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Excel where rivals neglect
Dining at the best
Will Guidara, author of Unreasonable Hospitality, took his team to dine at the number one restaurant in the world. They wanted to copy the napkin routine and the scented chopsticks in the bathrooms. He refused, because his restaurant could not afford it and the leader was already doing it.
Coffee and beer
Instead he asked what had been a bit disappointing about the evening. The coffee was average, and the beer drinkers, probably the chefs who had come along, were treated shabbily compared to the wine drinkers.
Back at his own restaurant, he appointed a coffee sommelier and a beer sommelier and told them their job was to hit it out of the park.
Why it works
Doing something spectacularly well that nobody expects grabs attention, and a customer who has been made to pay attention to it weighs it more heavily in judging the whole experience.
Why does the last course shape memory?
In a 1993 experiment by Daniel Kahneman and colleagues, people held a hand in painfully cold water for 60 seconds, and in a second trial for 60 seconds plus 30 more at a slightly warmer temperature. Most chose to repeat the longer trial, even though it contained more total pain. The finding is known as the peak-end rule: people judge an experience mostly by its most intense moment and its ending, not by an average.
Why do rivals copy the same practices?
The sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, in a 1983 paper, described mimetic isomorphism: organizations facing uncertainty copy the ones they see as successful. Over time every firm in a field adopts the same habits, and the field grows more uniform. The effect is strongest where nobody is sure what actually causes success.
How did Guidara's restaurant rise?
Will Guidara ran Eleven Madison Park in New York alongside the chef Daniel Humm. The restaurant won three Michelin stars in 2012 and was named number one on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2017. Guidara later described his approach to service in his 2022 book Unreasonable Hospitality.
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