Review: Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An engaging story of how a restaurant in the New York got to the award of the best restaurant in the world - and the work which preceded this title. Will Guidara is focusing on the service part of the restaurants.

The management lessons of the book are rather trivial. The inner life of organising service in a superb fine-dining restaurant was very interesting to read. After reading it, you cannot help not noticing small details when dining in a good restaurant.

In particular, I liked application of the Rule of 95/5: Manage 95% of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5% “foolishly”. That last 5% has an outsize impact on the client experience.

I also found interesting the principle of “It’s important to me” card in the partnership. In the case of disagreements, the only way to proceed in pursuit of a good partnership is to decide that whoever cares more about the issue can have their way. You can agree on “It’s important to me” card to be pulled in certain situations. But this card should not be abused by pulling it too many times.

Most of all, it was interesting to read about all the examples of how they applied small gestures of extraordinary hospitality in their restaurant.