You Are Selling Happiness: Hospitality Lessons From Danny Meyers

Hospitality is a powerful business strategy that involves creating a dialogue, customizing experiences, and putting employees first to provide emotional comfort and happiness to customers, leading to a higher favorite score and an unparalleled dining experience.

Key insights from this video

• 🤝 Service and hospitality are different, with hospitality being a dialogue and focused on making people feel customized and cared for.
• 💡 Putting employees first can lead to a better customer experience: "The best way to make the most customers happy is to make sure that the people who come to work in your organization are having a great experience coming to work."
• 🧠 A high hospitality quotient is defined by six emotional skills: "We've been able to identify what those six emotional skills are that are always present in somebody who's a 51 percenter: kindness, optimism, work ethic, curious intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, and integrity."
• 📝 "We keep notes on all of that stuff and then we put those connections to use for people that make them feel that this is a customized experience just for them."
• 💯 Emotional connection is key to making something a favorite, according to Danny Meyer.
• 🍽️ Danny Meyer believes that hospitality experience is just as important as the quality of the food in a restaurant.
• 💡 Danny Meyer believes that businesses should focus on selling emotional comfort and happiness, rather than just their product or service.

Time Stamps

• 00:00 👨‍💼 Hospitality is a powerful business strategy that is often overlooked and misunderstood, and it involves creating a dialogue and customizing experiences to make people feel good, which is what they remember most.
• 00:58 👥 Putting employees first leads to a better customer experience, as happy and focused staff create a positive environment that customers can sense.
• 01:39 👨‍🍳 Danny Meyer believes that having the 51 emotional skills that make up a high hospitality quotient, including kindness, optimism, work ethic, curious intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, and integrity, is more important than being the best cook or sommelier in the world.
• 02:26 👨‍🍳 Always collect information about your customers to provide a customized experience by using search engines, databases, and notes on their previous visits and orders.
• 03:04 👨‍🍳 Gramercy Tavern is New York's number one favorite restaurant according to the Zagat survey, and being someone's favorite is the highest compliment, as it implies an emotional connection that goes beyond just quality.
• 04:03 📝 The combination of performance and hospitality experience at a restaurant leads to a higher favorite score and creates an unparalleled dining experience.
• 04:25 💡 Innovation has a short shelf life, but acts of hospitality cannot be copied and that's what we'll focus on.
• 05:02 💡 Think beyond the product you're selling and focus on providing emotional comfort and happiness to your customers.