Today, we're replaying my conversation with Danny Meyer. He is the founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, which comprises some of the most acclaimed restaurants in New York, like Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café. Danny is also the founder and chairman of Shake Shack, which began in NYC but is now a publicly traded company with hundreds of locations worldwide.

Our conversation focuses on how great hospitality leads to a great business, regardless of what sector it's in. We discuss why hospitality is the starting point for Danny’s business philosophy, why first impressions matter, Danny’s concept of ABCD - always be connecting dots, how to scale hospitality, and how to build a business with essentialism and soul. Please enjoy this conversation with Danny Meyer.

Listen to Founders Podcast

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

-----

This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors. Tired of running your own expert calls to get up to speed on a company? Tegus lets you ramp faster and find answers to critical questions more efficiently than any alternative method. The gold standard for research, the Tegus platform delivers unmatched access to timely, qualitative insights through the largest and most differentiated expert call transcript database. With over 60,000 transcripts spanning 22,000 public and private companies, investors can accelerate their fundamental research process by discovering highly-differentiated and reliable insights that can’t be found anywhere else in the market. As a listener, drive your next investment thesis forward with Tegus for free at tegus.co/patrick.

-----

Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.

Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

Show Notes:

(00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best

(03:41) First question – Danny’s experience as a tour guide in Italy

(08:17) Why hospitality is the center of business focus

(08:19) Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

(11:50) Early lessons at creating an environment of hospitality

(15:17) His strategy ABCD and learning from a trout fisherman relate and relate to hospitality

(20:45) Scaling hospitality

(24:56) What kind of people make a hospitality business work

(29:34) How to be an effective leader

(33:00) Handling mistakes well in the role of hospitality

(36:28) Creating the spark in the early part of entrepreneurial ventures

(40:32) When its time to start something new vs expand something you are already doing

(45:52) The excellence reflex and an example of this in his career

(50:25) Kindest thing anyone has done for him

Monaco, entre mythe doré et réalités diplomatiques