The cornerstone of the company’s culture was a philosophy Danny called Enlightened Hospitality, which upended traditional hierarchies by prioritizing the people who worked there over everything else, including the guests and the investors. This didn’t mean the customer suffered; in fact, the opposite. Danny’s big idea was to hire great people, treat them well, and invest deeply into their personal and professional growth, and they would take great care of the customers—which is exactly what they did.

In restaurant-smart companies, members of the team have more autonomy and creative latitude. Because they tend to feel a greater sense of ownership, they give more of themselves to the job. They can often offer better hospitality because they’re nimble; there aren’t a lot of rules and systems getting in the way of human connection. But those restaurants tend not to have a lot of corporate support or oversight—the systems that make great businesses.

Corporate-smart companies, on the other hand, have all the back-end systems and controls in areas like accounting, purchasing, and human resources that are needed to make them great businesses, and they’re often more profitable as a result. But systems are, by definition, controls—and the more control you take away from the people on the ground, the less creative they can be, and guests can feel that.

Restaurant-smart companies can be great businesses, and corporate-smart companies can deliver great hospitality. But their priorities are different, in ways that fundamentally affect the guests’ experience.

In a restaurant-smart company, that phone call most likely would never have happened. And if the controller did happen to catch the mistake (if the company had a controller at all!) and reached out to the chef, they’d likely be told to stay in their lane. But overhearing that phone call taught me that someone in corporate wielding that kind of control isn’t always unwelcome. The chef’s bonus was tied to his food costs, and if his numbers were consistently below par, he’d be out of a job. That explained the relief I’d heard in his voice when Hani told him where he’d been bleeding. Our back-office efficiency meant that guy didn’t have to worry about the numbers and could go back to being a chef. We weren’t stealing his creativity; we were returning him to it.

Former navy captain David Marquet says that in too many organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority. I was learning that, taken too far, corporate-smart could be restaurant-dumb.

The museum cafés, meanwhile, were the redheaded stepchildren of USHG, and I loved it. We were flying under the radar and had lots of creative freedom as a result. I immediately set out to implement my vision: to make the cafés at MoMA corporate-smart and restaurant-smart. But what I discovered almost immediately is that walking that line is really, really hard. Every decision I made seemed to expose the natural tensions between improving the quality of the experience the guests were having and doing what was best for the business. Restaurant-smart meant leading with trust—including allowing the people who worked for me to do what they felt was best for the guests. Corporate-smart meant running a tight ship. Which was right?