was going to be with these people for four days five days. There was one two, or that would be seven days. I could tell who was going to be the hardest nut to crack who is going to be the easiest and I just kind of made a game. I kind of loved it of trying to figure out how I was going to turn around the unhappy people and make them happy.
And build a group of people that would really have a fun time together. I wasn't thinking about the word Hospitality. I wasn't thinking about any of this except feeling it intuitively and I was actually learning like crazy. I got to learn how to give a Rome by night to her that says begin to learn the language. I got to get to know many local Trattoria. Swear. I would not only bring these groups for their included dinners, but I would get paid.
Lyra commission for every head I brought in there this became Hospitality experience culinary experience group psychology experience and ultimately it began my love affair with Italy which continues to this day.
I love the line in your book that it's human nature for people to take precisely as much interest in you as they believe you're taking in them. I think that's a really nice summation of or an introduction into your
In of hospitality, I would love to hear you describe. Why and how hospitality is sort of the starting point for your business philosophy. Generally,
maybe some of it has to do with having established my business in New York city that has always had really good food in a lot of it and you can't win here on food alone and you can't even win here on wine alone. Everybody's got good wines on the other sir, certainly enough people do and so I feel like a
Time ago I realized that food was the Starting Gate if you didn't have really good food and good wine list and fair pricing and a nice environment. You just weren't even going to get anybody to want to come back. But I was more interested in turning First Union Square Cafe, which was my only restaurant for the first 10 years of my career and then Gramercy Tavern, I was more interested in turning those into your favorite restaurant and in order to make it your favorite restaurant.
We not only had to be really good at what we did but we had to be even better at how we made you feel we had to make you feel like we were on your side which is Hospitality, but then take it a step further. We had to really make you feel like you belong it and it was this unlocking of a human emotion, which is that more than anything else. I think human beings long to belong you first get to belong to a family then you get to belong to
Whatever School you grew up going to and whatever team they rooted for and maybe you had an organized religion and you belong to that congregation. Maybe you were in a fraternity and you belong to that fraternity. But whatever it is. It's such a deep drive to belong to something. It's really the reason that our industry exists. Now that's different perhaps if you're talking about chain restaurant that you find on an exit of the highway, which is one of a thousand
That's that's not necessarily a place that exists for belonging as much as it exists to refuel people, but I think restaurants especially full service restaurants really exist for the purpose of creating a place to belong to you.
I remember very distinctly sitting near the front row at the Jazz standard many years ago and can recall the image quite specifically. So, you know, I certainly would add to that list of people sad to hear that news. I want to go all the way back to the earliest lessons you learned at Union Square Cafe.
I think you're in your late 20s, when you set that restaurant up, it sounds like from the Italy store. You had some natural instinct for Hospitality or natural skill, but I think one of the things you've written about and talked about is just always getting better at this what were some of the key early lessons that you learned at creating that environment of hospitality because just seems very hard to do you get someone for first initial meal. Hopefully they come back it's somewhat transactional when it starts and you're trying to transition it into something much more think you say dialogue not a monologue, which is a neat way of
Thinking about this. What were the mistakes or the early lessons? You learned at Union Square Cafe that started to lay this foundation for all these other great
restaurants. I learned that it was all about front door front door is the first signal that you get when you go to a full-service restaurant as to whether this is going to be a transaction IE. Give me your name and I'll give you a table give me your order and I'll give you food pay your bill and we're done. Okay, it could either be that or it could be.
I contact a smile a sense that I'm happy to see you a sense that I do see a sense that you matter that can all happen right at the front door or not. And that's when you know with any place you go to you can go to a pick your favorite coffee bar in your neighborhood. We all have stories of the chain that over the last ten years. Maybe you've gone there 500 times and you always order your coffee the exact same way and they never remember.
Which is a great way of expressly letting you know that you don't really matter and they don't really see a transaction by the way if it's quick and the coffee is hot and you keep coming back then the transaction was fine and I can do it quickly and it doesn't take me any longer while I'm taking your money to smile and thank you. And remember all I have to do is say what you like the usual and now you feel like you belong there and now I've become essential in your life.
That's what we strive for and that's frankly the reason that I love this business so much. I am really focused on this challenge that I don't think I've seen a lot in our industry and that is can you successfully scale Hospitality. Can you successfully scale a feeling of Welcome very very different than the massive success that Ray Kroc had in our industry and so many others afterwards which is
Can you successfully scale a system to consistently produce a flavor whether or not you ever go to eat fast food got to give some credit to the fact that the fries are going to taste exactly the same Coast-to-Coast country to Country. They nailed the systems for consistent flavor, but I will also tell you that I promise you that the way you are made to feel Coast-to-Coast country to country is going to be vastly different because it just was never part of their.
Should we be able to scale a human feeling of belonging and that's what I'm kind of transfixed on is can you actually scale Hospitality?
I want to explore that idea in some depth. But before we do lay a couple examples that I so love about the method if you will for creating good Hospitality two things come to mind your acronym ABCD and this great story around learning from a trout fisherman who overturned a certain Rock when you were fishing with him. Can you describe how those two things might?
Late to each other and relate back to
hospitality ABCD simply means always be collecting dots so you can always be connecting to us. And in this case dots some people would rather call it data. But when I talk about a DOT, I'm talking about a morsel of information that matters to you and if it matters to you, then it better matter to me because if I want to matter to you I better care about
Important to you. So if you're coming to dine in our restaurant ABCD always be collecting dots I better take a minute and check out who Patrick O'Shaughnessy has interviewed in the past. I might even want to take it a step further and ask myself if I know any of those people when you and I first met and we establish that we each know Bill girly that was connecting a DOT you did it for me. I would have done it on my own because I'm a big fan of bills.
Yes, but that is ABCD. So you can ABCD this gets back to this notion that people really want to belong to something. I think people also want to connect with people and we look for things that we have in common which is the root of the Worth community which were all craving. I want to belong to a community. I better start by finding things we have in common. It could be a sport team that we root for it could be that we live in the same state and now maybe we have
In common, it could be we went to the same college or we were in the same fraternity at two different colleges, but we're looking for that stuff. That's the collection of dots and then when you connect those dots you're showing an interest in someone else and what happens is you get that introspect
the people component of all this and this whole circle has back to the ability to scale Hospitality just obviously seems Central. I love the idea that in your company's people were evaluated with 51% emotional performance.
49% technical performance very deliberate. I'm sure which way that scale tips say a bit about that. And again, I'm thinking about this trout fisherman, you know turning over the Rock and the care that it takes and how you engender that care to make sure that all the people that are interacting with customers have that same standard. How do you start to scale Beyond just Union Square Cafe to this much larger collection of restaurants and businesses around the country.
Let's just take a second and tell the story about the turning over the rocks.
That is I'll start by saying I love fishing. I have never developed a love for fly fishing and this happens to be a fly fishing story. But what I got out of fly fishing has helped me in business and that is that the expert fly Fisher people even before they show their physical dexterity in fishing. They have to actually show an interest in the fish themselves before they can possibly catch a fish and
way they show interest in the fish is to figure out what is actually hatching in the water at that moment. What kind of insects are actually hatching because the fish are smart enough to not eat something that isn't hatching at that moment a really good fly fisherman Wades into the water turns over Rock underneath which is a whole community of things hatching and they're really good fly Fisher.
Sees what's hatching says aha. I've got a tie a fly that's going to actually look just like what's about to hatch and that's what I'm going to tie at this moment if I want to catch those fish. So that's where this all came from. How does that apply to business? Well, I think if you're in business you want to catch as many fish as you possibly can also known as customers. It sure does help to have a product that the customers actually want at that moment and furthermore.
Or as marketers and we're all marketing are product all the time. It sure does help not only to have the product people want but to deliver it in a way that they cannot miss it it all has to do with taking an interest in who is your customer and having what they want. That's kind of what I think about all the time. And how do you surround yourself with people who get that as well? I feel like leadership is about setting priorities.
And then exemplifying the behaviors that you want to see in other people. It is a priority of mine and is an example that I do try to set all the time with everybody who works for us to follow through and care as much about the customer you want as you hope that they'll care about you somebody writes you an email. You don't just write them back. It's inexcusable not to figure out something about them before you write them back. Does that take extra time? Yes.
Of course it does. However, it's going to most likely lead to a much richer opportunity. If a good opportunity
exists at all. I'd love to hear a bit more about the challenges of scaling Hospitality that you've encountered as you thought through this. I don't know whether Shake Shack's appropriate to touch on here since it is a much more scaled up repeated experience than a single restaurant as you sit back and try to solve that french fry problem on the service side rather than the product side. What are the major challenges that you've encountered and ways
Gotten around them. Well, I think Shake Shack is a great example because it's a
scaled business. There's over 300 Shake Shack's in the world and there are at least last time I checked something like 14 different countries in which Shake Shack operates in Shake Shack's case. You're not only scaling Hospitality, but you're scaling a culture across many many many different cultures. It's a great example. It's an example of what we've been talking about which is taking an interest in other.
People so that they'll take an interest in you you better go in to a community whether it's in the United States or abroad number one with humility because no one in the world wants you to come in saying we're the big smart New York people lay down for us and eat our hamburgers. That's just not how the world works at all. So you go in with humility and you learn as much as you possibly can about the community the same way. I talked about learning as much as you can about a prospective guest and one of
Fine dining restaurants. Here's an example and this could be for any City. It could be for any country. We send in a team of people and take Los Angeles Los Angeles was a great laboratory for this Theory plus California's sort of hamburger Central in the United States. They know everything about drive-ins. It's a driving culture. They know everything about Burgers and Shakes and the last thing California needs is a New York.
You're telling them how to eat burgers. We knew that going in we did in California. We started in Los Angeles. In fact, the first Shake Shack was in West Hollywood with a huge amount of humility and that starts with two months before hand using the advantage of coming from the fine dining industry to send our team to the best restaurants in Los Angeles as ambassadors and getting to understand the restaurant Community understand who they buy their
X from understand the products they make that they're really proud of understand the distributors in the suppliers in the farmers that they work with understand how they recruit people understand who the players are in the media World on and on and on lo and behold Shake Shack opens with four items on its menu in addition to the 80% of the items that are consistent at every Shake Shack 20% of the items are customized.
And by doing that in every city we go to even close City like in New Haven when Shake Shack first opened in New Haven next door to Yale. The walls were made from recycled bleacher seats from the original Yale Bowl. The special hot dog was named after the Yale mascot and a special recipe went with it. It's that 80/20 80% consistent 20% all about you showing an interest.
In you which makes you feel like this is my Shake Shack I now belong here and guess what? You can actually do that with a scale business. We do the same thing. Also were each Shake Shack actually picks one menu item and gives a percentage of the proceeds of that menu item to a local not-for-profit different in every Shake Shack and that local not-for-profit usually gets to take part in the opening night event members of a
Staff get to know the the not-for-profit volunteer there in many cases. It's just a way of showing interest if you expect to get that interest back and it's a great way to just avoid being a cookie cutter transactional business, which doesn't really interest
me. I absolutely love the 80/20 rule. I won't forget that one. What are the characteristics shared by the people that make an organization like this hum thinking back to that 51% emotional. What have you learned about the
Keep all that fuel all this because I guess every business is just about people but certainly yours is even more so about the people delivering the service and Hospitality. What have you learned there about building a bigger organization?
Well, we've learned that there is an answer to a question that I was stymied by for years and years and years almost everywhere. I would go giving speeches to different organizations most of which were not even in the food business. They just wanted to know about Hospitality. They would always ask consistently two different questions.
As one was how do you guys always managed to hire some many awesome people? I love the food. But it's your people that really make me come back. I would talk about looking for what you just accurately described as fifty one percenters people who are emotionally wired to be happier themselves when they deliver happiness to you now, that's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing if you're not that person, but it's an essential thing if you're going to succeed.
In a Hospitality driven business. Okay. So we're looking for people who have six emotional skills a very very high level kind optimism curiosity intellectual curiosity amazing work ethic highly empathetic highly self-aware and a high degree of Integrity. Those are the six emotional skills. That's 51 percent of what we're looking for in a pope Polly hundred percent higher the other
49% are all performance issues. Like are you a really good cook. Are you a really good sommelier or are you a really good dish washer? I don't really care what the role is we're looking for a hundred percent and fifty one percent of that has to be what we call High HQ High Hospitality quotient. And when you add up those six emotional skills at generally adds up to someone who while they're doing the thing. They do really really well are doing it in the service of
Making you feel better than you would have felt if we had never come into your lives and that gets down to a bigger sense. I have that to have an enduring business built to last it needs to become essential in the lives of people. It needs to be the kind of business that makes your life better because it exists. Here's an example within three blocks of my apartment in Manhattan are five different dry cleaners for different.
Nail salons, go figure I've go to the nail salon myself, but I do ask myself if any one of those went out of business or any one of those five dry cleaners went out of business. What I noticed what I care. Well, I don't want to start a business that didn't actually make a difference in people's lives. You would know that that had become an essential place in people's lives. If they really felt that something went missing. The cool thing is there's a lot of examples of
Essential things in the world. There are essential pieces of art. There are essential books. You've read There are essential songs. You've heard that your life got better because that song was written and you actually can't even imagine your life if that song had or of that group had never been formed. I can't imagine my life of The Beatles had never been formed her Paul. Simon had never been born her Crosby Stills and Nash now, obviously I'm dating myself, but I just feel good when I hear their music.
And that made my life better and it would make my life and really really sad. If someone told me you can never listen to one of those songs again, that means that it achieved essentiality and guess what there are millions of songs that have been written that didn't achieve that there are millions of restaurants that have been built. I think I've built restaurants that never achieved essentiality, but that's not what we strive for and you only get there when you start with people who exist for the purpose of doing the thing they do.
Only will in the service of making other people feel better. And if you can do it for a long enough time that business develops soul.
I absolutely love the acid test of is what we're building here. Does it have the potential to reach that stage of essentialism and soul? I think the answer is often going to be no. It's a great way to move on from something of an idea early on. I also Imagine That sticking sort of with the emotional theme Here the leadership component as the organization's get bigger becomes obviously different and new challenges.
Oh and I love this framework that you've laid out for. I think the three words were constant gentle and pressure as ways of being a leader in trying to align a couple of those things with your personal style. Can you walk us through that framework for
leadership? I feel like so most leaders have a vision for where they're trying to take you and good leaders not only have a vision but they're able to communicate it. Then it becomes a lot of herding cats and you can do it with a command and control.
Approach I just don't think that last very long it do as I say because I've got all the power do as I say because otherwise you're fired. I don't think you're going to get the best workout of people working in that kind of environment what that also means is that I think really strong leaders need to be really good at not only having a vision and communicating the vision. They have to be equally good at persuading people that it's worth your while to come along and do it and oftentimes the
Vision is going to involve some type of change change in your behavior change in the way. We do things around here a change to your expectations about how life was going to go, you know, most people don't really like change. Most people don't really like uncertainty the notion of constant gentle pressure is that I believe you need all three words as a leader. You better be consistent with it. The reason I use the word gentle is that if
Too harsh while you're trying to reel in a fish. The line is going to break if you're constantly playing the fish and real hit in in One Direction and you're keeping the pressure on you. Don't let up on any of those things. You don't let up on the constant or the gentle or the pressure. I think that more great people are going to do more great work for more time in your company. It's just the way I am. I know that there are sometimes especially in
in times of crisis when you do have to shift into I know what I want to do it you got to shift into that mode command and control mode, but I don't think most people will want to be part of a team for a sustained period of time in that environment and I think those are the kind of work environments that tend to see a ton of turnover which never equates to a great morale and often does not correlate.
To the best talent because the best talent I know in the world would love to buy into a vision and then sort of be left alone to do their best work and not have a micro manager at every step of the way say do it this way do it this way do it this way. So constant gentle pressure. I tend to use much more when it has to do with our culture. This is why we do what we do. This is what I expect the results to be. I really let people
We'll figure out how to use their expertise to execute on that. If I knew all the answers, I wouldn't need them in the first
place another aspect of leadership. You've mentioned a bit earlier is just this notion of embodying the things that you're trying to preach and I love this line in the book the road to success is paved with mistakes. Well handle is there a particular mistake that you remember that you were personally involved with maybe you were in the restaurant yourself and to say a little bit more about handling mistakes. Well and the role that that plays in this notion of
hospitality.
My notion of mistakes is that they are the greatest renewable resource on Earth. There's always another one you're never going to run out of it ever ever ever as long as the human race occupies parts of the earth. There will be mistakes You can disagree with that. I've never met anyone who doesn't make mistakes, but if you agree with that notion, then you say all right, we can either let mistakes do us in we can either hide from our mistakes we can either
By that we made mistakes. We can either lie about our mistakes or what if we could actually put those mistakes to work for us. What if we could say hey as long as there's this constant waterfall or constant waves of mistakes coming think about the waves in the ocean. There's always another one. You don't know when it's going to come. You don't know how big it's going to be water might be calm enough for a while to make you think there's no waves, but there's going to be another one. That's what I like to do with.
Mistake making and it's like all right, as long as it's an honest mistake, I have zero patience whatsoever for dishonest mistakes, but an honest mistake, it's like great. Let's use it to our advantage. Let's learn from it. Let's own it. Let's name it. Let's teach from it. Let's employ what I call the five Ace of mistake making which are be aware you mated. That's a number one. You wouldn't believe how many mistakes get made where you didn't even know you made it. So be aware number to acknowledge it.
Number three apologize for it number four act to fix it and number five apply additional generosity. Those are the five as of mistake making people are blown away when you do those things because unfortunately in our society there is so much either shame or just natural muscle reflex to be afraid of acknowledging that you made a mistake or ashamed to apologize or whatever that it blows people away when you do those
Five things and you can actually end up in a better spot with someone for how well you embraced and overcame a mistake than if you had never made it in the first place to your first question. I would not even know where to start because there's just not a day that goes by I mean, there's the obvious kind of mistakes like in the restaurant business like spilling on somebody or forgetting somebody's birthday candle that they had requested. We've made more macro mistakes like picking
A subpar location for a restaurant in each case if I've learned one lesson. It's not only apply the five days of mistake making but really trying to do it more quickly than ever don't be so afraid of the response that you keep this acknowledgement and apology and action in your pocket for too long fail quickly is really good piece of advice.
One of the things that is imbued throughout the restaurants and the business in general is creativity.
And you've opened many different kinds of restaurants. Obviously. I'm sure many of these themes have talked about pervade them all but there's probably some sort of creative spark at the beginning of each as a repeat entrepreneur. I'm sure these are moments that you live for these sort of primordial ooze stages of a new Enterprise and there's this concept you have of whoever wrote the rule that I would love you to explain as a device for this early stage of entrepreneurial spark and
creativity. That's spark you
Tribe is something that I haven't really analyzed a lot. I know that great musicians are often asked. I've heard interviews with Paul McCartney. How did you come up with blackbirder Eleanor Rigby and I don't know how he did it, but he did and maybe he woke up in the middle of the night singing a song. I haven't actually thought about when it happens or how as much as I probably should except for this. I know that my life experience plays into it and I liked it.
Collect experiences Fact one of the things I cannot stand about the pandemic is not being able to travel because I collect experiences and it's not only in restaurants. It can be window shopping. I can see the names of companies. I can see what trade signs look like. I can see how a butcher Cuts things differently in one country or another. I love going to markets to see how people eat. I love seeing art. I love seeing plays and I'm bringing this up.
Because by just being voracious when it comes to collecting life experiences, we're putting these experiences in our mind and our heart in our memory bank. I think inspiration that spark moment that you were describing happens when you find the right time to make a withdrawal from the bank that is appropriate to the current spending opportunity you have so in my business, I know that sometimes it's the context
That really helps me to figure it out. Shake Shack wasn't an idea that I was just dying to do I didn't wake up one morning having been focused on three star New York Times restaurants like Gramercy Tavern Eleven Madison Park the modern Union Square Cafe and wake up one morning saying now what I really have to do is Frozen Custard and hot dogs and cheeseburgers and crinkle-cut fries. It was basically looking at the context of
of trying to help revive a park and having food that would be in the public domain at a price point that anybody could afford who could afford to go to New York and I just shot it out the menu very very quickly and we haven't really feared much from that menu and all these since 2004. It's basically this I think I do some of my best work from the frame in word the great artist that you see in museums generally paint.
A canvas and then someone figures out what kind of frame to put it on which kind of wall to hang it on and how to light it and I feel like I do some of my best work artistically when you give me the frame and you say what do you think belongs in that frame? You actually give me the frame and the wall and the lighting and you say what do you think belongs in there? And that's what led to doing things like working in City filled with the Mets for they said here's Centerfield.
A place that nobody goes create a community out there. What are you going to do or the Museum of Modern Art says here's the space. We're going to give you and it's at the intersection of three generations of Architects of Moma. What are you going to do there? I feel like increasingly that's the kind of challenge I love which is you show me the frame. You show me the context. I love working inward as opposed to outward.
What is the tension between wanting to start new things and you know, obviously you're not a Serial entrepreneur. So you've started a lot of new things. How do you how do you deliberate at any point in your life or career? Whether it's better to expand or to pause and go deeper into what you already have
probably have the same way that a winemaker two sides. Is this a terroir wine? Is this a wine that needs to taste exactly like where it was grown and only like where it was grown.
Or is this a flavor that we can and should replicate many many many times. So if you think about wines the brands of wine that have sold the most globally I don't even know what they all are yellowtail doesn't taste like anywhere. It just tastes like something and it's obviously a combination of a good enough flavor in a good enough price in good enough name and packaging that it can sell everywhere.
But then you take wines from burgundy where every village even though. It's five blocks from the next Village actually taste a little different and then within that Village a Vineyard same gray Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, but a vineyard with in that Village is going to taste different than another vineyard with in that Village. I often feel that way about Union Square Cafe my first restaurant, I feel that way about Gramercy Tavern my second restaurant. They not only tastes like where
They were born but they're named for where they were born. Not unlike those wines we're talking about most of the great French wines are named for where they're grown. It's not a marketing name and I feel like we have a lot of those kind of restaurants Gramercy Tavern the modern. We also have restaurants that are more about another place than they are about this place. So a restaurant like maialino, which is based on my love affair with Rome not
Just Italy but Rome maialino actually has scaled because we have a restaurant in Washington DC called. Myelin Amari which is a seafood version of maialino here in New York. So every now and then we'll get one that just feels like there's not going to be hundreds of them because I just that doesn't really excite me that much with a full service restaurant. We have a new business new ish business called daily Provisions. There are two of them now one in the Flatiron District on 19th Street and one on the upper west side.
That I believe not only will grow but should grow. It's an interesting hybrid because daily Provisions the spark of inspiration for daily Provisions came because we were moving Union Square Cafe after 30 years to a new location on 19th Street, very close to Union Square 19th and park and the space that we got happen to come with another space next door, and we were completely
It focused on not screwing up moving a 30 year old beloved brand Union Square Cafe. Meanwhile, we had to figure out what to do with this little space next door, which became daily Provisions. We basically said two things. This one has to be a gift to its neighborhood. It has to be a gift to people who live near here and a gift to people who work near here and it has to have because it's so small really really good versions of the kind of food that you
Crave at any time of day so better have really good coffee at better have really good bread. It better have really good breakfast sandwiches better have the world's best crawler. It better have the world's best cookie. It better have the world's best rotisserie chicken to take home at night and we just started thinking about that neighborhood and if you lived there and I happen to live very close by I don't need a lot. I just need one of the top three versions of 15 different things.
That I could eat every day of my life. And in order to have a license to get on that little menu in that little place. It better be a really essential version of that. We don't need another me to Coruscant. We don't need another me to grilled cheese sandwich the ticket to get on that menu is you better be an amazing version of whatever that category is. So it turned out that daily Provisions was a Smash Hit.
The minute it opened which is why we opened a second one and second one was jam-packed with people covid hit and now daily Provisions is finding a way to to be really really strong in the pickup and takeout and delivery business because it has to because people can't gather anymore, but I'm telling you that story because it's a hybrid we created a place of its terroir and yet it turns out to be something.
That we found people were kind of coming from all over just to pick up their crawler in the morning or just to pick up their roast beef sandwich in the afternoon. And we said we should do more of these because this is a really cool thing.
I love the comparison of locality and extensibility as a way of thinking about any kind of business and the frame in word. I mean, it's such an interesting creative exercise to sort of book end our conversation around and unites many of the themes that we've walked.
Walked through I'd love you to tell maybe a story from your own experience of this. I think you call it the Excellence reflex. Just give a reflex of some gets thrown at you and you duck. There's certain people or companies that have this Excellence reflex. I think that will put a bow on this notion of obviously not everyone's in the restaurant business, but in our own ways, we're all in the hospitality business, and I'd love you to just tell a closing story from any experience doesn't have to be food or can be a meal can be anything just to nail him that point of Excellence reflex and why that can be so powerful.
Russell
if you're part of an organization that wants to compete to win you better surround yourself with people who want to win themselves. We use the Expression Excellence reflex, as you just said doing something as well as you can do it and learning to do it even better. Tomorrow is a journey. I'm telling you right now. I'm not the least bit interested in Perfection. It doesn't exist. It's a recipe to be pretty unhappy in life. I'm very very interested on the other hand.
And in the notion of excellence and I do believe that Excellence is a journey and I believe Excellence is honoring the work you did yesterday all the mistakes and everything. You gave it your best, but dammit figure out how you could do it a little bit better today. And when you see something that can be better you fix it restaurant workers are famous for a lot of things but there's this consistently weird thing. I've noticed Through The Years where they don't often know how to look down they walk
Right over the little pink Sweet'N Low rapper that somebody dropped from their table. That's not using your Excellence reflect that doesn't belong there. And by the way, I'm not trying to put down restaurant people at all. I'm putting down myself when I say this. It's like if it's not right, you got to fix it. Whatever. It happens to be. There's a great expression always leave your campsite neater than you found it, which I really really believe in that implies some Excellence, which is here's what I saw when I got here. I'm going to
make it even better, but I'll be damned if I'm going to leave it even worse. There's just no way I'm going to do that. We think a lot about that. I also think a lot about competition. I'm a sports fan and I love learning about what motivates Championship performance because in business, that's our sport. It's a game. We are paid to be problem solvers. I've learned over time that I need to surround myself with people who are motivated to be champions of all.
learn that there are three primary differences in the kind of motivations that that Champions have and not one is better than the other but it's important as you build a team to think about where people come from and so you've got the really really competitive champion whose motivation primarily comes from a desire to beat the competition that jazz is MM and the image I get my mind is Muhammad Ali standing atop Sonny Liston with
his fist in the air and you can tell he loves that he just beat that guy and then you've got the champion great Champion who's primarily motivated by a hatred or fear of losing its like there's just nothing worse than losing and I'll be damned if I'm going to lose which is why I'm going to win and I think of John Mcenroe yelling at the Umpire. How could you call that shot against me and then you've got the champion. I was just reading a great article about
Great track and field star who just passed away Rafer Johnson and you can tell that his primary motivation was out doing his own personal best. It's not that he really cared who he beat and he didn't really care that much losing just wasn't even on his mind. He just said, you know, what if I jumped X far yesterday, I'm going to jump X point to tomorrow. I'm just going to or I'm going to run X point to faster tomorrow. I think it's important for any of us.
Who are in a competitive field? What kind of bet you check out? How many people listen to your podcast all the time? And if I know you well enough you might even be aware of how other podcasts are doing in the category. It's just a good thing to have the self-awareness of what motivates you to want to be the best.
What's a wonderful closing thought and analogy and an excuse for me to ask my traditional closing question that I asked everybody and that is to ask what the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you is
kind of thing anyone's ever done.
Done for me was to say yes, when I asked her to marry me. I just cannot imagine any of my business life or family life or who I've become had. It not been for Audrey Hepburn and saying yes and becoming Audrey Hepburn admire. She is an amazing. Mom of four kids who I adore who I learned so much from and probably more than anything in addition to the isn't it? Great how she has supported me which it is.
But she's I think more than anything helped me to become real. I think there's a fine line between wanting people to be happy so much that you end up losing a piece of your own authenticity, and that never happened to me. Thank goodness, and I give her all the credit for that.
Well Danny, this has been easily one of my favorite conversations that I've had in this format. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you Patrick if you enjoyed
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