Danny Meyer Quotes
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When I was young, I had no choice as to what I was eating.
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How can you franchise hospitality?
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The great thing about capitalism is that it's a system that works.
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If you're constantly making business decisions on behalf of your investors first, ultimately you're going to wear down your other stakeholders. It's going to be potentially hurtful for your employees and your customers and the community you do business with.
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Be aware of textural elements throughout a party, like silverware, stemware, and linens. But the biggest element is metaphorical: it's your own touch. How are you making people feel?
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I learned that you shouldn't take your most esoteric concept and fit it into the largest space with the highest fixed costs. It puts too much pressure on the restaurant to hit grand slams every day when there just aren't enough people who want to watch that sport.
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Restaurants and chefs have become followed by such a broad swath of the public, in a way that used to be reserved for sports stars, movie stars, and theater actors. Restaurants are in the firmament of today's common culture.
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I grew up in a reform Jewish family in St. Louis. Our idea of Judaism was no bar mitzvahs and a Christmas tree that had a skirt at the bottom embroidered with the names of my grandparents.
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It's always imperative to improve and to remain dynamic - or you'll become lunch, as opposed to serving it.
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Every restaurant needs to have a point of view.
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If someone said, 'You've got to eat your next two meals at American fast-food restaurants,' I would do one meal at Chipotle and one meal at Popeyes fried chicken.
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When chefs like Wolfgang Puck became household names, that became a compelling reason for an intelligent young person to go into the cooking profession. There have been no waiters who have turned into household names. The service and hospitality aspects have clearly lagged behind the kitchen.
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You can't let challenges argue you out of doing what you know is the right thing.
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Shake Shack started off as a summer hot dog cart in Madison Square Park. It was not meant to be a company - it was completely accidental. It started off as an expression of community building.
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The part of capitalism that doesn't work for me is when capitalists make decisions in the way that Adam Smith suggested, which is that as long as you do everything in the interest of the investor, you're going to actually make the best decisions for all other stakeholders. I don't happen to agree with that.
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During one of his uncannily well-timed impromptu visits to my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, Pat Cetta taught me how to manage people. Pat was the owner of a storied New York City steakhouse called Sparks, and by that time, he was an old pro at running a fine restaurant.
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One of my great teachers was the late Jean-Claude Vrinat of Taillevent in Paris.
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Sometimes, early in their careers, chefs make the mistake of adding one too many things to a plate to get attention. If a chef is just coming up with wiz-bang gimmicks on their plate, that has nothing to do with bringing real pleasure to people.
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Long before Starbucks popularized the phrase 'the third place' - somewhere to interact outside of work and home - it was neighborhood restaurants that helped to define places like Union Square.
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I feel like not knowing Joe Torre is a hole in my New York experience.
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Steak and its accompaniments - wine, vegetables, potatoes and generous desserts - is a primal source of pleasure to which many people can relate.
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Hospitality exists when you believe that the other person is on your side.
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Short of hiring a new staff, consider giving subpar workers a chance to improve. Tell them why they're not measuring up and give them a set amount of time to make specific improvements.
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Whole Foods has been brilliant at changing the way food is produced because they just won't buy it if it doesn't meet their standards.