THE BURGER KING
It was 28 years ago when a onetime salesman decided to indulge his dining passions and open a little restaurant on East 16th Street in New York City. In the years since, Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group have left an indelible mark on the culinary landscape with marquee Manhattan restaurants like Gramercy Tavern, The Modern, and Maialino. But it was Shake Shack, which began as a food kiosk in Madison Square Park peddling hot dogs, concretes, and the world-famous ShackBurger, that made Meyer into a global sensation. He is now serving food to the masses in such far-flung locales as Qatar, Doha, and Abu Dhabi—not to mention some very happy Heathrow-bound Business Elite passengers on Delta Airlines who are about to feast on fare from his barbecue mecca, Blue Smoke. Over coffee and “the best biscotti in the house” in the front room at Union Square Café, where it all began, Meyer talks turkey.
Was there a formative moment in your life when you thought, “I need to be a restaurateur”?
No. I never dreamed of it, because it was the wrong thing to do. When I was growing up, restaurant jobs were considered [opportunities] for immigrant families who couldn’t do any other work, not valid entrepreneurial pursuits. I moved to New York after college to take a year or two to just have fun figuring out what I really wanted to do with my life. I had taken a job selling electronic tags to stop shoplifters, and became the company’s top salesman. I got to know every unsavory corner of New York City, Westchester County, New Jersey, and Long Island. I kept taking my commissions and buying stock in this company, which was public, and in the three years I was there, I made six times my money. But I was a prisoner in a business I didn’t really want to be in.
What inspired a change?
I had studied political science, and I thought about being a lawyer. On the eve of taking my LSAT, I was out to dinner with my aunt, uncle, and grandmother, and I was in a crappy mood because I didn’t want to take the test. So my uncle, who is an artist, turned to me and said, “What’s eating you?” I said, “I’ve got to take my LSATs tomorrow.” And he replied, “Well you want to be a lawyer, don’t you?” And I said, “No. That’s the problem.” And then, he said, “If you waste one minute of your precious life pursuing something you have no interest in, you’re insane.” And I said, “Well, I don’t know what to do with my life.” And he said, “What are you talking about? Of course you know what you want. All I’ve ever heard you talk about your whole life is restaurants.” And I go, “OK, should I go eat in restaurants for the rest of my life?” And he said, “No, you should go open a restaurant.” I promise you that was the first time it ever, ever, ever occurred to me. I enrolled to take a restaurant management class and got a job in a restaurant on 22nd Street as the assistant lunch manager. My salary was $250 a week. I did that for about five months. Then I went to cook in Europe for less than two months. When I came back, I pounded the pavement until I found this site.
What was your concept?
I had no concept. In fact, I hated the word “concept.” A great restaurant has to have soul. And for me, a concept is something that comes out of here [points to his head], whereas a soul comes out of your heart. Union Square Café is a restaurant that serves food that I love to eat, served by people that I want to hang out with, in a neighborhood that’s got the best greenmarket in the Northeast. This place hasn’t changed that much in 28 years. At the time, there just wasn’t anywhere you could eat really good food and drink really, really good wines where the waiters were not wearing ties, much less tuxedos. You could come here in jeans or a suit and eat at the bar if you wanted. No one was doing that.
The restaurant quickly became known for service.
We did, and I realized that that was a mistake. In 1992, we won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Service in America, and I felt like a fraud, because I didn’t think our service was that great. I thought, “What if the thing they’re recognizing is not, in fact, service? What if it’s something else?” That was when I drew a distinction between service and hospitality, as defined by how we make people feel. What they really want is to feel this blurred line of going out and coming home.
How hard is it to find staff?
It’s hard enough, in any economy, to find people who really want to do this. But there’s a miniscule population of those people who are also emotionally wired so that their greatest act of selfishness is to do something for you. And that’s really what we are out to find: a “high HQ,” a high hospitality quotient. Someone whose greatest job in the world is doing something that makes you feel good.
Are you ever afraid of opening a new restaurant?
No, or I wouldn’t do it. At the end of the day, I’m a serial entrepreneur—I’ve rarely met a good idea that didn’t tempt me. I’ve rarely thought through that idea, or impeccably analyzed the downside. In fact, I’m almost incapable of seeing the downside in a good idea. It never dawned on me for a minute that this restaurant might not work. And I love bringing other people along for the ride in stuff that I find exciting.
Restaurants are now reviewed in so many different ways. Do all of them matter?
The two biggest ways a review can matter is the rate at which it impacts staff morale, and the degree to which it impacts business. There are still some reviews that can majorly impact one or the other or both. Most don’t. But every legitimate review is legitimate feedback, and any restaurateur is foolish to not ask for opinions.
What kind of social responsibilities do you feel for your guests?
I feel a responsibility to make the kind of choices I would make for my own family. Would I say that 100 percent of everything we eat is something you should eat every day of your life? Of course not. If I drank a Shake Shack milkshake every day, I’d have a tough time staying in shape. But we have cage-free eggs in our frozen custard—I care deeply about that. We use all-natural meat without antibiotics or growth hormones. We compost in our restaurants. Does that take care of our guests? Indirectly.
Was it a big challenge to make Shake Shack successful as a scalable business?
The challenge was not in changing our single-unit, fine-dining DNA. The tough thing has been in learning how to scale who we are. Before Shake Shack, we had never done any restaurant more than once. We had to crack our own code and build our culture, not water it down. It was our fine-dining approach that led us to use reclaimed Brooklyn bowling alleys for the tables at Tabla, or to buy carbon offsets for all of our energy at Shake Shack, or to have solar panels at our new Shake Shack in Westbury, Long Island. Ten percent of every Shake Shack we open is highly localized. The restaurant design, the materials that we use, and the way we source some of our special ingredients, whether it’s beer or coffee or the baked goods that go into our concretes.
Many of your alumni, Like Tom Colicchio and Paul Grieco, have gone out on their own and been very successful.
What I love is that most of the people who spent time with us and then went on to do something entrepreneurial have championed the kind of work environment we create here. The sense of hospitality and caring for community stuff goes with them. But they sing a song in a very different voice then I ever could, and it’s really fun for me.
Will there ever be a Danny Meyer restaurant with a drive-thru?
I learned a long time ago never to say never. We kind of want to be the lightbulb to a bunch of moths, and a drive-thru is sort of a repellent. This is much more about bringing people together.