Danny Meyer

Businessman

1958-03-14

Quotes by Danny Meyer

• I think that Shake Shack wouldn't exist had it not been for Twitter. I don't think you would have gotten a hundred New Yorkers to stand in line for an hour if they couldn't have made their time really productive and organized snowball fights, ordered free hot chocolate, and, you know, Instagrammed photos.

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• People use restaurants to do business, to do politics, to socialize.

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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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• In one respect, it's easier to open a restaurant in New York because you get more media attention than anywhere else. Almost everyone will try a new place once, irrespective of the reviews, because it's a spectator sport.

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• Museums are like sports stadiums, hotels and hospitals: they are in the category of captive-audience dining.

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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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• I opened Union Square Cafe when I was just 27 years old, and my first hope was simply that it would stay in business. My higher hope was that in its lifetime, it might grow to play an essential role in the lives of its stakeholders.

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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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• When the economy goes sour, there are three different kinds of restaurants that do well: the smaller-scale neighborhood restaurants that don't ask much of you; those that have banked enormous goodwill by offering great value during the boom; and those with proven records of excellence, a sure thing.

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• Human nature doesn't change. When enough people are comfortable enough financially, there is going to be human nature that wants to spend more money on better quality and, to some degree, status symbols as well.

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• My 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.

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• Gramercy Tavern appeared on the cover of New York Magazine the day we opened, and it was five deep at the bar with people who were not necessarily here to dine. They just wanted to kinda sniff out the hot, new restaurant.

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• Some people are near- or farsighted - I'm thorn-sighted. The thorns on the rose are in really sharp definition for me, the rose petals a little fuzzier.

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• 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.

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• I think that any business that thinks that the transaction is 'you give me money and I give you food, next, you give me money and I give you food, next,' without understanding that people deeply want to feel restored is in danger.

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• You wouldn't have the same art on the walls at every restaurant or the same waiter uniforms. Neither should you have the same service style at every restaurant.

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• A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters.

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• One great worker equals three not-so-great workers, so it's worth paying terrific people not just for today but to find people that we think have upward mobility to become tomorrow's leaders.

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• There are a zillion variables to a hamburger. What part of the animal went into it. What coarseness. What temperature.

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• I run in London, in San Francisco - any city that's got a waterfront or park.

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