Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the restaurant guest experience podcast, where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is sponsored by Ovation, a guest experience platform for multi-unit restaurants who actually care about operational excellence and hospitality. Your team gets all the answers without annoying your guests. With all the questions. Learn more at OvationUpcom. And today's guest is a man who needs absolutely no introduction, but because I'm legally obligated to give an introduction, I will. He is the co-owner of Make it Nice Hospitality Group, which operates 11 Madison Park in Nomad. He's been featured on the Bear, he's co-authored four books and in 2022 he authored the groundbreaking book a mandatory read for everyone here at ovation, which sits over my left shoulder acting as my angel uh, when not being studied, unreasonable hospitality. Ladies and gentlemen, we have will gadara on the podcast. What's up will?

Speaker 2: 1:02

hey, buddy, I'm so happy to be here. I also love that it is sitting next to setting the table, because in many ways I feel like my book was the sequel to that one, so it's fun to see them side by side up there you know, I I kind of think of it as, like the old testament and the new testament, they're both important.

Speaker 1: 1:19

They both like teach good stuff, uh, and I I love them both and you know, um, I had the privilege of meeting danny and in at nra um last year and just awesome guy. And uh, kelly mcpherson, his cto, is um advisor, longtime advisor, longtime friend, so anyway, uh, well, one of the things that I was so impressed by was actually when because cause we've we've been going back and forth now for a little bit on like getting this podcast together and I really appreciate you taking some time the first time that I reached out for the podcast, um, your life, it was kind of crazy at the time having a kid lots going on, and I got um, someone on your team sent me a hey, a hey now's you know now's not a good time email and it was the nicest rejection email I have ever received and it was so nice in fact I had to read it three times to be like that she is saying no, right, because it was like so nice, and so what I was so surprised by was this feeling of hospitality.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Has you've kept it with? Have a pre-shift meeting when it's not like, when the hot dog story can't be taken as literally?

Speaker 2: 2:53

Well, I mean listen, this is what I'd say. Hospitality is much bigger than restaurants. I think that's an important starting point, right? I think I say this all the time no matter what you do for a living, you can make the choice to be in the hospitality industry simply by deciding that you care and that you're willing to be as intentional and creative in pursuit of people at every turn. And in restaurants, we just happen to do that through the sale of food and beverage, and to do that through the sale of food and beverage.

Speaker 2: 3:25

But we should be hospitality in our relationships in life. We should be hospitable in our relationships in life. We should or can maybe is the right word be hospitable in our interactions, whether you're running a tech company or simply engaging with people who want to engage, or gosh selling cars or mowing lawns and kind of everything in between. I think a lot of inspiration when you're leading a team comes through actions. I think a lot of it comes through words, and we have actions and words regardless of what we do, and so I don't need a hot dog story to happen in the moment in order to show my team what right looks like. I just need to, as best I can articulate what my core values and non-negotiables are, help guide them to understand how to bring those things to life. Correct them when they go astray, affirm them when they get it right. It also doesn't hurt to hire good people, such that they're already well-equipped to succeed.

Speaker 1: 4:34

So, when the correction, how do you find the best way to correct someone? Because I think that, whether or not we're again mowing lawns, running a tech company, running a restaurant, it's like there's going to be things that we want done a certain way. And how do you strike that balance between? Here's the principle I want them to know and then here's like an idiosyncratic nuance that I have that I want it done a certain way, but I don't have like a good reason? But it's kind of sometimes hard to separate those two things, because as entrepreneurs, uh, we tend to be like, you know, we don't necessarily know why we want something, but we just like have that vision and we go after it.

Speaker 2: 5:21

You know what I mean well, I mean, I might challenge that last part. I think there's always a why, right, like, if you really think about it, everything that you want done in a certain way, if you really pause for long enough to think about it, you can identify why you want it done that way. Maybe it's just that hey, like I gotta be honest, just I know, like taste is subjective, but for me this is what I believe it should look like. That's a why and that's a reasonable why. If you're the boss, you're allowed to have an opinion that, even with a subjective idea, governs the ultimate result. And I think with most things, I mean listen, if you can't figure out why something should be done a certain way, then maybe we should be open to doing. But let's put that aside for a sec. I think criticism is an invaluable tool and is a hospitable tool.

Speaker 2: 6:22

People cringe at the word criticism, which I think is unfortunate because it means people haven't pushed themselves to embrace it. Feedback is everything. Creating a culture where feedback is normalized is the first step to not only improving the product but also investing in your team. When I'm talking about feedback, obviously I'm talking about praise, setting high expectations, pushing your team to meet and exceed those expectations and celebrating the hell out of them when they do, giving them praise. But if praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. There are few things more powerful than when someone is willing to step outside of their comfort zone for long enough to invest in someone else's growth. And if we don't have people around us that are willing to challenge us, push us, correct us, help us grow, then by definition we will not grow.

Speaker 2: 7:24

And so people challenge my use of the word criticism and I always come back pretty forcefully that we shouldn't change the word, we should embrace its role in leading people. But for criticism to be thoughtful, it needs to be done in a certain way, and I have rules of criticism I talk about constantly, which is A you're criticizing the behavior, not the person. Someone's not a bad person for doing something wrong, it's just the behavior that needs to change. Criticism should not be emotional. The moment you bring emotion into it, you're making something unnecessary, emotional, which brings up guards. Criticism should be done in private, not in public, and it should be done consistently, because the only way to send a clear message to the people around you what right looks like is to be there to correct them every time it's done incorrectly, and similarly, to praise them every time it's done correctly affirmation.

Speaker 1: 8:26

criticism is investment. I think that's so powerful that because, at the end of the day, where it all starts is with this concept of hospitality and the way that you know, this is episode like 350 for us and one of the things in meeting with so many incredible hospitality leaders. If I were to distill hospitality down into one thing and I'm open for criticism on this Will but I would distill it down to hospitality is proving, in the restaurant sense, hospitality is proving to the guest that you care.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Hospitality is proving to the employee that you care. Hospitality is proving to the customer, to your business partner, to your spouse that you care. So first it's like with criticism, I think the base level is one they have the tools, they understand what the expectations were and they know that you care about them. I don't know what would you, being the expert on hospitality here, what do you think of that definition of hospitality? What criticism would you give it?

Speaker 2: 9:28

No, I think it's great. I like to define and redefine and redefine hospitality. I think that's important. With any idea that is meaningful to you, the better you are at articulating it, the better you become at compelling those around you to embrace it. And I think hospitality is about being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. I think hospitality is about making people feel seen. I think a great definition of hospitality is showing people that you care. The feeling seen. One is perhaps my favorite right now.

Speaker 2: 10:06

One of the things I like to remind people about is that service and hospitality are not the same thing. Too often they're conflated to be the same, but they're definitively not. Service is a part of the product. Service is meeting the base level expectations that someone should have of you In a restaurant. Service is getting the right plate of food to the right person within the right amount of time there. Nothing extraordinary about good service that's fulfilling a prompt. Hospitality is the extent to which the people you're serving feel seen. Um, that and, by the way, caring about someone and them feeling seems that is the same thing. Because you can't care about someone without like actually seeing them as a unique individual. Because you can't care about someone without actually seeing them as a unique individual that deserves to be cared about.

Speaker 1: 10:57

I love that. That makes so much sense and that separation of hospitality and service is something I feel like every company can really work on, pulling apart because it does. It is so different of I can go to the same exact restaurant, get the same exact food in the same exact time and have it be exactly the way that I want it to. One is hospitality, the other one is not. It's all about how that's. I love that it's. It's almost like you think about this and talk about this a lot.

Speaker 2: 11:31

Well, I mean, like you got some great insights.

Speaker 1: 11:35

So when, when this all boils down, in the hospitality industry, everything that we do is about the guest experience, and so what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

Speaker 2: 11:50

Well, it's funny not to be contrarian, but you have Danny Meyer's book behind you. Danny would say that everything we do is about the employee experience and actually that's the most scalable thing you can do, and then they'll be well-equipped and inspired and encouraged to then turn around and invest in the guest. I don't think it's possible to invest in the guest unless you start with the employee. I agree with him. Yeah, I'll just continue. I'm looking literally at his book so I have an inability not to quote him right now. One of my favorites of his quotes is hospitality is a team sport and it's true, right, it doesn't matter how hospitable I am restaurants all over America and in Europe, thousands of employees, many thousands of guests.

Speaker 2: 12:50

I'm not touching even a fraction of those tables. The most scalable investment I can make is by showing hospitality to the people that then can, in having received it, understand how good it feels to turn around and give it, teaching them, coaching them, educating them, caring for them, making them feel seen, and then, like most beautiful things in the world, that gets paid forward.

Speaker 1: 13:21

That's a great point, because who is the person who's going to hand the bag to the guest? The very last touch point is that employee. Is that server, is that, uh, that waiter? And when you're looking at something like hey, uh, when I have a bad experience at a restaurant because the server is rude, I don't say oh, I didn't like will will was mean to me. I say I don't like that company, right, like that is a bad brand because it's all a reflection.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Like we, I work with Big Chicken, shaq's Big Chicken, and when I was speaking at this conference, shaq was there and you know one of the things that you know, he was cool and he was just like Shaq. And then Perry Roger things that you know he was cool and he was just like Shaq. And then Perry Roger, his agent, was like you see how Shaq is, that's how you need to be, because how your employees treat the guest to that guest is how Shaq is treating them Right. And so we all we might not have the personification like a Shaq, but it's a representation of the brand you know and I love that idea of starting with the employees.

Speaker 1: 14:31

So obviously you have in the restaurant industry right now there's a lot of upheaval. There's a lot of people that are worried about the economy and, like I, can't invest in certain things I need to focus in on, just like my food and lowering costs and increasing revenue. But still the one thing that the message that we try to share is like we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it is about the guest experience, and so are there any tactics that you would recommend to someone who's running a restaurant nowadays to improve the guest experience?

Speaker 2: 15:08

recommend to someone who's running a restaurant nowadays to improve the guest experience. I mean, one of the things I I read about in the book is the rule of 95 5. Um, it's how I've always managed the finances of my companies, which is manage your money like a freaking maniac. 95% of the time, and by that I mean no dollar is overlooked and no expense is too small to be poured over, and you do that such that you can then spend 5% of it quote foolishly, and the air quotes are to imply that it's actually not foolish at all.

Speaker 2: 15:43

I think that, like most things the spoons are important, right, yeah, the spoons are important, but like that applies in the good times and it applies in the bad times. Um, yeah, you need to be thoughtful and get onto the defense when facing a season of adversity and when you are losing the game. But no team, when they are losing, ever wins if they only play defense. You only come back and win if you can also continue to play offense, and I mean, I don't think anyone would argue with that. And so why do we think it's a winning strategy in business during seasons of adversity to stop playing offense altogether? Now, perhaps the the balance shifts a little bit. Maybe during good times, where you can be a bit more bombastic and everything's just kind of coming up roses, you can really go all in on offense and the the relationship, the proportions need to shift. But if you ever find yourself in a complete lack of moderation where you're only on defense, the game is probably already over.

Speaker 1: 16:55

Powerful. I like that and it's so important that we really do focus in on making sure that we've got that right balance based on our current circumstances. So powerful Will. Who is someone that deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry? Who's?

Speaker 2: 17:13

someone that we should be following. Oh man, I think Kevin Bam. Kevin Bam is the owner of the Boca Group. He and Rob Katz own that restaurant group together and Kevin, I think, is remarkable. He has a huge restaurant company. They open unbelievably creative and successful concepts. He is a good dude, like all that stuff, but the thing that I'm inspired by most about Kevin is he's one of the people that understands both creativity and commerce at the highest level. He is a true operator. You always hear restaurants are such a terrible business, right, and I think that is oftentimes governed by the fact that too many people who open restaurants have never spent time learning and getting excited about the business side. Kevin is unbelievable at that side, and yet it doesn't come at the expense of understanding how to create remarkable, remarkable restaurants that not only put their best creative foot forward but do so in a way that cares for the people that work for him and the people that they all collectively serve equally.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Fantastic, All right. Well, we're going to have Kevin Bam on the. We're going to reach out to him, get him on the pod and everyone needs to follow Kevin Bam, Will? We're coming to the end of our time here? Where can people go to learn more?

Speaker 2: 18:45

Let's see. I mean on Instagram W Gadara, unreasonableh gadara, unreasonable hospitalitycom. And if you go to unreasonable hospitalitycom, you can sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter premium cool, so check that out and do follow him on instagram.

Speaker 1: 19:00

It's great. I love the stories that you share, the letters that you read. Uh, it's awesome. Well, will, for making it cool to care again about hospitality. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you so much for joining us on Give an Ovation.

Speaker 2: 19:16

Thank you, buddy.

Speaker 1: 19:18

Thanks for joining us today. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We're all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a two-question, sms-based actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at OvationUpcom.