Giving gifts can be a fun way to practice your hospitality skills. And according to one of the world’s most renowned restaurateurs, if you believe success is determined by the amount of money spent, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Will Guidara, the former owner of the upscale New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park, assumed his soon-to-be wife could adore the Cartier necklace he purchased for their first anniversary. She endeavored to like it instead and even wore it once. Guidara noticed his wife’s dissatisfaction in New York. Guidara witnessed his wife’s dismay when the New York Times ended its sudoku-meets-crossword-puzzle game “Boxing Match,” so he asked the game’s designer to create extra 50 levels, which he printed up and bound into a book for his wife. Guidara was startled to discover that his wife valued this gift considerably more than the hundreds of dollars he had paid for the necklace.
In an interview with Squawk Box” co-anchor Becky Quick last week, Guidara remarked, “That “Boxing Match” book could not have made sense to offer to some other human being on the globe.” He stated, “She felt noticed, she felt loved, and she felt recognized.
According to Guidara, the lesson is that money’s value is incomparably more than the value of time to people. You cannot recover time, but with cash, you can.
The unanticipated is worth more than the expensive.
“The feeling of that gift is overwhelming,” he said of receiving someone else’s time or energy. And it might not even be expensive. Giving someone your time and attention, “listening, and being there for them… According to Guidara, author of the book “Unreasonable Hospitality,” this is the greatest gift we can give someone. This is also the core idea behind unreasonable hospitality.
Guidara has benefited from this idea both as a restaurateur and husband. In 2006, he took over as general manager of Eleven Madison Park, working with chef Daniel Humm to turn around the failing eatery and elevate it to the ranks of the best in the world.
The two launched Made Nice, NoMad Bar, NoMad New York, NoMad Los Angeles, and NoMad Las Vegas under the Make it Nice hospitality division. Guidara collaborated with Optimism Press publisher Simon Sinek to release his book after selling his stake in the companies to Humm and became a best-selling author in the New York Times.
It all comes down to listening, Sinek said at the CNBC Work Summit. “If every firm has a customer or a client, there are lessons in inappropriate hospitality that can undoubtedly implement it,” he added. Sinek added that what Will does and what he taught his staff is to be fully present and listen for possibilities to surprise and delight someone with something unexpected.
America is based on connections of service.
The US has a service-based economy. The GDP is primarily derived from the service sector.
“When you look at those services, whether financial, computer, healthcare, insurance, or retail services, everyone who provides them for a living performs the same thing that I do. All of us are engaged in helping others, according to Guidara.
Not because its food was outstanding or technically flawless service, Eleven Madison Park rose to the top of a significant international ranking because, as Guidara put it, “we did things that went well above and beyond for our visitors.”
Guidara remembered how he once witnessed a Spanish family’s children enthralled by the snow falling outside his restaurant. When the family finished eating, Guidara had already bought sleds and was waiting outside with a car to take them to Central Park so they could go sledding. Another day, a couple who had been disappointed by the cancellation of their beach trip arrived at Guidara’s restaurant. By the night’s end, the private dining room was transformed into a beach for the couple to enjoy, with sand on the ground and a pool to dip their feet in.
A model of hospitality that uses Covid and problem-solving
Even though Covid has altered the world, Guidara and Sinek maintain that the value of excessive hospitality has not changed. Being a source of compassion to someone today can, in reality, benefit both you and the other person.
We all expect that other people should take care of us because we’re all so irritable and still struggling with the trauma of Covid. According to Sinek, I’ve discovered that we can genuinely help others solve their difficulties.
“The existing situation does not exclude this from working. There’s a reason behind it, Guidara remarked, and that’s why we should all focus on this.
