Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

Summary

Danny Meyer describes the development of his restaurants and the management approach he calls Enlightened Hospitality. His account starts with opening Union Square Cafe and uses restaurant experience to examine the relationships among employees, guests, the surrounding community, suppliers and investors. He argues that taking care of employees comes first in that sequence.

The book combines the founder’s business story with his approach to hiring, feedback, setting standards and responding when things go wrong. Restaurant work supplies the setting, while the wider subject is how an organization turns a service promise into the way its people behave. It presents Meyer’s experience and judgment, not a promise that the same choices will produce the same results in another business.

• SourceSetting the Table — publisher-supplied description · Publisher description: restaurant-building account and employee-first sequence of staff, guests, community, suppliers and investors.Checked 2026-11-03
• SourceSetting the Table — 2008 print-edition bibliographic record · Title, author, reprint edition, HarperCollins January 29, 2008, ISBN 9780060742768 and 336 pages.Checked 2026-11-03
• SourceSetting the Table — library contents and first-edition record · Table of Contents: The 51 percent solution; Broadcasting the message, tuning in the feedback; Constant, gentle pressure; The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled. Metadata here is the 2006 first edition; imported ISBN is the separately verified 2008 print reprint.Checked 2026-11-03

Why read it Our view

For a founder building a service team, examine how hiring, employee care, feedback and responses to mistakes support the customer experience. Use Meyer’s restaurant cases to ask who must act, which standard they need to meet and how the team learns when service falls short.