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Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Saturday edition of Faster Than Normal, exploring the stories, ideas, and frameworks of the world’s most prolific people and companies—and how you can apply them to build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself. 

Today, we’re covering Danny Meyer and his journey to transforming the restaurant industry with a focus on genuine hospitality, emotional intelligence, and creating unforgettable experiences.

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What you’ll learn:

• How Danny Meyer’s vision of hospitality made Shake Shack a global phenomenon

• Lessons on prioritizing your employees over your customers not just selling food, sell an experience, and hiring for emotional intelligence not just technical skills

• Quotes on hospitality, hiring, and innovation

Cheers,

Alex

P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. We want to be worthy of your time. I respond to every email.

Danny Meyer

Danny Meyer grew up in a family that valued hospitality. His father ran a travel business. It failed. This taught young Danny an important lesson: success requires more than just a good idea.

At 27, Meyer opened his first restaurant, Union Square Cafe. He had a vision: create a place where diners felt truly welcome. Not stuffy. Not pretentious. Just good food and genuine hospitality.

"I couldn't take in the information quickly enough," Meyer said about his early days learning the restaurant business.

He worked hard. Really hard. Meyer did "those kitchen tasks no one else wanted to do". He learned every aspect of running a restaurant. From cooking to serving to managing staff.

But Meyer's real genius was in understanding people. He developed what he calls the "51% solution". Technical skills are important, sure. But Meyer believes emotional intelligence is even more crucial.

"We can always train for technical prowess," he said. What he really wanted was "the excellence reflex" - people who instinctively act when something isn't right.

This philosophy helped Meyer expand. Slowly at first. Then faster. He opened Gramercy Tavern. Then more restaurants. Each one successful.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing. Meyer faced setbacks. Personal tragedy struck when his wife gave birth to premature twins who didn't survive. It nearly broke them. Therapy helped.

Through it all, Meyer kept focused on his core values. Hospitality. Quality. Community.

Then came Shake Shack. It started as a hot dog cart in Madison Square Park. Just an experiment. It became a phenomenon.

Today, Shake Shack has over 360 locations worldwide. It generates about $740 million in annual revenue. Not bad for a hot dog cart.

Meyer's success goes beyond numbers. He's changed how people think about fast food. About hospitality in general.

"In the end, what's most meaningful is creating positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and human relationships," Meyer says. "Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple, and it's that hard".

Meyer's story teaches us important lessons. Success isn't just about the product. It's about people. It's about creating experiences. It's about genuine hospitality.

And perhaps most importantly, it's about perseverance. Meyer didn't give up when faced with challenges. He learned. He adapted. He grew.

Today, Danny Meyer is a titan of the restaurant industry. But he hasn't forgotten where he came from. Or the lessons he learned along the way.

"The road to success is paved with well-handled mistakes," Meyer likes to say.

Words to live by. For restaurateurs. For entrepreneurs. For all of us.

Lessons

Lesson 1: Prioritize your employees over your customers. This sounds counterintuitive, but it's the core of Meyer's "enlightened hospitality" philosophy. He believes that if you take care of your staff first, they'll take better care of your customers. "We have never succeeded at making our customers any happier than our staff members feel coming to work," Meyer says. This approach creates a virtuous cycle where happy employees lead to happy customers, which in turn benefits the community and investors.

Lesson 2: Don't just sell food, sell an experience. Meyer understood early on that people don't just come to restaurants for the food. They come for how the restaurant makes them feel. "I realized that in fact, the food is rarely the reason people come back to restaurants. It's how they feel when they're there," he explains. This insight led him to focus on creating a welcoming atmosphere and exceptional service, which became his key differentiator in a crowded market.

Lesson 3: Hire for emotional intelligence, not just technical skills. Meyer developed what he calls the "51% solution". He believes that while technical skills are important, emotional intelligence is even more crucial. "We can always train for technical prowess," he says. "What we're looking for is what we call the 'excellence reflex'."

Lesson 4: Use language intentionally to shape culture. Meyer is meticulous about the words he uses to describe his business philosophy. He coined terms like "enlightened hospitality" and "51% solution" to encapsulate complex ideas in memorable ways. "You have to work hard to be intentional about what you want the culture to be, and then you have to have language to teach it," he explains.

Lesson 5: Collect dots to connect dots. Meyer was obsessed with gathering information about his customers. He called it "always be collecting dots so you can always be connecting dots." This wasn't just about remembering names or preferences. It was about creating a database of intentions. Meyer used this data to personalize experiences in ways that seemed almost magical to customers.

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Danny Meyer Quotes

On hospitality: "Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you."

On hiring: "The 51 percent solution: hire people who are 51 percent nice and 49 percent technically skilled."

On innovation: "A great restaurant doesn't distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes, but by how well they handle those mistakes."

On leadership: "The only way a company can grow, stay true to its soul, and remain consistently successful is to attract, hire, and keep great people."

On company culture: "You can't have a mid-life crisis in the hospitality industry. It's constant turbulence."

On business strategy: "Understanding who you are and who you are not is just as important in business as it is in life."

On customer service: "Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel."

On entrepreneurship: "Make new mistakes every day. Don't waste time repeating the old ones."

Further Readings

• What I Took Take Away from Danny Meyer's Business Philosophy

• Danny Meyer's recipe for success

• Read Danny Meyer's Motivating Speech on 'the Irrelevancy of Being Right'

That’s all for today, folks. As always, please give me your feedback. Which section is your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.

Have a wonderful rest of week, all.

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Alex Brogan

Find me on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok

Offshore Talent: Where to find the best offshore talent. Powered by Athyna.

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