What makes businesses like Ritz-Carlton, Disney, and Eleven Madison Park so unforgettable? In Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara—renowned hospitality leader and former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park—shares how he transformed a struggling New York brasserie into the best restaurant in the world through exceptional hospitality. In this free Unreasonable Hospitality summary, you’ll learn how to deliver extraordinary service to your customers—in a way that helps you to stand out, build lasting relationships, and make a real impact.
Hospitality as a Competitive Advantage
Eleven Madison Park (EMP), part of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), opened in 1998 but struggled to deliver a world-class dining experience worthy of its grand setting.
Over the next decade, Guidara worked alongside Michelin-starred chef Daniel Humm to redefine hospitality standards and took EMP to new heights.
EMP earned a 3-star review from The New York Times in 2008 and got upgraded to a 4-star review in 2009. In 2010, it made it to #50 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list and gradually moved up the ranks until it was named #1 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2017.
Their secret lies in unreasonable hospitality, which is much more than good service. It’s about personal, authentic connections and extraordinary experiences that make every guest feel special. Their approach shows that hospitality can be a powerful competitive edge—not just in the hospitality industry but across any other industry, be it real estate, finance, or healthcare.
In this summary, we will unpack the principles EMP used to build excellence and deliver next-level hospitality—strategies you can use to stand out in any business. It is divided into two main sections:
- Building a Strong Foundation of Excellence
- Delivering Unreasonable Hospitality
Part 1: Building a Strong Foundation of Excellence
Set a Clear Mission and Guiding Philosophy
When Will Guidara was offered the role of GM at EMP, his first priority was to meet with chef Daniel Humm to explore a true partnership between the kitchen (food) and front-of-house (hospitality). They agreed to run EMP as equals and make all major decisions collaboratively instead of the usual fine-dining setup where chefs lead and service staff follow.
Noticing that younger diners were turning away from formal dining, they set a clear mission: to make EMP “the four-star restaurant for the next generation.”
Being new to the team, Guidara spoke with each team member to get to know them and understand their challenges. Then, once the rapport was built, he invited everyone to get on board with the mission. Together, they set their strategy and their guiding philosophy by first identifying what was working, what wasn’t, and what needed to improve. They also defined the outcome they sought to achieve—a refined, innovative, authentic, and welcoming dining experience that every team member would personally want to receive.
Balance Conflicting Goals and Needs
Successful businesses balance between business systems and frontline flexibility.
Restaurant-smart companies give employees the flexibility and autonomy to create unique experiences for customers. Corporate-smart companies, on the other hand, focus on systems and controls. Both of these approaches must be balanced to be successful, as Will Guidara learned early in his career.
In our full 16-page summary, we share examples of how Guidara learned restaurant-smarts and the nuances of guest experience from Danny Meyer’s restaurants, how he learned corporate-smarts and operational/business efficiencies at Restaurant Associates, then combined them into practical business strategies like the Rule of 95/5.
Hire and Build a High-Performing Team
It’s easier to teach technical skills than to change mindsets. So when hiring, prioritize mindset and attitude over skills and experience.
Guidara shared his strategies for building a passionate, high-performing team–like how to give effective and direct feedback (praise in public, criticize in private), set clear expectations, and incorporate proper training. Guidara also introduced a 30-minute daily meeting (known as “pre-meal meeting”) to align expectations, motivate the team, and reinforce the culture. To deepen engagement, EMP launched an ownership program where team members volunteered to “own” specific parts of the restaurant experience.
In our full Unreasonable Hospitality summary, we elaborate on these and more strategies, including: how to find the right people, let go of the wrong people, equip people with what they need, instill passion and ownership, use feedback and recognition as a motivational tool, address conflicts and co-create effective solutions.
Develop a Strong Culture of Collaboration & Excellence
To deliver exceptional hospitality on a consistent basis, you need a culture of collaboration and excellence. This involves:
• Strategies to empower your team to contribute, innovate, and take ownership;
• Using shared rituals, traditions, and language to reinforce core values (e.g. reminding one another to “make the charitable assumption”, having Thanksgiving dinner as a team);
• Building team camaraderie and excellence by celebrating wins, supporting each other through challenges, and encouraging feedback and experimentation; and
• Other practices to nurture leaders at all levels, like the ownership program, peer-to-peer teaching and other leadership initiatives to build engagement, confidence, and leadership skills.
We address each of these strategies in detail, along with practical tips and EMP examples, in our full 16-page summary bundle.
Pursue Excellence Relentlessly
At Eleven Madison Park, the relentless pursuit of excellence came from constant micro-improvements and learning from top dining establishments. Guidara and Humm drew key insights from industry leaders like Per Se—adapting their precision and playful creativity to refine EMP’s service. Check out our full summary to see how EMP continuously worked on raising the bar—and how you can apply them too.
Part 2: Delivering Unreasonable Hospitality
The ingredients in Part 1 pave the way for high, consistent standards. But, to deliver customer experiences that way exceed expectations, you need even more—a culture of hospitality and the pursuit of seemingly-impossible standards.
Refocus on the Fundamentals
When you’re driving yourself toward ever-higher standards, it’s easy to burn out or lose your way.
In their intense push to become a four-star restaurant, the EMP team pushed themselves to exhaustion—until one of their morning shift cooks ran into the restaurant at 11 pm thinking she was late for work (when she was 10 hours early). This made Guidara and Humm realize that to move forward more sustainably, they had to first slow down and regain balance.
In our complete Unreasonable Hospitality summary, we explore the strategies used by EMP to reset and refocus while still aiming for excellence. For example, they introduced deep breathing exercises. In high pressure situations, staff reminded each other to take a deep breath and regain composure.
Change the Game with Unparalleled Hospitality
An audacious goal can be deeply inspiring—even if you don’t know how to achieve it yet. Despite achieving four-stars and making it to the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, EMP set even a higher goal of becoming #1 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. To achieve this, they worked on exceeding expectations on how they made people feel. Because food trends change over time, but the human desire for connection never fades.
But, how do you consistently deliver unique, unexpected experiences that exceed expectations and touch every customer on a personal level?
EMP redesigned their entire guest experience to remove all transactional elements and make their dining experience a two-way dialogue shaped by customers’ real-time inputs and signals. For example, a couple celebrating their anniversary found their private room recreated to resemble their wedding venue.
They used “improvisational hospitality” to inject meaningful surprises and once-in-a-lifetime experiences in a way that was unique, spontaneous, yet scalable. In our full summary bundle, we explain how that was achieved, enabling EMP to achieve its new mission to be “the most delicious and gracious restaurant in the world.”
Getting the Most from Unreasonable Hospitality
EMP’s journey was one of vision, passion, and commitment to excellence and unreasonable hospitality.
After it became a 4-star restaurant with a multi-hour dining experience, it was no longer practical for most guests to visit EMP regularly. This prompts the hospitality company to expand its reach by opening another restaurant, NoMad, as a more accessible counterpart to EMP. They successfully replicated the fundamentals outlined above—the right employees, a hospitality-first culture, intensive onboarding, and signature dishes—while creating a unique identity for NoMad.
If you want to apply the same principles and promote unreasonable hospitality in your own business, check out our full book summary bundle that includes an infographic, a 16-page text summary, and a 31-minute audio summary.
This book includes many more short stories, personal anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes challenges from Guidara’s journey in the restaurant industry, illustrating the key insights he gained about excellence, hospitality, and leadership. For more information, purchase the book here or visit https://www.unreasonablehospitality.com.
For more resources on customer experience, leadership, and service excellence, check out these books:
- Raving Fans: Discover a simple framework for turning customers into enthusiastic advocates.
- Delivering Happiness: Learn from Zappos’ CEO as he shares how customer service and company culture helped grow a billion-dollar business.
- Leaders Eat Last: Know how to create trust, collaboration, and purpose-driven teams.
Who Should Read This Book
- Leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, and business owners aiming to build a culture of excellence and quality service
- Anyone in the hospitality or service industry who wants to deliver memorable experiences for their customers, differentiate their business and make a positive impact.
About the Author of Unreasonable Hospitality
Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect is written by Will Guidara. He is a restaurateur, speaker, and hospitality expert best known for transforming Eleven Madison Park into the world’s best restaurant. As the former co-owner of Make It Nice, he helped create several celebrated dining experiences focused on unreasonable hospitality—the art of exceeding expectations through generosity and human connection. After leaving Eleven Madison Park in 2019, Guidara shifted his focus to speaking, writing, and consulting on leadership and hospitality across industries.
Unreasonable Hospitality Quotes
“No one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable…you need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn’t yet exist.”
“Hospitality is a selfish pleasure. It feels great to make other people feel good.”
“Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent ‘foolishly’… Because that last 5 percent has an outsize impact on the guest experience, it’s some of the smartest money you’ll ever spend.”
“Praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment.”
“Managing staff boils down to two things: how you praise people, and how you criticize them.”
“These ownership programs gave these motivated, creative people a project to engage with while they earned their stripes.”
“Excellence is the culmination of thousands of details executed perfectly.”
“It was our pursuit of excellence that brought us to the table, but it was our pursuit of Unreasonable Hospitality that took us to the top.”
“We were no longer in the business of running an extraordinary restaurant; we were now in the business of human connection.”
Service is black and white; hospitality is color: Black and white means you’re doing your job with competence and efficiency; colour means you make people feel great about the job you’re doing for them.
Click to download the Unreasonable Hospitality infographic & summary
