I HAVE BEEN FLY-FISHING ONLY once in my life. It was in Woody Creek, Colorado, outside Aspen, and I went with a young guide who had come highly recommended by the original chef at Eleven Madison Park, Kerry Heffernan (no relation to my wife, Audrey), an expert fly-fisherman. My guide, displaying wisdom that belied his age, called me over as he waded into a clear, rushing stream, and picked up a small rock. He turned it over and smiled. From a distance, I noticed nothing unusual on its slick underside. I had no idea what he was looking for, or at.
“Here, come look,” he said. He pointed out dozens of tiny aquatic insects hatching on the rock. This told him precisely which fly to tie because, as he explained, the trout would only bite on an artificial fly that resembled what was actually hatching. The guide then put the stone back exactly where he had found it. I was intrigued. There was a world of information under that rock, if only one knew or cared enough to look for it.
I took a valuable business lesson back home to New York.
There’s always a story behind a story if you look for it; and
you can augment your success at “hooking” customers by taking the care, time, and interest to look. On my rounds in our dining rooms, I’m constantly turning over rocks, hunting for those details—a guest’s impatient look or a glance at a watch, an untouched dish, a curious gaze at our artwork.
These details could indicate that someone is bored, impatient, in need of affection, puzzled, interested, or just daydreaming. But each gesture is a potential opportunity for me to visit the table and provide some hospitality.
It’s human nature for people to take precisely as much interest in you as they believe you’re taking in them. There is no stronger way to build relationships than taking a genuine interest in other human beings and allowing them to share their stories. When we take an active interest in the guests at our restaurants, we create a sense of community and a feeling of “shared ownership.”
Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it’s theirs. They can’t wait to share it with friends, and what they’re really sharing, beyond the culinary experience, is the experience of feeling important and loved. That sense of affiliation builds trust and a sense of being accepted and appreciated, invariably leading to repeat business, a necessity for any company’s long-term survival.
And it all starts by turning over the rocks.
I’m constantly reminding our staff members to initiate a relationship with our guests whenever it’s appropriate. For example, it’s amazing how powerful it can be simply to ask guests where they are from. Often, that leads to making a connection because we know someone in common, or we’ve enjoyed the same restaurant, or we can share a sports story.
The old game of “Do you know So-and-so?” is a classic example of turning over rocks to further human connection. And it works. When you are considering several restaurants for dinner, other things being equal, you’ll choose the one whose maître d’ went to the same school as you, or roots for your sports team, or has the same birthday as you, or knows your second cousin. You’ll also tend to choose a restaurant whose chef came out to greet you on your last visit, or who saved you the last soft-shell crab special, knowing it was a favorite of yours. The information is always there if it matters enough to look for it.
Making my rounds in the dining rooms involves, more than anything else, my ability to see, hear, and sense what’s going on so that I can connect intelligently with our staff and guests and make things happen. I don’t have a standard approach for every table, but I often start with a gut sense that a patron is ready for a visit. That’s what springs me into action. I might just walk over to a table and say, “Thanks for being here.” That puts the ball in the other court. The encounter either does or doesn’t advance from there. But once the rock is turned over and a dialogue begins, I start to learn something, and I always act on what I learn. (And sometimes I learn that the person just wants to be left alone to eat dinner.)
One night in April 2002, soon after opening our barbecue restaurant Blue Smoke, I noticed a couple in the back room gazing out at the trees in the courtyard. I could sense that they were debating whether they liked their ribs, so I went over to greet them. “Where are you from?” I asked.
“We’re from Kansas City,” the man said.
“We’re going to have a tough time living up to the barbecue standards of your hometown,” I replied.
As we chatted, I also learned that they had recently moved to New York and that they were very happy to have discovered a real pit barbecue place in their neighborhood. “I only wish we didn’t have to make reservations for barbecue four weeks in advance,” the man said. I told him that we had just decided to leave half the tables open for walk-ins as a way of encouraging spontaneous visits to the restaurant. That news pleased them. Then the man added, “You know, in Kansas City they give you more than one kind of sauce. Would you ever consider serving a sweeter and spicier sauce than this?”
My hunch was right: something had been on their minds. Now I knew what it was, and also how to make a connection. “It’s interesting to hear you say that, because we’re actually working on a Kansas City–style sauce right now in the kitchen. Would you like to be the first guests to try it?”
I went to the kitchen for a pitcher of that sauce and brought it back out to the table. The man poured some on his brisket (something a Texan would never do). “This,” he said beaming, “takes me home!” I asked for his business card, and later wrote him a note when Blue Smoke began offering Kansas City–style barbecue sauce.
I’m certain that this couple felt a sense of ownership in the restaurant after our encounter. As far as they were concerned, they were in part responsible for our putting the new sauce on the table. That’s the kind of dialogue we want to have. Hospitality can exist only when there is human dialogue. This particular dialogue provided great customer feedback and helped us forge a bond with two customers— not a bad investment of six minutes of my time!
I try to be in the restaurants as often as possible. For nearly twenty years, until the opening of The Modern on
West Fifty-third Street, all my restaurants were within a ten- minute walk of one another and my apartment—and I made it my business to visit every one of them during lunch. I’m not there just to greet and shake hands. I’m building daily communities within the restaurant’s larger community.
The best way to do this is to first gather as much information as I can about our guests. I call this collecting dots. In fact, I urge our managers to ABCD—always be collecting dots.
Dots are information. The more information you collect, the more frequently you can make meaningful connections that can make other people feel good and give you an edge in business. Using whatever information I’ve collected to gather guests together in a spirit of shared experience is what I call connecting the dots. If I don’t turn over the rocks, I won’t see the dots. If I don’t collect the dots, I can’t connect the dots. If I don’t know that someone works, say, for a magazine whose managing editor I happen to know, I’ve lost a chance to make a meaningful connection that could enhance our relationship with the guest and the guest’s relationship with us. The information is there. You just have to choose to look.
I always try to sense opportunities to glean information, and it’s not limited to information about our guests. I will often just stand on the periphery of the dining room and watch. I gauge the temperature of the room, the smell, and the noise. Most important, I watch my staff members. Are they enjoying one another’s company? And are they focused on their work? If the answer to both questions is yes, I feel confident that we’re at the top of our game.
Think about every time you’ve walked into a restaurant or an office, or even looked into the dugout at a baseball game. When the team is having fun and is focused, the chances are very good that the team will win.
I study the faces of our guests. If I see that the direction of their eyes intersects at the center of the table, I know that they are actively engaged with one another and I’m confident that everything is fine. This is an inopportune time to visit. Guests dine out primarily to be with one another, and their eyes tell me they are doing precisely what they came to do.
Whenever I see that the direction of someone’s eyes is not bisecting the center of the table, then a visit may be warranted. I am not certain that something is wrong, but I am certain that there is an opportunity to make a connection without feeling like an intruder. It could be that a guest has been waiting too long for his or her food and is looking for a waiter. It could be that someone is simply curious about the architecture, a work of art on the wall, or, for that matter, an attractive guest across the dining room. Or a guest could be momentarily bored, or just taking a pause, or having a fight with a companion.
I also look for solo diners. From my own experiences dining alone, I know that solo diners have a straightforward agenda: to treat themselves to a gift of quality, contemplative time, and to do so at our restaurant. I consider that the ultimate compliment, and I’m also hoping that today’s solo diner will host tomorrow’s party of four.
A little perception goes a long way. Hospitality can, in the right instance, involve little more than standing nearby and allowing my body language to smile at the guests. If I catch, say, a woman’s eye, she may beckon me to the table and
let me know that she needs water, a waiter, or the check. If I thank her for coming to the restaurant, she might say, “You’re very welcome. This place is so much better than your other restaurants!” Or, “We were wondering when you opened this restaurant.” Or, “It’s nice to be back. It’s gotten much better. Last time, the ser vice was so slow.” Or, “We hadn’t been back since you opened. It was so loud then!
How did you fix that?”
In these exchanges I’m collecting information not just about who our guests are, but about how they feel about our product. One advantage a restaurant has over many other businesses is that we can get instant feedback while our consumers are consuming our product. People have an emotional attachment to food and to their money, and they come to our restaurants with high expectations. To the degree that they believe we are on their side, we usually don’t have to work very hard to get candid reactions.
If our customers love what they’ve ordered, I can tell by looking at their faces (and their plates). If they aren’t happy, they’re going to let me or my staff know—as long as we’ve built the right relationship with them. One night in Blue Smoke, I noticed that some diners had finished eating but had left most of their onion rings untouched on the plate.
They could simply have been full, but I went over to say hi and to have a closer look. Sure, enough, the rings didn’t look crispy. “You didn’t love them,” I said, gesturing to the rings.
“You know, you’re right,” the man answered. “They were the only thing I thought could have been better. I wish they’d been crispier and spicier.”
“Well, then,” I said, “you’re not paying for them.” A moment later, as they got up to leave, the man handed me
a $100 bill. “This is for the waiter,” he said. Good as this waiter was, I knew that the generous gratuity was in part a reflection of the fact that the guests appreciated our taking a special interest in them and caring for them. In the end, we decided to take the onion rings off the menu, because we couldn’t get them consistently right without incurring a very high labor cost to produce them. That, of course, led to a spate of new complaints: “Bring back the onion rings!”
IT HAD OCCURRED TO me in Woody Creek that until my fishing guide turned over that rock, I’d have been content to stand at the edge of the running stream enjoying the dreamy valley and mountains. But in business, turning over the rocks and reading the water, as a fly-fisherman might do, gives you crucial information so that you can take an even deeper interest in your customers, and encourages them to do the same with you.
Since I opened Union Square Cafe in 1985, guests who have dined with us there and in our other restaurants are presented with both a check and a comment card, an idea I had first seen while I was at Pesca. (There, guests were asked for their name and address, but feedback and comments were not solicited.) If guests write their name and address on the front of the card, we place them on the mailing list for our newsletter. That way, as promised on the comment card, we can “keep them informed of upcoming events,” such as our “morning market meetings,” “wine and food dinners,” and cooking classes. On the back of the card there’s room for guests to share their opinions about the food, wine, ambience, ser vice, and anything else on their minds—an ideal opportunity for us to collect dots. Early on, I responded personally to every comment card, but today that is the job of our chefs and managers, who read up to
100 cards a week. It’s an excellent way to build trust, encourage and enrich dialogue, and give our guests the confidence that, at our restaurants, their suggestions are taken seriously.
It may seem obvious now, but in the 1980s using a comment card to compile a mailing list for a fine restaurant’s newsletter was an innovation of sorts. You would rarely if ever see comment cards distributed in fine restaurants—that was more the domain of places like Denny’s. But within two or three years I began to notice that the wording I chose for our first comment card—“We want you to return to Union Square Cafe and eagerly seek your comments or suggestions”—was being adopted almost word for word in all kinds of restaurants. Today, we have collected well over 150,000 names on our mailing lists. The lists have proved to be an extremely effective way to build a community and stay connected with our guests and friends all over the country—and even worldwide. Today, of course, the entire marketing profession is out to collect e-mail addresses to stay in touch with existing and prospective customers. We do that too, but in my judgment nothing can or will replace the meaningful contact that happens with a personal note or newsletter sent the old-fashioned way.
One of the oldest sayings in business is “The customer is always right.” I think that’s become a bit outdated. I want to go on the offensive to create opportunities for our customers to feel that they are being heard even when they’re not right. To do so, I always actively encourage them
—when I’m on my rounds, in our comment cards, and in letters or e-mail to us—to let us know if they feel something’s not right. When they do, I thank them.
I HAVE ALWAYS VIEWED excellence as a journey rather than a destination. Taking that journey demands a form of athleticism. It is the athlete’s nature to call on all resources to compete and win. I believe it’s possible to apply to business the same athletic skills I would apply on a tennis court or a baseball diamond. I see this as a combination of innate ability, focused training, and a persistent zeal to win.
A friend once told me a story about an athletic display by Governor Jeb Bush of Florida. My friend, who is a very successful businessman—and, I should note, a Democrat— opened an office in Florida with about forty employees. On the day the company was incorporated, out of the blue, he received a personal phone call from Governor Bush (whom he had never met) thanking him for doing business in Florida. “Here’s a special number,” the governor said, “that I want you to use if you ever need any roads moved or bridges built for your company.” My friend remains a Democrat, but he left that transaction very impressed with Governor Bush.
Whatever your politics, that’s an inspirational business story. It’s the kind of unexpected gesture that sends a clear message to the governor’s constituents: I’m not taking one vote for granted. In my business, which is so dependent on repeat customers, I never take a vote for granted either. I’m campaigning for a core constituency of regulars. I don’t know too many businesses that can survive without one.
If I see a new area code or zip code on our reservations list, or if I notice that some guests come from as far away as, for instance, St. Paul, Minnesota; Highland Park, Illinois; or Cambridge, Massachusetts, I will make sure that these guests get special attention. We might ask them how they heard about us. We might ask them if they are in town on business or a vacation. We will ask where else they’ll be
dining while they are in New York. That opens a dialogue with them, as well as an opportunity to send them to one of our other restaurants—where they can expect to get another special welcome. The hope is that when they return home, they’ll spread the word about each of our restaurants.
How do you get customers to come back for more?
That’s the question facing every business owner, whether the business is a bowling alley, pharmacy, computer company, or tattoo parlor. There are two processes at work
—trial and repeat. And it’s critically important to prevail in each of them. If you own a restaurant and you’re fortunate enough to persuade someone to give it an initial try (no small feat), you’d better make a great impression and win the first round. I think that most businesses are better at coddling regulars than they are at focusing on first-timers. But both are crucial to any business; although it’s obviously important to keep your steady clientele happy, life depends on auspicious beginnings! In tennis, you can’t possibly win a tournament without first having won each of the earlier rounds. If we can get to the third round with a guest, we’ve got a good shot at moving him or her into the important group of patrons who become cherished regulars.
It’s always fascinating to see which people choose to become regulars at any one of our restaurants. We don’t necessarily have the same core of habitués at each place. In fact, only a very few patrons love everything we do with equal enthusiasm. More typically, we’ve found that a dyed- in-the-wool regular at one of our restaurants loves one or two of the others, and that’s it. This is usually a matter of chemistry, and of preferences in food and design.
Even so, our batting average is pretty good. I’d guess we succeed at earning repeat business over 70 percent of the
time. It’s significant that the older our businesses become, the more popular they become—and not just according to the Zagat Survey. With few exceptions, our restaurants have also enjoyed increased revenues each successive year they’ve been open. I know that popularity is not in and of itself a measure of excellence but it is one reliable measure of how many people you’re pleasing, and how well you’re pleasing them.
If an avid restaurant-goer in New York dines out three times a week, that’s twelve times a month. People love discovering new experiences when they dine out, so I assume that about eight of those times they’ll decide to try a place where they’ve never been, whether it’s an establishment that has just opened or one that has been around for years.
That still leaves four meals per month to return to old favorites. I don’t expect anyone to eat at any of our restaurants every day or even every week (though we are remarkably fortunate to feed and serve a substantial number of seriously devoted, loyal creatures of habit). I’m deeply grateful when regulars who dine with us three or four times a week think of our restaurant not just as another destination but also as their club—or better still, as an extension of their family and home.
My goal is to earn regular, repeat patronage from a large number of people—40 percent of our lunch business and 25 percent of our dinner business—who will dine at our restaurants six to twelve times a year. Unlike a Broadway show, which most people will see just once no matter how much they’ve enjoyed it, a solid restaurant experience should make you want to return for more. There are always more dishes to sample, more waiters by whom to be served, and more tables from which to view the ever-changing
scene. At its best, a restaurant should not let guests leave without feeling as though they’ve been satisfyingly hugged.
If you can do that, regardless of what product you are offering, you’ve built a solid foundation for your business. Those satisfied customers become not just your regulars but also your apostles. They’ll proceed to sell your product for you by telling the world how much they like it. Automobile companies and watchmakers have long understood that people buy their products not just because of how the product itself performs, but to tell a story about themselves. Almost any watch tells time; every car can get you from point A to point B; and every restaurant can feed you. Just as my choice of a watch to wear and a car to drive (and be seen driving) says something about me, so too does my choice of where I dine frequently. We want as many of our guests as possible to be proud to identify themselves with our restaurants. Our job is to give people a story worth telling.
For us, building a community of regulars has become more efficient, with computers and online reservations, than it was in our early days, when we maintained a standard paper-and-pencil reservation book. I receive computer- generated copies of the detailed reservation sheets from each of our restaurants first thing every day. My assistant also reviews the sheets in the morning, looking for tidbits of information that can help us offer our guests more hospitality. Knowing who is dining where—and when—helps me determine how to plan and plot out my day. It also gives me the opportunity to get involved with seating and greeting plans. We look for opportunities to create chance encounters by strategically seating people with similar business interests near one another. We also try to create privacy for those who want it. I happen to love maps. I view our reservationists as cartographers, the reservation sheets
as a map, and the dining experience as a brief vacation for our guests. As with any trip, there are lots of routes one can take; and it’s our job to draw a map with the greatest possible detail. The more specific information we can gather ahead of someone’s dining experience, the greater the chance that we can create a “rave” experience. Is it a special occasion? A first visit? Does this guest prefer a quiet table? Was there any problem the last time this guest visited? Does any guest have an allergy? This guest loves red wine! That guest is a columnist for Newsweek. Another is going to a Knicks game. And so on.
Our telephone reservationists, who are our first line of offense in delivering hospitality, listen carefully and then input whatever data they receive from a caller into our Open Table reservation and “guest notes” database. (In the old days, we’d also gather information, but it was simply written in pencil on the reservation sheet for the day. That system made it unlikely that we’d ever be able to retrieve the information again.) This information tells our hosts, maître d’, managers, and servers a lot about a guest’s needs, and helps us to customize our ser vice and hospitality.
We also make sure to enter into “customer notes” any previous mistakes we made (“overcooked salmon on 7/16, spilled wine on purse 5/12”). We also indicate all “special requests” (“likes table 42; bring hot sauce with food; loves corner table; ice on side always with cocktails; allergic to shellfish; serve coffee after dessert”), which then show up on our computer reservation screen. As long as we make it clear that we’re interested in knowing through active listening, most people are delighted to tell us exactly what they want or need.
When a reservation indicates that a guest is dining at one of our restaurants for the first time, we’ll make sure the
host knows. If we are to stand any chance of creating a new regular, it starts here. We’ll need to win that trial round!
It’s even possible to use the reservations sheets to begin the hospitality experience before anyone sets foot in the restaurant. One day I noticed on a reservation sheet that a couple would be coming in that evening to Gramercy Tavern to celebrate their twentieth anniversary—a big-deal night, for sure. That morning I picked up the phone to call them and thanked them for sharing the special occasion with us. “Bring a good appetite,” I said, “and enjoy your anniversary.” The woman on the other end of the line was happily surprised to hear from me, and said she was just about to confirm her reservation. “No need to call,” I said. “It’s taken care of.”
After we hung up, I confirmed the reservation at Gramercy Tavern and instructed the restaurant to send a complimentary midcourse to the couple that evening.
Knowing it would be something delicious delivered by a wonderful waiter, I was confident we would create an evening worth talking about.
That is being proactive about offering hospitality, and it’s what our managers do when they’re performing at their best. Many businesses depend on word of mouth. People talk about where and how they celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays (“What did you do for your birthday? Where did he take you for Valentine’s Day?”) and so those special occasions are especially rich opportunities to build word-of-mouth business.
Reviewing the reservation sheets that same morning, I learned that a regular guest was coming for dinner at Tabla, having visited three of our other restaurants over the previous two days. These included Jazz Standard, our music
club downstairs from Blue Smoke, where this guest had enjoyed hearing the wonderful pianist Bill Charlap. It is absolutely critical to know such details. I called Tracy Wilson, our general manager at Tabla, and urged her to acknowledge how much we appreciated his loyalty.
Then I saw on another reservation sheet that a couple I knew who were coming in for dinner that night at Blue Smoke had indicated that they wanted to give their best regards to me. Why wait? I promptly picked up the telephone, called them, and left a message on their answering machine: “Hey, Helen and Paul, this is Danny Meyer. I noticed that you’re coming to Blue Smoke tonight, and I just want to let you know how much your loyalty means. I won’t be able to be at the restaurant to greet you personally, but I hope you’re both well and that you’ll enjoy Blue Smoke tonight.”
I realize that I don’t have to do this kind of thing, but there is simply no point for me—or anyone on my staff—to work hard every day for the purpose of offering guests an average experience. I want to hear: “We love your restaurant, we adore the food, but your people are what we treasure most about being here.” That’s the reaction that makes me most proud and tells me we’re succeeding on all levels. I encourage each manager to take ten minutes a day to make three gestures that exceed expectations and take a special interest in our guests. That translates into 1,000 such gestures every year, multiplied by over 100 outstanding managers throughout our restaurants. For any business owner, that can add up to a lot of repeat business.
In the late 1990s, when I first started hearing about Web- based electronic reservations books, I was very resistant to the whole notion. I thought that by taking online reservations, we would be losing the advantage we had
always had with our warm, human telephone staff. We would be like every other restaurant.
Then I changed my view, for one reason: to close that window of access to people who preferred making their reservations online would be poor hospitality. It may be more convenient for them to reserve at eleven-thirty at night when they’re sitting at their computers than during our regular business hours. It would let them check out the availability of a table without making a single call, without the frustration of a busy signal, without being put on hold— and without eventually being told that there’s nothing available.
Once I finally accepted the inevitability of online reservations, I fell in love with the process and its benefits. Every time somebody makes a reservation on the Internet, that’s one less telephone call for our reservationist to handle. As a result, the reservationist can more often avoid making the annoying request, “May I put you on hold while I take another call?”
The information we receive—whether a booking was made by telephone or on the Internet—is instantly added to the file of guests’ preferences that we once recorded manually on reservation sheets or occasionally on file cards.
Now, thanks to the vast record-keeping capacity of the computer, I can measure the degree to which guests are regulars. I can know what their favorite table is, or if they have a favorite (or least favorite) server. I can know when a guest’s birthday or anniversary is. I can know if guests are regulars at our other restaurants—in which case I’m even more pleased to see them coming in to try another one of our restaurants for the first time. All this adds up to a gold
mine of information, which allows us to connect all sorts of dots.
Online reservations also allow guests to make their own comments. One guest, describing himself as a “super- Eleven Madison Park regular” and wine enthusiast, was making, by his own count, his 149th visit. If we see that guests qualify for VIP status for Open Table, meaning that they’ve made a huge number of online reservations at all sorts of other restaurants, we know that we’re welcoming people who frequently dine out at other fine restaurants.
That’s a valuable opportunity to turn proven restaurant aficionados into our own regulars.
Occasionally, there are angry, demanding, or even abusive callers who do test our reservationists’ patience. We have designed a shorthand system to give us a heads-up about a potentially difficult situation. It’s another way we take a proactive, athletic approach to hospitality. If a reservationist has had to work especially hard to calm down or accommodate an irate caller, we may use the notation WFM (“welcome from manager”), which means that the guest may need some extra attention from a manager.
When people let us know that they don’t wish to be interrupted unnecessarily, the notation is “do not disturb” or “drop and go”—that is, deliver the food and leave them alone. This note is passed on to the host and waitstaff. Our job is not to impose our own needs on our guests: it’s to be aware of their needs and to deliver the goods accordingly. In hospitality, one size fits one!
When I spent my summer as a tour guide working for my dad in Italy, I reported to his manager in Rome, Giorgio Smaldone, a proud, chain-smoking native of Salerno who taught me a lot about the essence of hospitality. Giorgio’s favorite expression about how to treat tour group members,
delivered in his special form of English, was: “There is to make them feel important. Always start with the one who most need feel important!” Many years later, a wonderful server who had been at Union Square Cafe for more than a decade told me that when she had previously worked for Mary Kay Cosmetics, Mary Kay would teach the sales people that everyone goes through life with an invisible sign hanging around his or her neck reading, “make me feel important.” Giorgio and Mary Kay had it right. The most successful people in any business that depends on human relationships are the ones who know about that invisible sign and have the vision to see how brightly it is flashing.
And the true champions know best how to embrace the human being wearing the sign.
DESPITE HIGH-TECH ENHANCEMENTS, RESTAURANTS will
always remain a hands-on, high-touch, people-oriented business. Nothing will ever replace shaking people’s hands, smiling, and looking them in the eye as a genuine means of welcoming them. And that is why hospitality—unlike widgets
—is not something you can stamp out on an assembly line. But its powerful impact can be taught, and teaching it with hundreds of colleagues is the best way I’ve found to extend my reach.
One reality of our business growth is that I cannot be everywhere at all times. I compensate for the fact that there’s only one of me by studying the maps and responding. I’ll often run into somebody on the street and be able to say, “I understand you were at Tabla last night. How was your dinner?” People immediately feel good and are surprised that I would know this. But why wouldn’t I? If I want our guests to take an interest in us, I’d better take an equal interest in them.
I also use this information to bring together people from similar professions, or to connect people who I know share some common ground—whether it’s from the art world, financial ser vices, politics, the culinary business, book publishing, journalism, advertising, or design. I call this planting like seeds in like gardens in order to extend our community. I’ll purposely make certain that these people are seated near, but not next to, one another. Or I may simply introduce them, hoping that something positive, beyond a good meal, may come out of the “chance encounter.” A publisher who sees another publisher dining at Union Square Cafe will logically assume: “This is where publishers come for lunch.” A food journalist who sees a well-known chef dining two tables away may conclude: “This place must be good if he eats here.” I call this form of dot-connecting “benevolent manipulation.” Everyone wins, including us.
Through the years I’ve had plenty of help from our loyal friends in building communities. Roger W. Straus Jr.—the brilliant book publisher and world-class bon vivant who cofounded Farrar, Straus and Giroux and led that company for nearly six decades until his death at age eighty-seven in May 2004—became one of our best and most devoted patrons soon after Union Square Cafe opened. By our estimate, Roger ate some 3,000 lunches there—his favorite dishes were oysters on the half shell, black bean soup, smoked steak sandwich, and vitello tonnato—and almost all of those lunches took place at table 38, where he held court an average of three days a week for nearly two decades.
Roger was proud of the people with whom he dined— erudite editors, Nobel Prize winners, best-selling authors— and it was always important to him to introduce them to his other friends. Sometimes we’d be chatting at his table and he’d lean forward to ask me if I knew “who the son of a bitch was over there” at table 30 or table 36. When I’d say no, he
was always kind enough to introduce me. Seeing Roger lunching at table 38 made any other author, editor, agent, or publisher aware that Union Square Cafe was the downtown haunt for the literary trade. It also didn’t hurt that across the room sat another legend in the book world: Paul Gottlieb of Harry Abrams, a leading publisher of art books and other literary works. Through the years, many other tables in that dining room began to be filled by other publishers, many of whom are important fixtures at the restaurant.
Sometimes I’ll see a name and remember that it’s a guest who once held a book party at Gramercy Tavern or Eleven Madison Park. I can then remind the maître d’ to welcome him or her back. One day I’ll see that novelist Richard North Patterson, a longtime friend of our restaurants who dines with us whenever he’s in town from San Francisco, is coming in. I recall that handgun control is the subject of his latest novel, and when I notice that Donna Dees-Thomases, a founder of the Million Mom March, is eating in the restaurant as well, it’s natural that I’m going to seat them near each other, setting up a chance for a beneficial outcome.
Google (or any online search engine, for that matter) is one of the best dot-collecting tools ever invented. I might see a name on the reservation list I think I recognize. I can then check Google to find out who the person is. It’s a remarkable tool for hospitality and for drawing even more detailed maps. Google proved to be amazingly useful during the Republican National Convention of 2004. We served a late-night dinner party at Eleven Madison Park for about a dozen media people who included NBC’s Tom Brokaw, the New York Times’s R.W. ( Johnny) Apple, Maureen Dowd, Todd Purdum, plus Purdum’s wife, Dee Dee Myers, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary. Following a marathon evening at the
convention, they all finally sat down to a five-course dinner at eleven-forty-five. Before I left at one o’clock in the morning, I said, “If you folks stay long enough, we’ll have to serve you scrambled eggs for dessert.” And Johnny Apple, who’s from Akron, Ohio, said, “I can tell you’re a Midwest boy, probably attended a bunch of coming-out parties.” I smiled. “In fact,” I said, “it was by going to debutante parties as a nineteen-year-old in St. Louis that I first learned about eating scrambled eggs at two in the morning.”
“But I bet you’ve never had ‘eggs daffodil,’” he said. “That’s the real thing.” He had me there.
As I was leaving for the night, I said to my team, “You guys need to go online and figure out what ‘eggs daffodil’ are, and I want you to make sure to put a bowl of them on the table by two o’clock in the morning.” After all, if you believe that word of mouth makes the world go around, here were eleven people who had fairly big, powerful mouths.
Googling “eggs daffodil” revealed just a vague description, but it was enough to inspire Eleven Madison Park’s chef, Kerry Heffernan, who improvised what he imagined eggs daffodil to be, creating an inspired recipe that included zucchini blossoms and cheese. They were brought out at two o’clock and served in a copper pot to Johnny Apple, right around dessert time, as the journalists were making some toasts. (Brokaw and Apple would soon be retiring and were each covering their last political convention.)
The next day Kerry told me the eggs daffodil “blew them away.” Kerry loved the recipe—he had cooked the eggs and cream slowly, put them in a blender with some beurre fondue, and then gently heated them up again, stirring in some zucchini blossoms—and said he had decided to put it
on our brunch menu. The ABCD strategy—always be collecting dots—had once again strengthened a sense of community and had challenged our staff to express more caring and creativity than our guests could have expected. It also provided an opportunity to add more value by listening, using our imagination, and executing.
We had served a wonderful dinner as it was. But when Johnny Apple made that remark about “eggs daffodil,” it was as if he had presented us with a rock with all kinds of life growing underneath it, and we were then able to tie the right fly to catch the fish. Two years later, I saw Tom Brokaw at a dinner party, and he told twelve other people the story of eggs daffodil. Ask Johnny Apple or the others what they remember most about that evening’s menu. I guarantee it’s the eggs daffodil.
