This means we don’t just obsess upon our financial results; we look at our long-term impact on the communities we serve and we adapt policies and programs to be a positive force. And, given there’s much less cofounders’ drama than most other companies, our employees can focus on how this start-up, which became one of the world’s most valuable hospitality companies nearly overnight, can live its mission helping our customers ‘belong anywhere.

Chapter 5: Restaurant-Smart vs Corporate-Smart

“It was on that call that he introduced me to the concept of restaurant-smart vs. corporate-smart. He described the distinction between the two. In the simplest terms: Where do the highest-paid people in the company work? In the restaurants themselves, or in the corporate offices? That says a lot about how the company is run.

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.

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?

We spent a lot of time in our manager meetings talking about how to make this more efficient. We ended up stealing a solution from baseball, where the catcher has to communicate with a pitcher sixty feet away: sign language.

After the host brought you to the table, the captain would hand you menus and ask about your water preference. Moments later, and without any visible communication—often before the captain had even left the table—your server would be at the table, pouring your preferred water choice.

It wasn’t magic; the captain had discreetly signaled your preference to one of their colleagues using a hand gesture (wiggled fingers for bubbles, a straight chop for still, and a twist of the fist for ice) behind their back. Another issue was that the room felt busy. It took a lot of people to execute hospitality at this level, but too many bodies moving swiftly around a room—even one as big as the dining room at EMP—can feel chaotic. In a bustling brasserie, servers zigzagging through the room lends an exciting energy; in a fine-dining setting, the commotion feels disruptive.

So we established traffic patterns for the staff like the ones on city streets, though they were imperceptible to our guests. Corners had invisible stop or yield signs. Most of the room was one-way only, and the traffic moved clockwise. In a two-way corridor, you hugged the wall to the right, as you would if you were driving.