... Perfetti Van Melle, the Italian company that makes Mentos mints, AirHead fruit chews, and other delicacies. His sales force sells products to retailers who then stock their shelves and hope customers will buy. In the past few years he says he’s seen a shift. Retailers are less interested in figuring out how many rolls of Mentos to order than in learning how to improve all facets of their operation. “They’re looking for unbiased business partners,” Chauvin told me. And that changes which salespeople are most highly prized. It isn’t necessarily the “closers,” those who can offer an immediate solution and secure the

signature on the contract, he says. It’s those “who can brainstorm with the retailers, who uncover new opportunities for them, and who realize that it doesn’t matter if they close at that moment.” Using a mix of number crunching and their own knowledge and expertise, the Perfetti salespeople tell retailers “what assortment of candy is the best for them to make the most money.” That could mean offering five flavors of Mentos rather than seven. And it almost always means including products from competitors. In a sense, Chauvin says, his best salespeople think of their jobs not so much as selling candy but as selling insights about the confectionery business.

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Hospitality Economy

At the reception afterward, we ran into Massimo Bottura, the Italian chef of Osteria Francescana, a Michelin three-star based in Modena—and number six on the list (not that we were counting). He saw us, started laughing, and couldn’t stop: “You guys looked pretty happy up there!

I was fortunate enough to be part of the management team for the great Daniel Boulud. Daniel is so renowned in my industry he is known by his first name alone; it is also the name of his Michelin-starred restaurant in New York, which he opened in 1993 after years as the acclaimed chef at Le Cirque.

Neither EMP nor Tabla was pretentious, but they were fancier places than I’d ever pictured myself working at; I was (and still am) more cheeseburger than foie gras. Not for the first or last time, I turned to my dad for advice. He addressed my concerns this way: “It’s easier to learn the right way to do things at the high end than it is to break bad habits. You can always take it down a notch later, but it’s harder to go the other way.” A month later, I was a manager at Tabla, running the front-door team. My education had begun.

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.