Danny Meyer wrote the book on hospitality. No, really. His New York Times best-seller Setting the Table has become the industry standard for the hospitality business and beyond since his company, Union Square Hospitality Group, took off. Now he brings the crown jewel of his kingdom, Shake Shack, to Las Vegas. He talked to Las Vegas Magazine’s Susan Stapleton about what it’s like opening at a resort named after New York and his definition of hospitality.
Why did it take Shake Shack so long to come here?
It took this long because we didn’t have the right team that was ready to grow. Now we do. The opportunity came along to be connected to a brand called New York with a park adjacent to this. We were born in a park. And this is on the Strip, not buried deep in the back of a casino. Basically I said, “This is it.” Here’s my simple answer: The stars finally aligned. I’ll say it was a complicated construction. It was really building from the ground up.
You say your employees are even more important than your customers. How will we see that at Shake Shack?
I think that’s the thing I’m most excited about. We just never fail to find happy people who love being with other people while in the process of serving you. I would challenge you to look in the kitchen. You can’t fake it. There are just happy people. We first try to create a community amongst them. They get a kick out of each other. Because they’re spreading good energy to each other, you’re going to feel that as a guest.
Every resort here seems to have a burger joint.
They seem to have three burger joints now. I was in The Venetian. I can still smell it on me. You could blindfold me and I would know the hotel I smelled. They all have a slightly different smell. They have a Johnny Rockets and right next to it they’re opening a Prime Burger. They all have one or two steak places, too.
How do you think Shake Shack stands out?
I don’t know that it has to stand out. I think Shake Shack is a wonderful option. Shake Shack did not invent burgers, or french fries, or milkshakes. There were many before us and there will be many after us. We’ve always had the philosophy of, “Let’s be the best Shake Shack we can be.” If there are five different kinds of burgers you like and we’re lucky enough to make the rotation of your five, that’s great. That’s not a bad business model. In New York City, you have to beat 6,000 pizza restaurants. You have to beat 5,000 Italian restaurants. I don’t know how many burger restaurants there are, but the point is, no one is trying to put that pizza restaurant out of business. You hope you have a business.
How do you define hospitality?
That’s easy. I define hospitality as the degree to which you feel we’re on your side when we’re cooking our food for you and serving our food. I think hospitality and service are completely separate issues. Service is, “Did your buzzer work and was your burger served in time?” Hospitality is, “If your buzzer wasn’t working, did we do something to figure it out?” I think service comprises all the things you should expect us to do. Hospitality is the range of things we could do to make it even better. It doesn’t feel good if you go to a restaurant and there’s four of you and the waiter delivers the right food to the right person. That’s what you expect them to do. It feels really good if the waiter remembers you from the last time you came there and remembers you’re the one who was allergic to lobster and offers you a substitute. When the chef sends out an amuse-bouche, it doesn’t have lobster in it. We define hospitality as something that happened for you.
How difficult is it for you to dine at a restaurant with bad service? Do you ever reach out to the owners to say something?
If it’s in my own restaurant, absolutely. When I’m in someone else’s restaurant, I want to be a guest. If I know the owner and the owner were to ask me, I promise I would be honest. But if I know the owner and no one asks me, it’s not my job. I’m not a restaurant critic. At that point, I’m a consumer and I’m happy to learn lessons that I can then take back and teach our staff. Sometimes the lessons are good lessons that I want them to do more of and sometimes the lessons are bad lessons where something happens.
