The most important thing you can do is make the distinction between customer service and guest hospitality. You need both things to thrive, but they are completely different. – Danny Meyer
Wearing a baseball cap or sleeveless shirt in a white-tablecloth restaurant is rude and makes other diners upset, just like someone on a cellphone. – Danny Meyer
My favorite place is whichever sidewalk is beneath my feet because I am just constantly fascinated by walking and looking and learning. If I’ve already walked a street five times, then the next five times I walk it looking up, and I learn something about the cornices. – Danny Meyer
I never get sick on airplanes, which is incredible. You’re basically in a flying petri dish. – Danny Meyer
Museums are like sports stadiums, hotels and hospitals: they are in the category of captive-audience dining. – Danny Meyer
It’s always imperative to improve and to remain dynamic – or you’ll become lunch, as opposed to serving it. – Danny Meyer
You cannot open a major New York restaurant today and not be aware that showbiz will play a role. – Danny Meyer
If you’re constantly making business decisions on behalf of your investors first, ultimately you’re going to wear down your other stakeholders. It’s going to be potentially hurtful for your employees and your customers and the community you do business with. – Danny Meyer
When the economy goes sour, there are three different kinds of restaurants that do well: the smaller-scale neighborhood restaurants that don’t ask much of you; those that have banked enormous goodwill by offering great value during the boom; and those with proven records of excellence, a sure thing. – Danny Meyer
There are three things that people pick up on the instant they walk into your home on Thanksgiving. They will be able to feel the human energy. They’ll smell the food. And they will see, instantly, the table. – Danny Meyer
At the base level, a burger is a piece of meat and a bun with something on it. It’s simple but it seems to make a lot of people happy. – Danny Meyer
At my restaurants, we have training drills before every meal. We talk about what we did yesterday that was great and what we can improve today. – Danny Meyer
A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that’s on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters. – Danny Meyer
My history has been to grow the roots as deeply as you can before going on to the next thing. That’s why it took 10 years to go from Union Square Cafe to Gramercy Tavern, and another 10 years to go from Blue Smoke’s first location to its second, and five to go from Shake Shack 1 to Shake Shack 2. – Danny Meyer
Steak and its accompaniments – wine, vegetables, potatoes and generous desserts – is a primal source of pleasure to which many people can relate. – Danny Meyer
Restaurants with small courses that give the customer choices, and that don’t obligate them to spend a fortune, are going to do very well. – Danny Meyer
Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions – for and to – express it all. – Danny Meyer
A great restaurant doesn’t distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes but by how well they handle those mistakes. – Danny Meyer
During one of his uncannily well-timed impromptu visits to my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, Pat Cetta taught me how to manage people. Pat was the owner of a storied New York City steakhouse called Sparks, and by that time, he was an old pro at running a fine restaurant. – Danny Meyer
In one respect, it’s easier to open a restaurant in New York because you get more media attention than anywhere else. Almost everyone will try a new place once, irrespective of the reviews, because it’s a spectator sport. – Danny Meyer
The cooking standards for Italian food are less demanding than for French. All you need are some fried mozzarella and five pastas, and you’re in business. – Danny Meyer
I think that any business that thinks that the transaction is ‘you give me money and I give you food, next, you give me money and I give you food, next,’ without understanding that people deeply want to feel restored is in danger. – Danny Meyer
One of the things that may get lost among all the hubbub when a company is ‘going public’ is that the business can now be owned, in part, by its greatest fans. – Danny Meyer
I don’t think there’s going to be sustainable demand for restaurants that force you to spend hours there. – Danny Meyer