In the latest episode of Grey Matter, Danny Meyer, Founder and Executive Chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), joins Consello Founder, Chairman, and CEO Declan Kelly to discuss how leaders can turn a core instinct into an enduring and repeatable culture of excellence. The conversation takes on a familiar challenge leaders face: what makes an experience exceptional is often the hardest thing to maintain as a business grows.
Over four decades, Meyer has built some of the most influential names in hospitality, from Union Square Café, which he opened in 1985, to Shake Shack, which was born from a hot dog cart concept run out of the kitchen of Eleven Madison Park and has grown to over 400 locations globally. In the conversation, Meyer explains how he turned his philosophy of hospitality into a shared way of working that could grow with the businesses he built. That experience is also the subject of Meyer’s new book, “What Could Possibly Go Right?” which examines how to build an organization that can sustain exceptional hospitality at scale.
A central part of Meyer’s approach is HQ, or Hospitality Quotient, a genuine satisfaction in making others feel better. He believes an organization’s success is 51% hospitality and 49% performance. That belief shapes how he looks for leaders and how teams learn to “read signs” to recognize what each customer or colleague needs. When employees share that motivation, the culture becomes a common standard that shapes the way the business operates every day.
The full episode is available at Consello.com and on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.