A great restaurant doesn't distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes but by how well they handle those mistakes.
The most important thing you can do is make the distinction between customer service and guest hospitality. You need both things to thrive, but they are completely different.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Customer service is focused on fulfilling needs, while guest hospitality emphasizes creating a welcoming experience.
In this quote, Danny Meyer highlights the crucial difference between customer service and guest hospitality. While customer service involves meeting the basic needs of clients, guest hospitality goes beyond this to create an inviting and memorable experience. Both elements are essential for success in any service-oriented business, but they require different approaches and mindsets to implement effectively.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation on improving business practices, you might say, 'As Danny Meyer wisely points out, understanding the difference between customer service and guest hospitality is pivotal for our growth.'
More from Danny Meyer
All quotes βMy history has been to grow the roots as deeply as you can before going on to the next thing. That's why it took 10 years to go from Union Square Cafe to Gramercy Tavern, and another 10 years to go from Blue Smoke's first location to its second, and five to go from Shake Shack 1 to Shake Shack 2.
In an age when so many groups are rolling out restaurants faster than your local baker makes donuts, my goal is that each restaurant feels hand-crafted. That they have their own soul.
Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions - for and to - express it all.
Similar quotes
In a period of economic downturn, the overwhelming instinct is to pare back, cut costs, and lay off. If you do that, do so with your strategy in mind. The worst mistake is to cut across the board. Instead, reconnect and recommit to a clear strategy that will distinguish yourself from others.
No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.
As a company, we have to be very transparent. We are in a business very related to finance, and I want this company to last long, and I want this company to be audited by everyone.
I'm a believer that you accomplish much, much more with direct relationships than by using an intermediary. And that cash you keep in the bank can be the difference between staying alive as a small business, or not.
The game business reinvents itself every five years.
We are not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other company.