4 Lessons From Will Guidara On 'Unreasonable Hospitality'

Eleven Madison Park is one of the best restaurants in the world. But it’s not just world-renowned for its food, which is indeed exquisite, or the space, which is beautiful. For anyone who has had the good fortune of dining there, what makes it truly special is the outstanding hospitality experience, which was instilled, cultivated, and perfected by restaurateur Will Guidara.

While Guidara no longer co-owns Eleven Madison Park, his extraordinary approach to hospitality lives on at the restaurant, and continues to inspire operators across the industry to focus on and elevate the guest experience. 

Guidara was a keynote speaker at this year’s Bar & Restaurant Expo in Las Vegas and wowed attendees with his thoughts on service, the guest journey, and what he calls “unreasonable hospitality.” Here are the most important takeaways from his talk, to help you find ways to make your business truly outstanding.

Too many people conflate service and hospitality as meaning the same thing. There are two different ideas. Service is a part of the product: it's getting the right thing to the right person, in the right time frame. Hospitality is the way you make those people feel when you're providing that service. It's the depth of connection you make with the people you're serving. It's the amount of loyalty you earn from them when you make them feel seen when you give them a sense of belonging. 

Unreasonable hospitality is applying the same creativity, the same in intention, the same passion that so many people apply to the product they're serving and reserving some of that passion and intention and directing it towards how you make people feel — those that you serve and the people that you work alongside. 

At the end of the day, every successful business person is trying to identify its competitive advantage. What is the thing about what you do that will prevent someone else from coming in and stealing your business? Yet far too many people, when they think about that, they only think about the quality of a product or the strength of their brand. But it does not just matter how good the product is. It does not just matter how strong the brand is. Because eventually someone else is going to come around and create a better product. They might be younger or more innovative or better capitalized. They might just be more talented than you are. At the end of the, the only competitive advantage that exists over the long term comes through hospitality. It comes through consistently and creatively and generously investing in relationships. Those take a long time to build, and if you build them in the right way, the loyalty you earn will take a very long time to erode. Unreasonable hospitality is just my way of articulating the idea that we should throw ourselves wholeheartedly at the pursuit of those relationships.