Setting the Table Review

As readers will know from past posts, the IT team took a trip to NYC a few months ago and were fortunate to be able to dine at Union Square Cafe, one of the restaurants started by Danny Meyer. It was a wonderful experience.

I have just finished reading his book, Setting the Table, and want to recommend it for anyone interested in understanding service/hospitality and the entrepreneural experience. It’s all from Danny’s experience and is a fast and casual read.

I came away with a few tidbits, some of which I had seen in other forms, some unique to me. I’ll just run through them quickly. Danny frequently questioned the assumptions of opportunities before him, asking why can’t we rewrite the rules, such as St. Louis bar-b-que in NYC, or why can’t a restaurant be high end and still have a warm feel. His questioning and then breaking of the rules was instrumental in his success. With such a strong focus on hospitality he developed a standard for hiring that looked for a mix in any person of 49% technical ability and 51% social ability. Not unlike what we do here in Zingerman’s IT department. Always on the lookout for information that could “connect the dots”, Danny focused on what he called “turning over the rocks” – in essense he looked at any situation with curiousity and thought about the patterns he was seeing and what they meant.

The only thing that I found myself questioning throughout the book was Danny’s head over heels infatuation with reviews. Personally I’m probably on the far other end of the extreme on needing positive feedback and so I had a hard time identifying with this deep need on his part.

Amazon: $17.13