When companies expand, they often say, āThe bigger we get, the smaller we have to act.ā (This was a mantra at Shake Shack.) At EMP in the early days, we went the other way. We were a single restaurantāpart of a bigger company, but operated as if we werenāt, with a huge amount of autonomy. We were little, but we wanted to act big.
Related Quotes
This means we donāt 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 thereās much less cofoundersā drama than most other companies, our employees can focus on how this start-up, which became one of the worldās most valuable hospitality companies nearly overnight, can live its mission helping our customers ābelong anywhere.
Neither EMP nor Tabla was pretentious, but they were fancier places than Iād 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: āItās 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 itās harder to go the other way.ā A month later, I was a manager at Tabla, running the front-door team. My education had begun.
Because when you start focusing on extending the charitable assumption to the people around you, you find yourself giving it to yourself a bit more as well. We were introduced to many of these concepts on our very first day, at the meeting for new hires. Those meetings were in themselves unusual; my Cornell friends had gone on to work for large restaurant companies who didnāt do anything of the sort. And the importance of those meetings within USHGās culture sent an immediate signal: āThereās a certain way we do things here, and itās bigger than teaching you how you move through the dining room or how to spiel a dish.
Still, a hundred and fifty people worked for us at EMP, and every one of them had to be aligned with the mission. We needed language. Language is how you give intention to your intuition and how you share your vision with others. Language is how you create a culture.
Chapter 12: Relationships are Simple. Simple is hard.
āOne of Richard Coraineās most often repeated sayings was āOne size fits one.ā He was referring to the hospitality experience: some guests love it when you hang out at the table and schmooze, while others want you to take their order and disappear. Itās your job to read the guest and to serve them how they want to be served.