Danny Meyer
Danny Meyer
Daniel "Danny" Meyeris a New York City restaurateur and the Chief Executive Officer of the Union Square Hospitality Group...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth14 March 1958
CountryUnited States of America
art neither restaurant waiter walls
You wouldn't have the same art on the walls at every restaurant or the same waiter uniforms. Neither should you have the same service style at every restaurant.
art owner represents restaurant salt uniforms
A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters.
age baker faster feels groups local restaurant rolling
In an age when so many groups are rolling out restaurants faster than your local baker makes donuts, my goal is that each restaurant feels hand-crafted. That they have their own soul.
almost anywhere attention easier open respect restaurant spectator sports york
In one respect, it's easier to open a restaurant in New York because you get more media attention than anywhere else. Almost everyone will try a new place once, irrespective of the reviews, because it's a spectator sport.
concept esoteric fit fixed grand highest hit largest learned people puts restaurant sports watch
I learned that you shouldn't take your most esoteric concept and fit it into the largest space with the highest fixed costs. It puts too much pressure on the restaurant to hit grand slams every day when there just aren't enough people who want to watch that sport.
both came confuses great home restaurant sure time whether
A great restaurant is one that just makes you feel like you're not sure whether you went out or you came home and confuses you. If it can do both of those things at the same time, you're hooked.
love senate since washington
I've been in love with Washington ever since renting my very first apartment there many years ago while working as a Senate intern.
best casting earlier executive leading needed pick producer
Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I've been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I'm an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays.
ability create delicious determine experience food good people perceive succeed understanding value york
Essentially what's going to determine how you succeed in New York is how people feel about the space, how delicious the food is, how they perceive the value and, most important of all, how they feel treated. My understanding is Stephen Starr is exceptionally good at all of this and his ability to create a transporting experience.
food people refuse
People who have come to appreciate well-sourced and well-cooked food refuse to pay too much for food that they wouldn't want to pay anything for.
adding bringing chefs coming early gimmicks plate pleasure
Sometimes, early in their careers, chefs make the mistake of adding one too many things to a plate to get attention. If a chef is just coming up with wiz-bang gimmicks on their plate, that has nothing to do with bringing real pleasure to people.
created false felt guests member relationship staff system
At that point, I was impassioned about abolishing the tipping system because I felt it created a false servant-master relationship between servers and guests at the restaurant, ... would just make the staff member feel really horrible, as if they had done something wrong.
honoring
Diners are upset that restaurants aren't honoring reservations, and a lot of restaurants help bring this on by overbooking.
brilliant buy changing food foods produced
Whole Foods has been brilliant at changing the way food is produced because they just won't buy it if it doesn't meet their standards.