The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Will Guidara Ran the World's #1 Restaurant – What Can He Teach the Comedy Cellar?

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

0:00 "You picked the wrong guy" – the audiobook story 3:12 "You own [Comedy Cellar], one of New York's treasures" 7:28 The customer who will never tip again 15:41 Motivating a team after you've won: finite vs. infinite games 23:23 Noam doesn't like fine dining 39:55 Handling Google reviews & hunting down critics Noam sits down with Will Guidara — author of the New York Times bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park (named the best restaurant in the world under his leadership), and co-producer of The Bear — for a conversation between two obsessives who refuse to run their businesses as businesses. They compare notes on why the money has to be a byproduct, how to answer a customer who swears he'll never tip again, keeping a team motivated after you've won, why fine dining lost its way, tracking down anonymous Google reviewers, and why Will walked away from the top restaurant on earth to be a better dad.

Good evening and welcome to live from the table. Summer Edition. My name is Noam Dwarman. I'm the owner of the comedy seller. I'm here all by myself today, but we have a fantastic guest. His name is Will Godera. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Unreasonable Hospitality. He is the former co-owner of 11 Madison Park, which under his leadership was named the Best Restaurant in the World. He is the host of the Welcome Conference, a co-producer, on the Emmy Award-winning series, The Bear, and is a recipient of the Wall Street Journal Innovator Award. Welcome, Will Godera. Thank you so much, man. I'm really happy to be here, and it's great to get some time with you. As we were just getting ready to start,

I found out that you've come to the Comedy Seller, which I'm over the moon about it, and you had a good experience. I actually listened to the audio book of your book, and I think it's the only audio book I've actually listened to beginning to end. And I'll tell you something, you might like this. I didn't know it was your voice reading it.

And as I was listening to it, I say, wow, they got a really, really good narrator or whatever you call it to read it. Did you, just as an aside, did you have direction for that? Did you take after take? Or you're just a natural edit? Well, first of all, thank you for saying that. That's a cool compliment. No, I mean, I did that. So during COVID, this is when we still lived in New York before we left.

When COVID started, my wife and I were living in New York City, we moved up to our place in the Hudson Valley for a couple weeks to let COVID pass. And obviously, that didn't happen. And we ended up living up there for a few years. And that's when I wrote the book. And so I was up there when I did the audiobook as well. And first of all, the publisher asked me if I wanted to do. wanted to record it or if I wanted someone else to do it.

It doesn't make sense to me that I would let someone else record my story, right? It's my voice that should be in it. So I did it. Dude, I was in like some guy's basement in upstate New York with not much in the way of training, but I just kind of leaned in and read it with as much emotion as I could. And I'm excited how it turned out. And FD.I. In fact, being really honest, at first I was listening to it.

And I was like, this gets some funny. I said, get picked the wrong guy for this because I'll tell you, I never heard you for it. And I said, first of all, he's too professional. It's too good. And I was like, this doesn't sound like a grizzled restaurateur. This sounds like a very, you know, soft. I don't know what the word is like this. I couldn't imagine that a guy who had to wrangle an organization to become the number one restaurant in the world.

and I know very well what that means. I said, how could this guy be so, you know, speak this way? But then I, so then I started researching. I said, no, no, it's him, it's him. So anyway, if things go bad for you, you should read audio books. All right. Wait, but hold on, hold on. You started by saying before we fresh record, I told you I'd been to the comedy seller.

And I just want to put language to this because I'm a New Yorker my entire life until just a couple of years ago. And there are a handful of places that I think fully distill the beauty of New York as beautifully as comedy seller. A place that feels like, every time you go there, no matter how many times you've been there,

like you're discovering something new where there's this combination of ambition and comfort. And where, I mean, dude, I've been there so many times and I've never left without feeling that that was a night worth remembering. And it's an honor to be on this podcast because I really do believe you own one of New York's treasures. It's incredibly nice you to say. Let's compare notes. So when I read your book, I felt immediately.

And although I do have some kind of differences in the right word, but just maybe because my business is so different from what you're describing. but in one way it was clear to me that we are hatched from the same egg. You tell me if I'm wrong, which is that we don't really view our businesses as business. And to the extent we're dragged into that consideration, it's against our, it's under protest, meaning that I'm going to speak for myself, and you tell me if you differ, when customers come to my place, I don't care if they spend money, don't. spend money. All I care about is that they have a good time. And I know this is my profession, and I need to make money, as my father used to say, and money is a very fortunate byproduct of this

undertaking. But I couldn't care less when the customer spends money, doesn't spend money, if he's unhappy, I want to give him his money back. All I want is it's just an extension. The same way I would be, if they were in my home, I want to treat them in my business. And I hope I can make money after all of a sudden done and still honor that first directive. So how do you feel about that? Yeah, man. I mean, 100% listen. Like, I do believe that you need to be intentional and how you manage the numbers such that you have the resources to execute the creative ideas that you have. Right. Like a lot of my, the things that I did that I loved doing the most, they've required money.

bring those ideas to life. And so I need to make sure there was enough money in the bank to do that. But I think when you focus on just creating the best possible version of an idea that you possibly can, the money will invariably follow. If you focus just on making the money, not only will the product not follow, but the money sometimes doesn't follow either. My dad, who is one of my biggest mentors and one of my best friends, I love this man. much of what has made me successful I learned from him.

And yet, he's gotten frustrated with me at times because of the decisions I've made that are not financially focused enough. Like when we became number one, that year that follows earning that spot should be the most profitable year of a restaurant's entire existence, right? The wait list is endless. You can charge whatever you want. And that was the year we closed the restaurant and gutted it and renovated the entire thing and started anew.

And it drove my dad crazy. But for me, we became number one. Now it was the time to start again. And I think if you always do, if you ask yourself what right looks like and you always do that, financial success will follow. The opposite approach does not always work out the same way. Oh, that's exactly right. I mean, as you say, you have to, you're running a business. You can't be an idiot.

But when you start running it to make money, there's really no limiting principle to that. And before you know it, you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Let me tell you a few things that I do. Actually, you know what? Just before we get to that, because I got an email yesterday, you know, okay, this actually, I can tie them all together. every time a customer leaves my place, 30 minutes after they leave, they get an email or a text message asking them to rate their evening. And I learned over time that these fancy questionnaires

breaking them down, these are too tedious and actually you don't get the best information. So it's very open-ended. Essentially, I want to tell the customer to tell me the thing that's at the top of his mind that he'd like to tell me, because that's usually the most important thing I need to know. And this is the most important thing I do. It's the one thing I will not delegate. I answer every customer email myself. I regard, and this is, you know, my employees know, I feel this way, and it's probably not out of the Dale Carnegie handbook to say so. But I regard the entire organization of a business very often as kind of the deep

state, meaning it exists to keep the truth from the boss, right? Even my most trusted, and I have, by the way, I have the best general manager in the world. I mean, you can't even imagine how good she is. But even up to the general manager, when something's going

wrong, in some way, the fact that something is going wrong, she feels the reflection on her, right? So I bypass everything by going directly to the customers. And I find that this has been a tremendous tool for me, and I'm not running fine dining, so it's different. But anyway, so I got an email. You tell me how I should answer it. The comic quality was a bit below average for the seller, but was still fun overall. My issue is with tipping. I believe every employee should be paid what they deserve. Just charge me what you need

to in order to pay your employees properly. If it's too much, I won't come to the show. Don't charge me $20 a person plus drinks that are priced at six times the cost to the seller and then expect me to tip on top of that. And then there was more of the guy said, he's, I'll keep coming, but I'm not tipping, just so you know. If you don't like that, let me know now because I'm never tipping again. What do I say to a, what, after I read unreasonable hospitality, what should I say to that customer? I mean, listen, I think more often than people want to be heard more than agreed with. Yes, very good. And when you start to go down the road of what is right and what is wrong, you're missing the very point of an exchange, which is being right as irrelevant, right?

It's just about meeting someone where they are, and then ideally giving them enough context to understand why you make the decisions you make. The reality of why most operations in America still have tipping is because at the end of the day, while this person might be willing to pay a lot of, a lot more and not have to tip. That's not how most people's brains work. They look at the prices of items and then they decide whether they think that to be expensive or not. Tipping is the custom here.

And so bucking that custom, it puts your business at risk. Yes. Do I also believe that tipping should not exist anymore? Yeah, I do. I think working in restaurants or in bars, like being in the service industry is a profession and we should be paid what that profession commands and it shouldn't be at the whim of the person we happen to be serving and yet that's

not the world we're living in right and then by the way what I would do is I'd flag that guy's name and I'd have a different menu printed just for him where everything is 25% more that's a good idea but I wouldn't I wouldn't hide behind it I would literally change the top of the menu whatever the guy's name is, let's say it's Nome. Noam special, no tipping menu. Everything is 25% more. Please enjoy, exclamation claim. By the way, because I know you do have to somebody's birthday.

They have a special birthday menu and things like that that you guys are known for. Well, I've gone back and forth. First of all, I know that Danny Meyer, who you used to work for, try an experiment with no tipping, and for whatever reason, they backed off it. And my, I've noticed two things about it. two observations about the tipping thing. One is that some servers are much better than others, and it's really nice to see good work directly rewarded

in a way that, I mean, it's on display for everyone who works with them. Like everybody knows, wow, that person always, and it's not necessarily the hot waitress. It's not, it's actually the person who locks into their customers the best. That's number one. And number two, and this is a more recent observation I had, A lot of people have way more money than other people do. And this is a way that wealthier people actually can pay more for a product without the business having to raise the prices.

So I know I'll tip, you know, 25%, and someone also tip 15%. But if the restaurant had to set the wage, that waitress or server would never have the benefit of the many people who are. happy to pay more, right? They have money and they're happy. So I think if these people think, yeah. I could like, I could rapidly argue it in either direction. Right. Like Danny's entire company went no tipping.

We were the only restaurant that until I sold it stayed no tipping. The reason why we were able to stay no tipping and others weren't is as follows. If you're looking at like two different Italian restaurants that are each serving pasta a la carte and people like look at. restaurant menus online and one restaurant is serving plates of pasta that cost $42 and the other one is serving plates of pasta that cost $28. Like the one that charges $42 is at a disadvantage and people don't have the ability to do the math in their head to figure out that, well, that one, the tipping is already included. So it's actually less expensive, you know? And that just is,

there's no way around it. That was hard. Unless more restaurants shift to no tipping at the same time, it will be harder for anyone to get over that. It was different for us because we were serving this very, very expensive tasting menu. It was a singular restaurant. People weren't comparing our tasting menu price to another tasting menu price. Now, the other reason it worked for us is because we were 100% full all the time. And so it wasn't like on a slow night, you're paying all your servers $42 an hour and taking a bath on it, right?

Like, we have consistent enough business to make it work. The benefit of no tipping was that when some of the people in my team that weren't necessarily extraordinary managing their money and finally got to their vacation time, they're still making the same amount of money on vacation as they were when they were working, right? It helps people lead a more professional and mature approach to life. In the same way that whether you and I are on vacation

or working, we're making the same amount of money. Right. And it extended that same courtesy to the people on the front line. I do think it requires a heightened level of leadership because you need to ensure that you are inspiring your team to do a great job by your guest just because doing well is the right thing to do. Not because if you are slightly more hospitable,

you're going to make a little bit more money that night. Actually, this inspiring is, and the thing I want to ask you about. So I have a problem that I've started a number of businesses. I started the Cafe Wah and I, and in many.

Wait, Cafe Waugh was yours too? Well, the Cafe Wah originally was a famous place. It closed in 1968. And then when I got to school, that was, I opened the nightclub and it was in the same location, 115 McDougal Street. So I took that name. I remember that name for when I was

kid and I said, I'll call it the cafe wa. And so people think it's the same place that always existed, but it's not. So yeah, that cafe wa was mine. Not in like, I sold it almost 20 years ago. Dude, I had some awesome nights there in my early 20s. That's amazing. Yeah, well, I used to play, I was to lead the band there. I was a musician.

That was, when I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, I started a band and this nightclub, and it became a huge success. But anyway, and it was easy to inspire a staff when we were building a place

as it was growing, as they saw me throwing everything into new ideas and trying this and trying, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, at the place. I know it's a problem. I'm struggling to figure out how to do it better. And when I read the part about how you guys were number one, the first thing I thought of is,

okay, now that they're the number one, what do you say Monday morning to motivate the team now? Right? Like, how do you keep them now, instead of all about this battle to win, now you're just all about, let's not fuck up and lose. Let's not, you know, so how do you do?

with that. Do you know the writer Simon Sinek? He wrote the book Start with Why. Simon is like one of the great business book writers, thought leaders of our time. He actually is the publisher of my book. He wrote a book called Start With Why. That was amazing. That was probably his biggest book.

But he wrote another book called The Infinite Game. You mentioned this book Start with Y in your book now. Yeah. Yeah, good. Sorry. Yeah. And the principle of Start with Y is like, sure as a leader that you understand the real purpose behind the work and that once you have

articulated that clearly that you remind the people in your team of that purpose over and over and over again right like i i don't know what how you would articulate it but from the outside like and you already alluded to this the purpose of the comedy seller is not to turn a profit it's not even to like probably make people laugh it's not to serve them drinks it's it's to create a little bit of magic in the middle of a city that needs more of it and to give people the ability to put their worlds on pause and to forget about their troubles and just convene in revelry and laughter and like that's what i always get out of that place like the world feels sweeter when i leave that place than it does when i go into it that's the why and okay step one is reminding the people on

the team that what they are doing that it matters, that it impacts other people, and doing that over and over. And there's no setting it and forgetting it with this. It's a marathon. It's on a sprint. Once you've identified the purpose, you need to talk about it forever. Because listen, I don't care how much you like your job. Let's name it. Whether you're an employee or an owner, sometimes work sucks. Right. And if you don't know that you're making a difference in other people's lives, I think it's impossible to feel good about the work you're doing on those difficult days. But so that's one side of it. What is the purpose?

That's his first book. Another book you wrote was called The Infinite Game, which is that if your company, you're as an owner, the entire team's purpose is to win a finite game. It's going to be really hard to maintain morale over time because once you win that game, you're screwed. right his argument is that every business needs to have a bigger goal the infinite game you're playing a game that you can never quite win and the energy of the team is centered around being in constant pursuit of that goal the infinite game i was playing at a little medicine park was i wanted to redefine what hospitality could look like not just in restaurants but in culture that was a game you could never win right

So there's no hangover from the big moment of victory. Now, the point where I would challenge the book, the Infinite Game, is that I agree, we need to always be playing an infinite game, pursuing a goal that we can never fully check off the list. But within that, we need to have a bunch of finite games as well because part of the human condition is it's hard to work endlessly if you can't actually win every once in a while and feel the validation of a victory.

Becoming number one was one finite game in the infinite game that we were playing, getting four stars, similarly, a finite game. And when you're creative enough, you can find so many different finite games to play. I remember when I got there, there was no Michelin. We weren't anywhere close to getting on the list

of the best restaurants in the world. It was years in between New York Times reviews, But open table, if you like dug into the website on the open table site, there was a list where on a monthly basis they ranked the best restaurants in New York based on open table reviews. And we were never on that list. And so our finite game became, we're going to be number one on that list. Dude, we would like, if an open table VIP came into the restaurant, it could be like some dude from like Nebraska. If they had been to enough open table restaurants, they were going to get the best experience. of their lives just because we wanted to win that finite game.

Yeah. Every finite game was a temporary morale boost, but the pursuit of this bigger, infinite game was the thing that always kept us hungry and moving forward. Now, that's all well and good, but it boils down to a leader, and it doesn't need to be the owner. It could be the person that has been, this has been delegated to by the owner, recognizes that a big part of their job is to inspire their team and to remind. them of that purpose every single day forever it's hard it's hard um that that's what uh i mean

for people who don't know you were hired by danny mire yeah and you did what you're describing um i did what you're describing for many many years and and just the way my life is now i i can't be there and do that anymore so this is what um struggling with. And I'm trying to re-assert myself in certain ways, but I very much worried about that change in the spirit of the place. Now, let me ask you some other questions. I'm so happy to be able to talk to you because, my God, to be able to speak to somebody who is such an expert in this and compare notes, I don't meet people like you. Thank you.

So this is something, I don't, brace yourself now. I don't like fine dining. And I'll tell you the reasons why. And first of all, from a business point of view, I don't understand how it can make money unless it's wildly successful or you're the beneficiary of a sweetheart lease or I just don't understand how the numbers add up.

That's one thing. But from a customer point of view, I find it a grueling experience. I'll tell you the thing that bothers me most. The weight between the courses. It's like I don't like, first, I go to Noble downtown a lot, which I don't think that's considered fine dining, although it's a high-end restaurant.

And I like that place very, very much because it's upscale, but they treat me like an everyday, almost like a local diner would. Like, how you doing? It comes on a casso, it comes course, course, course. no weight. But in a real, like a tasting menu, fine dining restaurant, there's like 10, 15 minutes between courses. So I find that

just, I can't take it. Number one. Number two, there's usually a low batting average to my peasant mentality. Like, two out of the eight dishes, I think are delicious. Like, actually, when I went to live in Madison Park,

they have an avocado dish. I just couldn't believe that an avocado like this existed on planet Earth. I had never tasted an avocado like this. I asked the guy, where do you get your avocado? He says, the avocado guy. I say, all right. But in general, many of the dishes are recipe and preparation, like, they're to be admired.

But if you could put that dish, again, this is just me, right? Like, I go to the Saigon shack on McDougal Street a lot, and they have this vermicelli noodles with pork, Vietnamese pork. It's really incredible. You could put every dish on a fine dining menu for free on that counter. I would say, no, keep it. I want to pay for this pork dish, you know? So that's how I feel about fine dining.

But obviously, I'm wrong because people line up by the thousands to do it. But I know I'm speaking for a long time, but you did indicate in your book in certain places that, that some of what I'm saying reverberates with you as well, correct? Oh, 100%. Yeah. By the way, I think there's like a lot of people that are struggling with fine dining increasingly now.

But I never loved fine dining. And in fact, that was the very reason for most of the changes I made when I was running that restaurant. Listen, to be very clear. And when I got to a Madison Park, New York was falling out of love with fine dining to begin with. like the old French Michelin-starred restaurants uptown were closing and they were being replaced by Momofuku and all the other brands that were like really ushering in a much more casual approach to

restaurants in New York. Here's the thing. I think like anything, fine dining is important. And this is why I think it's important. And this exists not just in food, but across every artistic medium. You see these fashion shows where runway models are wearing outfits that no one would ever be caught dead wearing in real life. But it is what's happening on those stages that influences how fashion designers are approaching more everyday outfits around the world. The same is true with film and music. You need these places where there is a maniacal pursuit of an in order to ensure innovation is happening just generally. But in spite of that importance, I think we're finding that he was getting it wrong for a long time,

and in some cases, really continues to get it wrong, is the entire experience is too focused on what it wants to serve and not nearly focused enough on what people want to receive. Yes, exactly. So things I didn't like about finite that we tried to address. I, it felt like it was for my parents and not for me. I had to get dressed up to go eat dinner. I don't want to get dressed up when I go eat dinner,

especially a long meal. So we got rid of the dress code. It felt like a temple where you had this compulsion to whisper. I wanted the restaurant experience to be fun. So it wasn't like this precious situation. We did card tricks as dessert courses and all sorts of stuff, just to ensure that we were delivering the experience that was important to deliver, which was revelry at the table.

I didn't like how many courses there were, because if I'm there with you and you're important to me, and I'm going to this place so that you and I can really have a good night together. With 15 courses, that means your and my conversation is going to get interrupted 100 times. There's too many interruptions. We will reduce the number of courses. Listen, at the end of the day, I love fine dining restaurants for the following reason, that the table is one of the few remaining places in life that two, three, four people can come together,

feel naturally inclined to set their phones aside and lean in and authentically connect with one another. A fine dining restaurant where you can take that table, yeah, I love a three and a half hour meal when it's in pursuit of that. I believe a restaurant experience, the food, the service, the wine, the design, they're merely ingredients in the recipe of human connection. And when a fine dining restaurant understands that, that's when I believe it can become extraordinary. When, just jumping around, when you have a tasting menu, I hope this is interesting to people because I'm dying to hear this stuff.

When you're a tasting menu, and it's like nine courses, you're charging. charging three, four, I didn't know they charge $300, $4,000. And somebody doesn't like a course. Like, they don't like the duck or something. And what, how do you handle that? You can't just take it off the check because it's a tasting menu, right? Yeah. And I always weren't like, so what, how do, how would you handle that when somebody doesn't like something? Well, a couple different things. I remember one time when we were coming up, I went to another restaurant and there was a note at the bottom of the menu that said, if you have any allergies, don't bother telling us we're not changing any of the dishes.

Nice. Which was unreasonable, but in the opposite direction. Now, at that time, like any good restaurant, we'd begin the experience by asking the tables if they had any allergies, right? So we could adapt to the menu and not kill people, but not killing people is a rather low bar. And instead, we changed it to, do you have any allergies? Anything that you don't like?

Any ingredients that you're not in the mood to eat tonight? No, I, just to be clear, unless you want to say something else, I meant like you serve it to them. They take a bite and say, oh, okay, go ahead. No, I'm going to get there in a second. Yeah, yeah. By the way, that was very unique in a restaurant experience. Most chefs don't want to do the work to come up with endless permutations of every dish just in the event that, no, on table 36, doesn't like mushrooms, right? And so that already set us up for success.

It was me saying, hey, I'm not here to introduce you to new ingredients. I can be if you want to, but you're going to enjoy the meal more if I deserve you food that you like. So tell me what it is, and we're going to work harder. Now, if my team is well trained, they are going to serve the food and then just kind of keep an eye on you for the next three, four minutes, because you can tell from afar. People's body language says it all. I can watch people engage with other people at the table.

And if it's clear or even possible based on what I'm saying, that you might not like that. I'm going to go check. And ideally at that point, I've created enough safety in our relationship that you're going to tell me. I'm just going to give you something else. I mean, for me, like, when you're running that kind of restaurant, when you're charging those prices, I think actually the philosophy applies to any business at any price point. If you don't like it, I'm either going to fix it or I'm not going to charge you.

And so I think there's a myriad number of ways to fix it, but it just requires first. paying enough attention to catch what's happening before it's too late. But you used the word intentionality before. It requires, and I don't know if your businesses could maintain this without you there, if anybody's business could, it requires somebody who feels this intensely, who won't take it's fine for an answer. you know, because I know that we see eye to eye in this. I see right through the customers when they tell me everything is okay.

Because people normally tell you everything is okay. You have to trust your gut. We all know what somebody sounds like when they're really happy with something. And my assumption is always if they don't sound that way, they're not happy with us. Are you sure? And I'll say, that doesn't look quite the way. you know i'll interrogate them until they'll finally say well yeah as a matter of fact you know it was oh thank you for telling me and they're surprised that i want to know right but of course i want to know

first of all i want to know because i want them to be happy and second of all my business depends in a long run on me knowing right because they won't come back my they're thinking that maybe other people are thinking that and then that's a side of something you can fix to get better yeah oh and for and for everyone you find there's 20 you didn't find my father your father was a great man my father was a great man he used to say he's he say no what's the biggest what's the biggest loss in any business and i'd say uh you know whatever i said you go no he'd say the customer that doesn't come back you know that's what he said the customer that doesn't come back that is the biggest loss everything else pales in comparison to the customer

that doesn't come back who doesn't come back somebody who wasn't happy so yeah and i we had a staff meeting recently and I was trying to encourage the staff to trust their instincts and just you know don't just give this perfunctory is everything fine and people say everything's fine and walk away you know look look at specific details you I say you know the weaknesses that were prone to they overcooked the burger whatever they are every dish I'm sure you know every dish has its thing where if they fuck it up this is the way they normally fuck it up this is the way they normally fuck it up, right? So I said, ask, zone in right on that. I try to... Burger cooked to your liking. Yeah, yeah. Or, and then also look at their burger, and you

know whether it was cooked the way they ordered it as well. Even if they tell you it's fine, if you see it's not medium rare, take it back. And sometimes, and, or sometimes they say, no, no, I want to. I say, just make them another one and bring it to the table. But this stuff doesn't happen if I'm not there. And I really don't know what's do. I try to tell them. you're not allowed to bus a dish that's not finished. If a dish is not finished, you have to put it here, and the managers have to look at it. They have to taste it if they can bring themselves to, you know,

they think it's sanitary to taste it, all of which is to create also a deterrent structure such that people want things, you know, nobody wants to deal with this stuff all the way to the kitchen. So anything, do you want to comment on any of that? I mean, people would be surprised at a comedy club, does this kind of thing. And I'm sure we, you know, bat $250.

But that's really what I'm trying to do. But I'm not surprised. Yeah. Because the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. You don't find that level of success by being selectively caring about what matters to you, right? Like, comedy seller does not become comedy seller. I feel like, oh, I care about what's on the stage.

Everything else is irrelevant. No, like the entire experience is responsible for the reputation any business ends up getting over time. I mean, listen, you guys have some sort of pre-shift meeting? They have them. They probably don't have them regularly like they're supposed to, but we have them. I think that's the biggest lever. And in that pre-shift meeting, not making it a perfunctory thing where he's

being like, all right, guys, we have this many people coming tonight, we have this comic, like have a good service, right? That's how most people do it. And the reason most people do it is because, like, whoever the person running that meeting, is they don't feel like they've earned the right to actually try to inspire the people on their team. They wait for someone to almost like knight them and say you are now responsible for being inspirational. And yet the reason why like TED talks and some of these things are so successful is because very, listen, we all crave inspiration and very few of us have someone in our lives that's

willing to step up and inspire us. If you are not reminded what matters and what right looks like every single day, the culture won't focus on what right looks like. It's about naming the non-negotiables and circling back to them over and over again. It's why, I'd imagine, the business was better at doing these things consistently when you were there every single day because you probably talked about this stuff every single day. Yeah. You know, what's that, of course, I can't quote the line, but this famous first line of Anna Karina, know, where it's like, you know, every, every happy family is happy in the same way, but

there's a million different ways for unhappy families. I think businesses, like every good business is, understands this in the same way, sees eye to eye, and there's a thousand different ways that businesses can be bad. But this is what you're describing, whether it's a car company, and there is no business that this is not the right way to operate. And I'm sure you're as shocked as I am all the time, how often I deal with customer service. And they're just terrible. Amazon, of all places, is quite good in my experience.

Amazon really cares about it. They're super focused on it. And you can achieve hospitality through different approaches, either through, like, really leaning into efficiency when that's the desired element of the product that people are craving or through personalization. There's so many ways to get there. I mean, dude, in the past three years, the most surprising thing for me in this journey around this book

has been the number of different industries that have really rallied behind the ideas. I've spent time with, you name an industry, I've likely spent time with someone in it, whether it's tech or finance or insurance or major league baseball or that. NFL or the MBA or prison systems and healthcare and education. Every business can make the choice to be in the hospitality industry simply by choosing to care about this stuff. Yes. And every business

can also alienate a lot of their customers simply by choosing not to. Yeah. The line is all happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. So not surprised that Tolstoy was pithier, but things have changed a lot. There was a time when if you had a customer who was unhappy, you could hope that it would somewhat be contained, right? And now we have the internet. We have Google reviews. And by the way, I'm sure it's a horrible system

because if you have a completely unfair or dishonest Google review as a business owner, there is not even anybody at Google who will pick up the phone to even consider it with you, even if you have a video. You could show them. This didn't happen. And somebody puts in your business name, the Google Review comes up whether the customer is asked for it or not. So this is very treacherous. But I do notice, and I want to get your comment on this, so many businesses do not answer their negative Google reviews, do not follow up on their negative Google reviews. I will sometimes,

because a lot of people will use an alias, but I'll look at their other reviews. I'll try to figure out what city they're probably come from. Then I'll find the area code. I'll go through our reservation database. I'll find everybody from that area code, and I will send an email to say, you know, track it within like seven days.

I said, I got a bad review on Google review from like, it looked like somebody from the D.C. area, was this you? And 75% of the time, I can track them down and they're shocked, you know? And I never asked them to take the Google review down, although usually they will, not always, but I'll refund them, I'll address it, I'll find out what happened. How do you, you know, how do you handle them or how did you handle them? What do you think is the right way to handle them? That's funny. First of all, it's like a PSA. If you go to the nominee seller and you do not want to have a conversation. Don't leave a bad review. He will find you.

Yes, I really try. I mean, listen, here's the thing. Social media has obviously magnified all of that. And yet, the core of it remains true. I mean, there's all this data around this idea. But if you come into my business, you have a good time, you're going to talk about it. If you come in, you have a bad time, you're going to really talk about it. But this is, I think, the, core of the point you're making. If you come in, you have a bad time, but then I do whatever it takes to make that right. That's the experience you are going to talk about the absolute most. There's almost a business case to be made that you and I should open up a restaurant where we intentionally mess up with every single person that walks through the door just so we have an

opportunity to make it right, right? It's the greatest investment, either financially or from a time perspective in marketing available to any business. If you really invest in customer recovery, it pays dividends. How I dealt with it? Listen, I used to read every review. And I think that's important because the day you stop, if you're in the business of making other people happy, the day you stop caring about what people think is the day you take your first step down the road of irrelevancy. Now, that said, I didn't change every time someone said they didn't like something or in the especially disrespectful reviews, like, life is too short.

I just left them alone. But if I sense that it was rooted in honesty and there was something we can do to fix it, I would engage. I try to make sure that I don't place too much importance in everything on the internet because there's going to be some snarky stuff out there and it's too emotionally draining.

But I agree with you. If you're committed to creating something great, you've got to work hard to make sure you don't leave a single guest behind. And all of it filters down to the staff. I mean, I know sometimes I'll get a text message in the middle of the night from a waitress will say, I just want you to know, you may get a bad email, and she'll describe what happened with the customer. She wants to head it off at the past.

Now, part of me. I would always tell my team, like, hey, guys, I trust you. You have, you are empowered. If you don't think they liked the meal, comp the whole freaking thing. Yes. I would rather us have a hard conversation about you being too generous the next day than you're not being generous enough. and now I have to deal with the outcome. It's the best thing.

And I always tell them, these are all the rules of the place. We go over them. I said, any rule in the place can be broken if you feel you need to call an audible to make the customer happy. Any rule.

And I'm always shocked that they don't do it. Like I was like, why did you get into this with a customer? You know, I told you, just let them go. Don't charge them. Your boss doesn't care. But they will become ego involved and emotionally involved.

And they don't want to back down, right? But that's when like in that pre-shift meeting, those are like, that's a beautiful opportunity to celebrate all the people that did break a rule the day before. Like consistently day after day after day reinforced, this is what Wright looks like. I'll tell you something else we're doing. You might like this. So, you know, I get these reviews every day. We use a four-star rating for our internal reviews.

Amazon uses five. The advantage of that is you can have the middle one, the three star is, you know, the perfect middle. I prefer that they're forced to choose a negative. Make a side. Yeah, are we trending good or bad here? Just tell me. So, and you know, you can argue different sides.

I mean, who am I to say that Amazon chose the wrong decision? Anyway, and I don't read the three and four star reviews. I have someone who worked for me a very long time who does read them, She follows up on the three-star reviews, and she'll alert me if there's something she knows very well to alert me to, but I handle all the one and two-star reviews. But every complaint is logged such that when that customer comes again in the reservation list, that customer's name is red. And if they hover over the customer's name, their complaint from the previous visit will show

up to us as we check them in. even if they didn't like their seat, the Coke was watery, anything that they mentioned. So we'll say, hello, Mr. So we see this, you know, your 10th visit. Last time you came, you didn't let last time the air conditioner, whatever is. And, you know, I feel. And I don't know why, like, there's so much technology out there now. This is not hard to do. It doesn't cost me a lot of money, right?

It costs me virtually nothing. And I'm always surprised that I'm not seeing that everywhere at this point. it'll eventually happen. But every time. I love that. I mean, everyone should do that. If you came in,

I messed up the burger, better and I messed it up again on the next visit. So like, give me the heads up so I can just double down. Not to say that, you're not trying to get every burger right, but it's a human business, things fall through the cracks.

The other thing I would suggest, though, is like, you know, athlete's always good to the tapes and they've had a bad game to see what they did wrong to make sure they don't repeat those mistakes. What they don't do often enough is go to the tapes

when they've had a good game to see what they did right to make sure that they do that thing again. Like, I could see it being just as valuable for the same thing to exist with the four-star review. Let's say I went into the comedy seller, and I was like, my God, it was the absolute best. I had this pina colada. And it was like the best pinocalada in my life, right?

I want to know how many times you've been somewhere and you loved it, and then you went back the second time, and it just wasn't as good. It happens a lot. And it's heartbreaking. And, like, if you love it for a second time, specific reason, I want to know that so I can deliver on that promise again and again and again. That's a good idea. I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I mean, we do tremendous volume and

it might be too much to look into, but at least the information in the event the bandwidth. No, I mean, computers and now AI, they can sort through a lot. We get, this is the only time I'm going to brag now, we get a lot of four-star reviews. We get our, our, our, our, Google reviews are at 4.8, which is very high for a business, right? The mathematics make it harder to get higher numbers. So we're doing a lot right. I'm never satisfied. I immediately bought your book.

By the way, you were recommended to me by a guy, a guy who one of the people who bought the Cafe Woffer me, I immediately bought your book and I gave it out to all the managers because it was my way of proving to them that I'm not crazy. Absolutely. You guys think, you know, here it is. Like, he's got the number one restaurant on the world. Everything that he's saying is the same kind of thing

coming from exactly the same, you know, place that I'm coming from. So you really can't. And everybody's reading it. Now, all my managers are in the process of reading it. Oh, that's cool, man. That's really cool. But now, so we're almost out of time. My question is now to you, why are you out of the business?

You know, I mean, I sold the restaurants just because my partner and I, we weren't really getting along anymore. Someone was going to have to go. We worked for a long time to split the business. And that's never a smooth process. And I started to feel like I was ripping apart the thing that I got to do. Let me just tell the listeners, your part is not just a partner. He is the chef.

Yeah, the shot. So you're a two-headed monster there. Exactly. Yeah, so go ahead. Sorry. And one day I just had this moment of realization. I was like, I don't want to break this whole thing apart. Let me just sell my half of it.

I believe that I have many more chapters in my career beyond this. And then I wrote the book effectively. Sometimes when you rewalk the road you've just been done, it helps you decide what road you want to. walk down next. And then the book kind of became that next road for me. To my surprise, the book became much bigger than I expected it to. And I'm not out of the business forever necessarily. But here's the thing. When it comes to restaurants, it sounds like this is something we have in common. I'm obsessive. It is consuming for me. And not in a bad way. I love it. Right.

Right now I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old. I want to be a good dad. It's hard. It's hard for me to imagine that I could be a good restaurateur and a good dad. I'm not saying others can't be. I'm just not certain that I could be. But as importantly, the companies I get to work with, the impact that I feel like I'm getting to make across so many different platforms is really satisfying for me. And I wouldn't be able to continue doing this were I to start opening restaurants again. So I'm enjoying this season. with the knowledge that there will be another season, and I'm not yet sure what that's going to look like.

I do miss restaurants. But it's funny, I live in Nashville now, and I was with a buddy of mine who moved from L.A. to Nashville. And he had just been home in L.A. at his house there for a month, and he'd come back, Mary McDonneros. And, hey, when you're in L.A., how do you feel about having moved to Nashville? Like, were you questioning the decision to move here?

He goes, you know, a friend of mine in L.A. I said, hey, do you miss it here? He goes, yeah. He goes, what do you miss about LA? He goes, I miss my restaurants. I miss my friends. I miss the weather. And he goes, what do you like national?

He goes, yeah. He goes, what do you like about it? He goes, I love the restaurants. I love my friends. And I love the weather. I think you can miss something without feeling the need to go back to it. So long as you are really enjoying the thing you're doing now. And I look at life as a series of seasons and I'm loving the one I'm in.

So two things I want to respond to what you said there. First of all, I had a father who had a restaurant in a nightclub and was raised by a single dad for much of that time. He was a very, very, very good and loving father completely devoted to me, always, always, always, always, always, always working. And though I had an extremely happy childhood and I was never felt neglected and my father did manage it somehow. I don't want my kids to have that same childhood. I find myself. That's number one. And number two,

I was a good kid dispositionally. That was just his good luck. I totally could have gotten into drugs and all kinds of stuff that I didn't simply because it wasn't, it was not because he had some magic way of keeping me out of trouble. I just, you know, it wasn't like that.

So, yeah. Yeah, so I, and this is what I described to of my own dilemmas. Like, I have three kids. They're young. And I'm very conscious about making time from my kids and the business suffers, although my general manager, Liz, came into my life in some magical way. I mean, I spent my entire career as a child, my father's entire career thinking, you can never hire a general manager and expect her to replace an owner. And then this woman, this woman walked in who actually does nine night at the third.

10 things better than I ever did them. And the other thing I wanted to say is that, I don't want to say his name, you might be aware of this guy. He's the smartest bar owner in Manhattan, in my opinion. And I spoke to him not long ago. I said, you opening any new places? And he says, no, I will never open another place in New York. It is just impossible.

He says, all my new businesses are in Nashville, South Carolina, and he loves Nashville. in Nashville, they're happy for you to be there. They're on your side. They want businesses to succeed. Do you have any, or I don't know if you don't want to answer, you don't have to, do you have any feelings about the business climate in New York, where the rest of the world?

You know, I think it's interesting. I know I have friends, obviously, some of my best friends in the world are running restaurants in New York. And I know a lot of them that are having a hard time. And I know a couple of them that are doing just fine. And so not being in it, I'm always hesitant to speak about it. I think our industry is one where since the day I decided to go into the restaurant business, people were warning me that it was a really, really hard business to go into.

And I decided long ago to stop talking about how hard it was, not because it would stop being hard, but rather because what I talked about is what I start thinking about. rather I just talked about how much I loved it and that's the thing I thought about I happened to do really well from a business perspective I think this time more than ever

is a two-headed monster or double-edged sword in the sense that there are more headwinds now than ever and yet with everything that's going on in the world with AI and division right like the human moments are more precious than ever before and whether it's

your business or a fine and nutting restaurant, those are like the bastions where people can come together for experiences that are as human as humanly possible. And that gives me faith that on the long term, it's going to be a great investment. I don't know how the, okay, my business, I'm lucky because I have fair leases, I have a bunch of places, and I own real estate. And it's a high margin business. Even though my cover charges are half what my competitors are charging, which I can't comprehend. Like, we'll charge $25 on the same night. They'll charge $48 plus a $6 fee.

I mean, I think they are on very shaky ground if there should be any kind of economic turnout. But anyway, but even, but we do much more volume. So it's a high margin business, and that wasn't always the case. who were able to pay our bills pretty comfortably. And I imagine expensive restaurants, if they're successful, that's a good formula. The day-to-day, inexpensive operator, with all the new, the liability, the insurance, the high minimum wages that are not really called for, in my opinion, because they're going

to tipped employees. And, you know, just as an aside when I... And now they don't even need to pay taxes on the tips. So like it's a, yeah, I don't know how they make it. And something else, you can just, you can blink like a hostage if you want, but it used to be there was cash. And every business, I mean, the game theory also was ugly, but every business owner had that relief valve that if you really got in trouble, he could take some cash.

You know, that's just the way, that's the way, that's the way the entire restaurant business operated. You could, you had that buffer in some way. Everything's 100% credit card now. So that you can get killed, just killed, you know. I mean, here's the thing. Like, at the end of the day, whether you're running a business that's bringing in $8 million a year in revenue or $25 million in revenue, many of the fixed costs remain the same. I think it's just a business where you need to be.

more savvy than ever in setting up a business such that it is prepared to be successful over the long term, right? It's harder to wing it if the foundational design is not wired for success. But this is awful because who can do what you're describing? Big chain restaurants, corporate restaurants, mom and pops that we adored, they're not savvy like that. They have no economies of scale. They can't read their own document. There's a million things they can't do. do. They don't even know how to follow their percentages. I don't know how to follow my percentages.

But I think AI is going to be one of these things that starts to provide tools that can be accessible and helpful for a lot of people. I hope. I hope. Yeah. Anyway, all right. So I don't know when you're going to be in New York again. Since it turns out you're a comedy seller customer, I really hope if you want to come again, you'll email me first. So we can have a frank conversation. By the way, by the way, I will definitely email you

because as many times as I've been to your place, there's definitely been a handful of times where I've tried to go to your place and haven't been able to get in. So this is fun to know you, man. You have, you have a, you can come anytime now.

But it's another thing I do. I hate to say it on the air, but so far when I say things on the air, okay, I'll tell you, you know, you ever got, this is just, I'll set it up. You know, L.O.

Bean, the store LLBin, right? Yeah, yeah. So I know LLB since I was a little kid because I used to spend summers in Maine. LLB always had this lifetime guarantee for every product they had. Yeah. Because Maine, culturally, is a very honorable place. And this was a wonderful thing that they had. And then as soon as the Internet hit and this, the Great Unwashed were able to start

return. L.L. Bean had to give up their policy. So you can't have nice things if you don't have nice people, right? So I'm always worried about saying certain things on the air for that. Like, well, I will, and then I have to rescind what I do because, but so far it hasn't happened. But I will, that we're sold out, we really are sold out. But I'll instruct the people in the back office. When somebody emails us, it's a birthday I've been trying, whatever it is,

where you sense that it means more to them to come than the other 100 people who got a sold-out message. I let them in. If it's even remotely possible, you're going to. Yeah, yeah. I feel like this is, why not, right? You know, we somehow make it work and it means so much to them, right? And I tell, my God, I've been in that situation. Yeah.

Or somebody said, my wife told me to make the reservation. I forgot. Now it's her birthday. She's going to kill me. I say, Jennifer, get them in. You know, I know that's so. And sometimes it might be fibbing, but doesn't matter to me. But by the way, that one thing, and I know we're out of time, but I want to say this because I think it's important. That says so much about the culture you've built. There's cultures where from the top down, they derive more pleasure out of saying no than they do yes. And then they're the ones that derive more pleasure out of saying yes than no. That's right. And that distinction says everything. about how that business is going to show up in the world.

And this is people, and this is a hiring challenge. You wouldn't even get into that. But I never have much believed that I could change anybody I hired. I needed to hire people who came into the job happy to do it the way I'm wanting them to do it. And then I have to try not to screw them up by them feeling I haven't properly appreciated them. But I, it's like this famous saying that one of the Israeli prime ministers had, it's better to tame wild horses than try to motivate Jules.

Like, yeah, I'll try to, I want somebody that's great, and I'll try to shape them. But to try to take a dower or a surly person and turn them into a friendly person, who's happy to say yes. I don't know. Maybe you were able to do it. I mean, listen, I don't think it's impossible, but given the alternative, yeah, of course. Find the people that, like, are genuinely, I don't know, happy to be gracious. Yeah, and they're out there.

All right. Will Godera is very, very big honor to meet you. This conversation has exceeded my expectations, just like your restaurants do. thank you very very much and please do email me and let's connect at the comments I cannot wait to be there again brother thanks for having me on

okay Steve hit the outro sounds good here you go that's me playing by the way all right thank very much sir yeah that's such a pleasure can you real quick what are your other places

is.