Transcript
Hey, this is the moment. I'm Brian Koppelman, thanks for listening. My guest today is arguably the most successful restaurateur in the world. And well, you can make the argument and it's Danny Meyer who you, wherever you are in the world, certainly know. Shake Shack, which started in Madison Square Park. And then Danny figured out a franchise. And it is absolutely. There's always this argument about in and out versus Shake Shack. I'm sure Danny won't weigh in, but I will Shake Shack all the way. Somebody in his restaurants are Union Square Café Gramercy Tavern, which was, you know, is when it opened. It sort of changed fine, fine dining after he changed it the first time. Blue smoke, the modern and Merlino. I mean, endless. Marta, he's about to open Martina, which is a new sort of how would you describe Martina? First of all, can I say hi and how great it is to be with you here, Brian? You can in a moment. I was going to interrupt you, but you were saying all these nice things, and I said, That's a bad time to interrupt you. Well, it's mostly going to be me trying to figure out how not to interrupt you. But Danny, you know, you know, I've met over the years a number of times and have recently started to become pals. And but what's great about this is at dinner, I'm a little bit shy to ask all the questions I want to ask. I'm not going to be shy now, so I'm just going to I'm not going to get my money's worth if you're shy right now. So here's where I want to start. I want to understand what you would identify as the intrinsic gifts. Let's say you have or that you recognized in yourself. Toward the beginning of your career that made you believe that you could do all this stuff. I kind of think that like like you and your career, the stuff that comes most naturally to you that everybody else says, Oh my God, how does he do that? Isn't this something that you probably value as much as you probably should, because it's so easy for you to do? And we see gifts and other people, sometimes more easily than we see them in ourselves. I do think having thought about this for a while that. It shocks me that more restaurant people don't understand that the real reason people go to restaurants is not because they're hungry or thirsty, but because they want to be loved. And I think we get that. And. It's not that hard to do it, and it really good food has to be on the plate and really good stuff has to be in your gla*s. But it's it's insane to think that that's going to make people want to come back, that'll bring them wants, but that's kind of it. But that all makes sense to me as a philosophy behind that. What you do. But I'm interested in. Because so many people have these vague feelings about the way the world ought to be or they'll notice something and have an insight, but you're able to manifest it. And in the beginning, the rate of failure for people in open restaurants is huge. When you started to recognize this stuff, how did you think about OK, I know how to. Enacted. The fact is, I did not know how to enact it, and I think because the cooking we couldn't even get drinks made in, you know, within a reasonable amount of time after you ordered it at the bar, we couldn't get the food out of the kitchen. I actually did not know how to do the restaurant business when I opened Union Square Cafe at the age of 27. I had at that point worked for nine months in a New York restaurant and staged in two kitchens in France for a total of three months. So to say that I was prepared to open a restaurant was absolutely crazy. I didn't know what I was doing. But the thing I did know was how to make people happy. And I and I the worse we were at the actual restaurant stuff, the more I had to call upon my own wiring, which is fix it until they smile, fix it until they smile. And you know, we have the medicine cabinet. We call it the medicine cabinet at Union Square Cafe, and unfortunately, we had to open the refrigerator door that was stocked with, I think, 14 different kinds of dessert wine at least 10 times a night to make people happy who were otherwise going to leave saying horrible things about the restaurant. So I guess it's kind of a long way of saying that. You know, we have we have four kids at home and they're all completely different, they're all wired differently, they all have different gifts and weaknesses and strengths and everything. But I think we all tend to rely upon our natural gift when the chips are down to overcome the things we don't know how to do. And I can't exactly tell you why my wiring is what it is, but I'm not happy until people leave one of our restaurants feeling a little bit better than when they came. It is that aspect of who you are. Were you always that way? Were you that way? Like on the schoolyard? If a bunch of people were going to play kickball or softball and you were going to get in the game, were you the person who was, you know, there's somebody who's upset about arguing about whether someone safe or out, and there's someone else who's trying to get everybody focused back on the game. Was that you as a kid? Yeah, it was. It was, you know, I was the middle of three kids in my family. And you know, I've shared this story with friends before, but my parents who stayed married for 25 years. Another way of saying they got divorced after twenty five years were on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum at a time. You know, when I grew up, it was Watergate and Vietnam and tricky dick and lots and lots of reasons to be arguing at the dinner table. And politics was only the start because they were arguing about a lot of different things. But I was the guy at the table who I just wanted to put a smile on everybody's face I got tired of. I just didn't like all the rancor. And I think I was that way in my cabinet camp, and I think I was that way on my Little League Baseball team. And I also had a way of provoking people. Almost as a as a way to get their mind off the silly things they were arguing about an unhappy about and just get people to smile when I say provoking, I don't mean necessarily in a bad way, but you mean like getting a needle out a little bit? I like I'm pretty good at needling people, but it's always with the intention of just getting people to chill out. The first time I understood this professionally, I think, was when I worked for my dad as a tour guide in Italy, and I was 20 and my job was to go to the airport in Rome with the bus picking up all these cranky people who had been traveling all night, helping them collect all their luggage, getting them in the bus, getting on the microphone to tell people on the bus, you know, don't drink this water, do drink that water. Make sure to protect your purses on your left side when you're walking down the street. All I know is that I would have these groups of people for about anywhere between five to eight days, and I just had this kind of preternatural ability to zero in on day one without even without without fail almost on. Who was the person who most needed to be happy, really? And I guarantee you that after three days or five days or wherever many days. I was going to turn that person around and turn them into the happier we must have been the best camp counselor. I was pretty surreal. That's an incredible gift to be able to do that in it. It's funny. You reminded me one on one of people's favorite episodes of this podcast, ever is the one I did with Amy, my wife, you know, and that we talked a bit about like the drama of the gifted child that Alice Miller and that what you're talking about is having to be in the middle and having to learn how Amy talks about when she was making her movie. I smile back. There was a scene where this kid is chattering and and the director came from a happy home and couldn't understand. Amy was like, because as long as the characters talking and keeping everyone laughing, they're not going to fight and it'll feel like a film. Well, you know this. This is this is a pretty good session we're having right here because, you know, I also learned a really tough lesson in the early days of Union Square Cafe when no matter how many times, I apologize to somebody for how long their food had taken. Or how many things we sent out? You know, to kind of make up for our screw up. There would be occasions where people would still not leave happy and. You know, I had basically done every single possible thing to make them know that I would have done anything to make them happy. And they would leave and they'd go, Yeah, you can buy our meal, but we're still not coming back. Yeah, you can send us that extra dessert, but we're still not coming back. Yeah, you can give us an extra bottle of wine, but we're still not coming back. And I finally learned the hard way in the restaurant business that. You know, there are some people that are actually happiest when you just let them be unhappy that that sometimes it's not your job. To try to change how somebody feels because you can't at a certain point, if you if you know that you had done everything you can and you know you're asking me a lot of questions like where did this all come from? I remember my brother and I, after my sister had gone off to college, might have even been in your cla*s. You're not mistaken. She or somebody was, but anyway. My brother and I were left at home with these two parents who just were clearly coming towards the end of their marriage. And my brother and I decided to have one last ditch effort to see if we could keep them together and get them to to be happy. Kind of like me in the restaurant. And so we rode out this long list of things that we thought each of them could do to improve the marriage. Wow. And they read it. And they both told us, thank you for caring enough to do this. And it was the next day that that they basically acknowledged and they said, You know what? Everything you wrote is absolutely true. Those are all things we've been working on for years and years and years. And now that you now that you remind us, those are just things that are never going to change. So we're going to get divorced. Oh, and so, you know, it's it's awesome and it's we sure we're trying and and so I think we probably got a lot of practice over the years when we were kids about how do you just kind of keep it together and make it better? Well, the people. Yeah. Well, that's amazing that you know, the funny thing is I was spending all my time cooking with my dad during all this stuff, right in the kitchen. The combination of food and pleasure and making people happy is not something that particularly foreign to me and emotional like Strom and drying the whole time as you're trying to manage it. That's right. Well, I in your book, you talk about the power of one of the things I want to ask you about was how you in like the the method by which you kind of check in with yourself about the stuff, like even being able to write down the stuff noticing and then taking the time to codify what you noticed so that you could present it to your parents and you talk in your book about the power of the journal you kept during a period of time in your life when you were eating in Europe. But I couldn't tell whether that was a practice that you continued. And for me, journaling every day is like a life changing thing crucial. So I'm wondering what what is your way of checking in on stuff for yourself on how you're processing it, on what you should do? Do you still write stuff down for yourself? Are you talking about professionally, emotionally yet? Both. Right? It's knowing how to process the because a great gift of yours is not reacting out of emotion in your professional life. Right? It's something most people can could learn from you. You, you train people who work with you. So that's one of the ways. But in all of it, like, what do you how do you what do you do to keep yourself in this sort of present and able to process? But it's changed over the years. I don't journal. I should probably journal, but I don't. As a matter of fact, just last week I found one of my journals. I was looking for all of them, but I found one of the journals that I was keeping as I was open in Union Square Cafe in 1985. And it was amazing because I have notes from my first service meetings, you know, with the staff when some of these ideas were, this is exactly what I want to know about. Yeah, and it's kind of amazing because as time has gone by, not much has changed. I knew intuitively how I felt about things, what the experience of writing setting the table did for me was. It forced me to really look back at. Over 20 years of experience at that point. That had been intuitive. And by putting the words on paper, it forced me to to be much more intentional about the things that had always come to me naturally. I wish I journaled more. I think in terms of what do I do right now to check in? A lot less, I had spent seven years of my life in analysis, three days a week on the couch, at various points in the early, you know, in my 20s and my 30s, even into my early 40s off and on. But I have a pretty good sense of who I am and what matters to me. And one of the things I do know about myself is that I can actually host a lot more attention than the average person that right. It makes complete sense. It doesn't it? My fuse is incredibly long. My patience is Herculean. Some some would say I'm too patient with things, and I think that people who work for me. Sometimes have a tough time with with how much tension I can host because they would blow a gasket. What's an example of that? Like if, like Danny, how can you not kick that patron out of the restaurant? Do you not realize they're trying to get away with something, or Danny? How can you not fire that person immediately? Do you not realize that they don't belong on the team? Or why do you not get angry when this, this, this and this happens? And I guess I just kind of I'm maybe I should, but I'm able to keep things in perspective. And I mean, I could be the guy that they wrote that whatever that prayer is, where they say, you know, grant me the serenity, the serenity, prayer, I think I'm that guy. It's like, I know what's worth fighting about, and I know it's not worth fighting about, and I feel like I get ahead a lot more by. By not fighting silly things. Well, no, clearly you I mean, but that does that should never be mistaken for not having a pretty steely core and and having core values that. You know, I refuse to to betray. What are those core values that you refuse to betray? They generally have to do with? With my own definition of justice. They generally have to do with people on the bottom rung not being treated the right way. You know, we're we're coming off a time when in our country. We're we're seeing things almost daily that. Don't square with. What I was always taught were right and wrong and just and unjust, and I am I'm having a really tough time. You know, just trying to square, where am I in that equation? On one hand, I'm responsible for. Many, many businesses and thousands of employees, literally thousands and thousands of people, and not all of those people. Necessarily agree with me. You know, politically or. And so I'm always finding myself lately torn as to when to speak out on things that I'd like to speak out on. And you know when to be a steward of other people's livelihoods? And I came very, very close, you know, with with recent events of just saying, screw it. It's just it's it's time to say what's on your mind, but I want to say what's on my mind publicly. In a way that can be constructive, not, you know, one more piddle in the ocean. Well, yeah, it's a. And you just said a lot of. Really compelling things there. And what you. You know, it puts me in mind of a conversation we had off Mike when we had dinner, which was about the way in which you use the platform that you have, which is primarily for the benefit of your businesses and those people. And this this this feeling you have of what of competing duties, right? Duty to the values for the culture that you feel are really important fairness, anti against racism, you know, against these things. But then that can I mean, you articulate it to me and I know you mean it, which is you're you're successful enough that nothing you say is going to affect the quality of life you or your children can have so that you're really talking about is a quality of life of these people who work for you. That's exactly right. So you know it. If I if I think back to the the earlier part of our conversation, I told you how I like to provoke and I always did as a kid. I think it was provocative in 1990 to eliminate smoking at Union Square Cafe plan to talk to you about that. Yeah. Everyone in our industry said, You're crazy. You're going to ruin it for the rest of us. You're going to ruin your own business. And yet my own dad had just died from lung cancer, and I was I was pissed off and I was also pissed off that every night practically there was a fight that I had to mediate between the last guy in the smoking section and the first guy adjacent to him in the non smoking section, just like he used to be on airplanes, or I would come home smelling like an ashtray or whatever. So we did it, and we got busier and busier and busier. That didn't feel like I was putting first of all, we only had one restaurant at that point, we had a hundred and thirty five employees. But I actually believed it was the right thing for our business. I was guessing you could tell yourself then that that was too. It had a great unity right of strongly held core belief about the health of the health of your employees and other diners. But also this you had a business instinct, right? Because you have this tremendous business acumen that told you it felt right if you were on the cutting edge there. Right? It would ensure to your fits your commercial benefit also. Right. This is a different question. It is. And you know, there are many other examples of doing things that that are out there, but completely non-controversial, like taking a leadership role in fighting hunger or taking a leadership role in the city, getting back on its feet after nine eleven. Those those are not very controversial issue. I would say that the elimination of tipping was another provocation in our industry, and it's been a provocation to my own company and it has put people at risk because what if we get it wrong? You know, I heard you talking about this on the podcast and wanted to talk to you about it too. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that when we do something like that, we are doing it because we believe that it is in the best interest of our employees to eliminate tipping. If I go out and I, you know, I was a policy major, I guess if I had wanted to be in politics, I might have done that. But I got into the restaurant business and you know, I think that there is a responsibility for people who have a public platform who are leaders to lead. And part of leadership is saying where you are and things. So it is. I'm just, you know, I mean, I would say that you are I am not being provoked by current events rather than me provoking current events. Well, it does seem that because you haven't been part as you've supported candidates and you've had events for candidates. And I think if people. It's probably clear where you stand on the political spectrum, but you haven't been a public partisan for sure. So that if you did raise your voice when things like Charlottesville happened, I do think people would listen to you in a different way. And I think you can look at certainly your peers and see that it hasn't hurt their businesses. We've talked about our both of our dear friend Mario Batali, and yes, we're playing the drinking game at home on the podcast. I did just mention battalion name so you can take a drink. But is that something you do with great frequency? I think my friends have a drinking game about it too, because I love Mario so much and he's very present in my life. But like Mario will go and say he'll call out the president if he feels like he's not do, and I don't think it's hurt the business. He's been. This isn't the size of your years because he doesn't have the Shake Shack. Yeah, but he has Mario. Yeah. I mean, he and he's will, you know, I find that his leadership in that way is really inspiring to me. It's made me think about it, right? I mean, I have this television show that's not nearly what Mario's business is or yours is. But I still. I feel I feel called to do it, and even if it means that some people aren't going to watch our show. I feel like I'm on the one hand, my show is a our show is about stuff that. That touches on some of this, right? But. But I do think it would be like you're a brilliant person who has a real point of view about this and you share it probably mostly with a group of people who agree with you as opposed to the world of people who follow you. So I would say you should keep thinking about. All right, thank you. It's just my own. Thanks, Dr. Brian. So, you know, what do I know? I don't have this stuff to lose that you do when? So when I hear you talk about the smoking thing, when I hear you talk about the tipping thing. It makes me wonder when you learn to trust your own instinct this strongly and what experiences were in business that taught you went to know the difference between being stubborn and being right because it's clear in this tipping thing that many of your compatriots have given up the ghost people who felt as strongly as you that it was the right thing for the industry, that it's been done in France and done in Tokyo. And why isn't it done here? But you won't give it up. And I'm I'm interested in how what that thought process looks like to you. Well, I think that the irony with with the elimination of tipping is that. On one hand, it's something that I've been thinking about for 20 years, in fact, I wrote about it soon after opening Gramercy Tavern in 1994, so. Twenty over well, well over 20 years. And the reason that it found its moment with me over these past two years is that I can see where our industry is going. And there are two underpinnings of our industry. That. Without which I don't know how our industry makes any sense. So think about it. What is a restaurant? It's a manufacturing plant also known as a kitchen. You get in raw product and you change it in the highest real estate. Districts in the world with a very expensive showroom, also known as a dining room to go with it. That very premise makes no sense. Why would why would anyone put a manufacturing plant on High Street? Pick your favorite city, you just wouldn't. And so. I can really speak for New York City way more than I can speak for anywhere else in the world, but real estate only goes up here. And we've we've hit a breaking point where manufacturing. Stops making sense at a certain point, but then as if that's not enough, the cost of labor to do the manufacturing. Has not only gone up dramatically, but as. As minimum wage goes up. Even for the for the group of people also known as servers. As salespeople who deliver the food, which are industry creatively found a way to not pay for 200 years, also known as tipping. Now, this very model, the shaky foundation of having a manufacturing plant and a sales floor with expensive finishes. It only worked to the degree that it did work. It only worked because the real estate was not beyond the breaking point. And you were only paying for part of your labor and at that underpaying them in the kitchen. Right? Once that gets broken. Games over for the fine dining restaurant business, so I've been watching that happen for years and years and years and the, you know, the notion of eliminating tipping at this moment in time, trying to get ahead of minimum wage increases, trying to get ahead of the unsustainability of asking really good cooks to live in an expensive city where they don't get paid enough to live in that expensive city. It it's either do it now or just say goodbye to the whole industry as far as I'm concerned now. Why are so many people you can't giving up the what? Yeah, they've given up the ghost, giving up the guns. They tried it because they know it's right, but they haven't figured out the math. And unfortunately, this is all coming at a time when the very things that I know are going to happen are actually happening, i.e., we're also doing this at a time when rather than. Competing with 26000 restaurants in New York, you are now competing with 26000 restaurants in New York and about 20000 ways people can eat at home. Yes. And so. Revenues are going down, real estate is going up. Labor is going up, and we're at a breaking point. And if you are a restaurateur and you've just decided to bite the bullet and try to go tip free, which means paying your staff what they deserve to be paid in the kitchen and in the dining room. It's a scary time to do it, because meanwhile, you see your revenues going down and you assume that the reason your revenues are going down is because you're running with shipping prices a little bit. Right, because that's the you had to raise prices on the menu. You're raising prices on your menu, even though at the end of the day, it's not going to be much more for the guest because they would have put a 20 percent tip on there anyway, but no one knows how to do reverse it. So that's the logic that a lot of your fellow restaurateurs like. You know, Dave Chang did it. A bunch of people in New York tried it. And then, as I say, they stopped, and so it sounds because the question they asked was, how do you know when you're being stubborn versus how do you know when you're right and like you were completely right about the cigarette thing? And the time you have proved out really quickly that you were right about this? Do you ever? So this incredible amount of logic that you apply is clearly one way, right? You're able to logic your way. We have enough restaurants and we've done this gradually enough that I can tell you that whatever trends there are, whether they're downward, upward or sideways in terms of revenue. Have not hit our no tipping restaurants more than they've hit our. So, you know, it's usually a neutral fact we have macro issues going on in the industry right now. And I believe that. You know, we'll either I don't I don't think people are going to stop going out to eat, I think that restaurants continue to provide an incredibly important opportunity for people to be with people, especially at a time in our lives, when there's a million ways not to be with people. I don't think the human need to be together is going to diminish. And and so while it's true that you can eat better than ever at home without lifting a finger and cooking by getting almost anything delivered. And it's true that you only have time in the day for three meals. I can sometimes get a few more in, but yeah, but I guess my point is that I when the dust settles. I want to be around with our restaurants, and I want to be around with really good food, and the only way to do that is to have a pay scale that would make a good cook, want to work there and and pay servers whose pleasure it is to make you happy. And we're going to be there. And so your question is, I just going to try and answer your question because I feel like I haven't. How do we know when stubborn is stupid as opposed to stubborn? Is either lucky or smart, but not smart? How do you? Yeah, how do you know? You just you just got to listen so carefully. And you know, we're we're constantly looking at data in our restaurants. That's a great answer. Yeah. You know, I've told this story before, but we were stubborn for probably a year too long on having fresh french fries at Shake Shack as opposed to frozen crinkle cuts, which people wanted. And that was stubborn and stupid to a point. I mean, it didn't hurt things in the end, putting her things in the end, but but that was a value thing, actually, you would have value that you were. It's a world of value which is stand for something good and. I do feel that if the decision you made is based in values. You're going to make mistakes, I'm going to make mistakes, we're all going to make mistakes really quick. At the end of the day, it's people's livelihoods at stake, and if I feel that. My decision and my stubbornness with that decision is costing jobs and our company as opposed to building jobs, then I'm going to get rid of it. Who do you talk to? Do you have people who keep you honest in your life? Oh my god, yeah. So how do you find people? Is it people in your organization outside of your organization? Well, the person who most keeps me honest in my life is my wife, Audrey, and she's done that ever since we've known each other because she just calls it like she sees it. And she's got a she's got an amazing sense of people. And I think it all starts with people. So she doesn't get involved with any of the day to day aspects of our business, but she remains incredibly interested. And, you know, she lets me know what she can call you on the bulls**t. If it's necessary, she can and does, right. That's her job. And I mean, it seems to me clear that your oldest daughter, how is your oldest daughter? Yeah, it's pretty good at keeping you honest, too. All my kids are. I know her. I've got any real over the place and people should. Follow her Instagram ice cream account, which is called two girls two cones. Even though she hasn't let her father know why it's called that we we know some of us, but I know why it's called that because she loves some scene from Portlandia for some scene from SNL, I forget what, and that's where we're all going to let family friendly Danny Meyer believe, but I think that's important to everybody. But that's definitely the case that that Portlandia thing just made it up. But and it was Amy Schumer show, too. And even that. But no, I watched you with your daughter, and what I loved was it was clear that these values you talk about aren't just theoretical, that your family at this great moment with Holly, where a friend of mine has an ice cream shop and she loves the ice cream, but said the lines were too long and I I said, Well, it's easy, I can get you to skip the lines. And she said, only mean people skip lines. I won't do it. And that wasn't for public. She wasn't saying that in public. She was saying that in an email where she was like, I really want the ice cream. And I felt like Danny and his family. They walk it exactly like they. That's true. That is true. And I figure you'd like to hear that. I do. But you know, in addition to Audrey and I are four kids, I've got so many people on the team at Union Square Hospitality Group that help. I just left a meeting with my executive team. We have a board of directors in addition to the executive team we have. Leaders in every restaurant, we have 60 people on the team, chefs and general managers who have equity in our businesses because I believe that if I if I want people to act like owners better, make them owners sure. So I get lots and lots of input all the time. We have legions and legions of. Restaurant goers who who write me who. You know, call me on the telephone when things are good, when things are not good. They tweet sometimes, so I am not at a loss for input, that's for sure. How how do you recognize someone in your organization who can be one of those people? Like, how do you train yourself to recognize a potential superstar when you're so busy now running so much of this stuff? How can you find the next great? I heard you once say, like, you know, finding a chef to open a place is a thrill for you. How do you carve time? I'm really interested in the time management piece of it with you. Two is a How do you create brain space? Knows that great Bill Gates Warren Buffett story where Gates used to be so busy and Buffett was like, Dude, that's there. You don't get a prize for being the busiest. How do you always spend some time with Warren Buffett? Would probably be useful for your amazing bluntness. But I actually have met Warren Buffett on many occasions, including being stuck in an elevator with him once. And I said to myself, Dude, you know, you've got like three minutes before the elevator moves. You better make the most of it. And I wasn't just the two of us. So what I did with him at that point, I didn't get advice from him. But I said, I've heard that that you're kind of in love with Dairy Queen. And I said, Would you ever be opening to tasting an even better burger? And he just laughed. He said, I'm good. Oh, was. That's all I got out of him. I appreciate it. I gave him, You already had Shake Shack going, Yeah, oh, absolutely. This was just a few years ago. Did you introduce yourself? I didn't have to, because the other person stuck in the elevator did, which is which was my opening in the first. So you did have a slight, a slight opening that was really getting there. But how do you give yourself space or time to think? And then how do you recognize how does someone within your world distinguish themselves in a way that you notice them? Well, in terms of thinking. I do need to do a much better job I I go to the gym three days a week and I run both days of the weekend, and that's my time. You don't have a smartphone with me. So listen to music when you run, I don't sometimes on the weekend, I'm in nature and I'm generally with either Audrey or Holly. And even if we're not running together and talking, we're we're sort of together. And I find that when I can recharge my body and my mind and my spirit and my heart and connect with people and nature at the same time and get stuff off my mind, that's what exercise does for me. I'm as much as I'm thinking. I'm also getting stuff off my mind. You get into that sort of thing that really helps. But. I just. You know, every morning I have a check in with a guy who's been on my team now for 25 years. Richard Crane, who's remarkable and he not only we call it playing tennis, we call it our morning tennis match only. It's not on a tennis court, it's just batting ideas back and forth. It's great. So you do that every day. I do that every day by voice, but I also do it by text with him all day. And he not only can help make. A good idea into a great idea, but it can also take. A pretty bad idea and help me delete it from my brain. So he's someone you listen to. I totally listen to him and I listen to, I listen to a lot of people. But then how will you identify talent? What? What if someone does that helps you out? Yeah, I would say that's something that comes pretty easily to me, really. And I would say that to the degree that you like going to our restaurants, there's a feeling you're getting from the people who work there. On balance, we don't have a perfect batting average, but especially in leaders, it's I think it's so important to understand. What are the emotional skills that we're looking for and what are the technical skills we're looking for? And I think we're just really good at it that, you know, we have a chief culture officer, Union Square Hospitality Group. Not a lot of restaurant companies have that. We have someone on our team whose name is Aaron Moran, who had come from Great Place to Work Institute, and she had spent her career studying best practices from companies that were great places to work like big, big companies. And she's brought a lot of that. Knowledge to us. She asks great questions, she puts things into play. And one of the great things that she did was to say that my book setting the table had laid out a way to prioritize our stakeholders, but had not necessarily told our team members how to behave while they were doing it. And so she encouraged us all, not just me to come up with for not more than for family values. That would be the underpinnings of how you're supposed to behave while you're taking care of each other after you take care of her, before you take care of our guests, before you take care of our community, our suppliers and of those four things and investors. And so the four things we came up with that we look for were somebody who prizes who naturally prizes. Excellence, hospitality, entrepreneurial spirit and integrity that is somebody who wakes up every day trying to do the job they do as well as that job can be done. Number two, who tries to do the job that they do in a way that actually makes other people feel better while they're doing it. Number three who? Either comes up with fresh ways of thinking about things every day, which is my definition of entrepreneurial spirit, or at least celebrates people who come up with fresh ways of doing it. And and then fourth integrity who goes about their life, their life doing things. Because it's the right thing to do, even when it may not be in their own self-interest, who has the judgment to do the right thing? And those are the four things that that matter to me. More than anything, the other thing that we've defined is six emotional skills. These are not values. These are emotional skills that we don't know how to teach. And I don't I just don't want to hire anybody who doesn't have these emotional skills that are just in case someone hasn't heard you say these somewhere else, can you say, Yeah, I want somebody who's number one, kind and optimistic. They're like, pleasant to be with. And who sees the glass as being half full? Skeptics and cynics don't tend to thrive in our business. Number two, someone who's intellectually curious, someone who doesn't think they know it all, who doesn't think that, you know, they don't make mistakes, who's accountable and who's excited about learning fresh ways to do things? Third, someone has got a remarkable work ethic. Someone who says, I'm I'm going to. It's not. Can I work more hours? But. It's not just that I know how to do something right, I'm going to do it till it is right for somebody who has a high degree of empathy. It matters to them how their actions make the world feel. They're aware of the wake they leave in their path. And they do something about it. And fifth, someone who is self-aware. Someone who understands. What their own personal weather report is on any given day and how it makes other people feel. And then finally, someone has got a high degree of integrity. Integrity was the one that is both a value, but it's also an emotional skill. Someone who for whom it's not just about them, it's about do I have the judgment to do the right thing even when it's not in my own self-interest? And I know what you're thinking right now. Yeah, well, I know you do. Yes, which is why you have no choice but to get on social media and articulate what you think because you did see me thinking. And if we do that, if we both feel the same way about what you just gave me the answer, because the way to do this in a way to advance my own team of employees is to put this in the context. That's right of our own family. Well, you should you should talk about who you would hire and who you wouldn't and what your values are and what they aren't and what you need because we can talk about empathy and integrity, right? I do have an interesting story along these lines, which is that. A couple of years ago, I think it was right when we were announcing the elimination of tipping. I was interviewed in the New York Times on that interview page, The Sunday Times Magazine. And at some point I was talking about family values. And I think the next question was in, by the way, this was in. November of 2015, so a year before the election and the person doing the interviewing said, well, then who would you? Well, then would you would would you support Donald Trump for the White House? And I said if I could be convinced that that, you know, going to work there would support these family values. I might be open to it. And after that, I got a letter from the Trump Organization saying it is a great place to work. Well, did you sound like you said something positive? But I think you meant to say you doubted that that's the way it was over there. I didn't know. But apparently, whatever I said, provoke somebody to write me a letter. Yeah, well, we're not. You can bet they were all on top of that. I think Trump, just for whatever it's worth, has none of those six things and you would never hire him. And if you made the mistake of hiring him, you would fire him. I'm not asking you to say that. I'm just saying that. You know, when you talked about the needle before Danny and how the utility of using the needle to inspire people, sometimes you told me a story that I won't I won't tell about somebody who got the needle out on you. And I loved hearing you say it because I saw how it made you competitive. This was a very, very successful, wealthy, amazing person who liked to get the needle out and in you talking about it and wanting to sort of compete, it made me wonder, you know, you have. I said at the beginning of this sort of glibly most successful restaurateur in the world, and I'm sure there are people who've started chains that maybe I don't know own them. But you basically are that when you're someone who's the question I really wrote down was, what do you dream of when you've surpassed your dreams and you can't really be needled anymore? You were, you know, you've made money, you know, for your generations of people, you've changed the way Americans eat. Your name is associated with the finest level of hospitality in the world. All this stuff has happened. You're still a relatively young person. What does all that look like to you as far as what you feel like, you're you can hope for? And now here's the thing I could turn that same question right back on you. And my guess is that. Let me not speak for you, because you're the guy who gets to ask all the questions today, but. Number one, I don't know what success is, I don't believe in success. I don't look at myself as being successful, unsuccessful. It's just not part of you've never had that in your vocabulary, really. I deny it. It just doesn't matter to me, doesn't work for, you know, you will tell me all the time, she'll say. You can't, you know, you can't be walking like an idiot down the street because people know who you are. And I'm like. Well, no, they probably don't. And who cares anyway? It's just not part, it's honestly not something I think about why? Because. While I'm certainly goal oriented as a leader. I just love the creative process, and I love being a leader of a team of people. And if? What you may call success ensues from that. It feels great for me, the greatest success in the world. The greatest joy I get is when an idea for a business or restaurant that tickles my fancy, so much so that I'm willing to take. A financial risk to put it together and or pull a team together to actually produce it. The greatest joy I get is when I see people enjoying the food or the music or the, yeah, whatever we're serving. So, you know, people sometimes think I'm crazy, I'll go to a Mets game. And spend most of my time not watching the baseball game, but watching people cheat in centerfield. It's Shake Shack and Blue Smoke and El Verano and box streets and Papa Rosa. We have five different businesses Barbecue Place. We're still messing around with that damn barbecue place. Blue smoke. I love it, but it's it's awesome. I just I mean, this is absolutely crazy, Brian, but I'll go. I'll just go up to people while they're eating our food and ask them they have no idea who I am, and I'll just say, how is that stuff? I just love that. I just love watching people smiling there. I watch people take a bite of a breakfast sandwich, a daily provisions. And I'm kind of hanging out in the corner, and I just like seeing the smile. This is so great. You know, we both love Seth Godin and I know you give out sometimes you'll send people the Seth's blog post. But he and I often talk about this question of an infinite or finite game. And you're playing an infinite game. Yes, which is why you don't want to check off the victory. Oh, I've succeeded. And it's a victory, because for you, you love being engaged in this very long game, right? You're right. You're absolutely right about that. But let's also acknowledge that I've chosen a field where. You can't sit back and rest on your laurels and think you're a big success because restaurants are animate objects. They're not books or films or, you know, or a digital recording of something big. They're never fully edited. They live every day and every single day, the minute you think you've arrived, someone's going to remind you he didn't let me prove it to you. Do you read reviews? Do you read Yelp? Do you care? I never read Yelp and I've never read Yelp because I think the deck is stacked. I think that the very premise of Yelp, its name is people not usually yelp out of joy. And so mostly I find that it attracts an articulate group of people who have something to yelp about. I mean that they've they've succeeded wildly. On the other hand, we absolutely read. Comments all day, whether it's from open table or Rezaie, I'm trying to think about the various ways, but as you get fit, you want to hear feedback. You like hearing feedback. I absolutely want to get feedback because I own, you know, every time I eat in any one of our restaurants. I have a page or two of feedback to give to the chef and general manager. We never, we never arrive. There is no point at which you can say, Do you want your way? So do you want your friends to tell you? Absolutely. I never know. Not in your restaurants. But I had an experience at somebody's restaurant a little while ago and I did not know, and I just didn't know what to do. Listen, I'd be like someone to tell you the minute a bad experience inflicted on a friend or family member or a stranger. The minute that that feels good to me, I should retire. So when you tell me it's going to be on one hand? No, no, it's going to feel like I let you down and I'm going to feel bad. But. A thousand percent of the time, I'm going to be grateful. And it's going to give us a chance to fix a problem I wouldn't have known about otherwise. So I got to know. I guess the way in which people have to tell that kind of thing is difficult. But I did. I, I didn't. It wasn't anyone I've mentioned on this thing. And but I was at a place and it was weird situation and took forever. And I just was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know if I share that or I don't. But you want your friends to share with you. You want people to tell you if they tell them the right way and it's not bulls**t. You know you want. You want to know it's helpful. I get it from my family all the time. And when you go, if you go to a friend's restaurant, will you tell them if there was an issue or will you not tell them if there's an issue? I would tell a really close friend if there were an issue. And I know how to do it in a way that is on their side. If it's not a close friend of mine, I just keep my mouth shut now. If somebody comes up to me and they ask you, they say, How was everything, which is my least favorite question in the world? Why? Because it's it's a lie. OK, tell me this is why you tell me how's everything, Brian? Oh, right. And you want to start right now. How's everything? So what if I just finished? If I just walked out of Shake Shack and I had a great and I got a burger and my favorite thing in the world, the creamsicle soda? I do think it's like the great. Maybe the thing you will go down in history for is that orange creamsicle soda. It is, I think, the best thing in the entire universe. And you ask me, I would be very happy and I would tell you here, here's the most honest way that you could do it with me. I met a there's an industry legend from the hotel business called Stamm Stan Bromley, and he worked for many, many years of the Four Seasons Hotel. And I'll never forget they had just gotten done building the gorgeous four seasons in San Francisco. 911 hits. The place was completely empty. That was the time that I had just joined the board of Open Table. So I was going out to San Francisco four times a year, and Stan would always say, Look, the hotel's empty stay here. I'll give you, you know, some insane rate 100 bucks a night or whatever place would be empty anyway. And he said the only thing I ask in return is tell me three things we could do to improve. That's a great, honest way to ask the question, so if if I were going to ask you or a restaurant colleague who would just eat at the new Union Square cafe, I'd say, give me, give me two or three things we could do to improve. That's inviting you, to be honest. That's great. Just a couple more things. You have a pretty great coaching tree of people who've worked for you and gone on to do great things, do you and I love seeing a lot of part just didn't event in the Hamptons with Shake Shack and I saw you with guys who used to work for you and I are off record. You don't miss anything off. Off the record. Off, Mike, I asked, Will are about you a number of times when? Well, and I both had drinks to see if I could get any dirt and like, there's just no dirty, just thinks the world of you. And often when somebody that kind of a thing happens, it's it's rough, do you? And it was clear to me that all these guys still look to you as the paradigm as like the great example, is that important to you? Like, do you like watching these people go with us? Yes, I would say one of my few favorite things about getting older. Is watching your kids grow up, and I feel that way about my kids at home. And I. Absolutely feel that way about alumni who have worked within the organization who. Who subscribe to a spirit of how to do business, but then took what they do in a completely different direction with their own thumbprint in ways I never could have dreamed. And so when I go to see Will and Daniel at 11 Madison Park or countless, countless other restaurants around New York City and across the whole country. It's so gratifying to see people where we had a great relationship. They love doing business with a cultural style that was completely aligned with how I would do business, but. They're wiring and their gifts and their taste add up to a completely different. Deal. And it's, you know, I was listening to the Beatles station on Sirius XM over the weekend and I was reminded that James Taylor's first album was on the album. And I love that album. I've listened to it for years. But what was cool about it was it was a similar thing. I guess it was Paul McCartney who had heard him play. I could be wrong about that, loved him and said, stylistically, you fit on the Apple label. And yet he's James Taylor. You know, it's and you feel that when you find out you feel that who come and work for you like a Colicchio worked for you and then well and Daniel and watching them go out and do their thing and being able to see whatever your contribution was to their understanding of how this all work. Yeah, must feel great. I go see Marco Kinara at half, you know, there's just they're just all over the place. There's guys that have a great restaurant in the East Village called Huertas Little Spanish Place. And you know, we had worked together at Mileena and blew smoke. It's just really fun to see that. Well, that's fantastic. This has been really fun for me. There's so much more we could have covered, but you're really an inspiring person, Danny. What what you've been able to do without losing the sense of yourself as, I mean, I guess that I was going to ask you, but you've kind of answered it, which was, do you ever feel this pressure to continue when everyone knows you as the yes, your steely and your incredibly successful businessman, but you're, you know, you invented this kind of American hospitality and restaurants and part of this being considered like the nicest person. And I was gonna ask you if you ever feel pressure to be that, but it seems to me you don't feel pressure to be that you just know no way you want to be. Yeah, if there's any one. If there's any one aspect that you don't see professionally, it has nothing to do with with my core values, but I'm a hell of a lot goofier than people probably know. Well, that's a great that's a great way to end this with the goofy but brilliant Danny Meyer. Thanks. Thanks for coming here and doing this, man. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate it. And go to his restaurants. There are, I mean, there's a reason the people over there, if you live somewhere where a Shake Shack just shut up, go. It's I will say Danny. I will never forget the first time I had a shack burger and it was for me the platonic ideal of the hamburger. And it remains so. Matt, always thank you. All right. Thanks, Robert. You can find me at Brian Koppelman on Twitter. You can find Danny, who's I have a feeling about to become really political on Twitter and let you know what he really thinks. What's your name on Twitter at Meyer? So watch that space for some explosive content coming up soon. Thanks.
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