Enlightened Hospitality Priority Order

“At this moment, “enlightened hospitality” was born. In a meeting of the entire staff of Gramercy Tavern, and with full agreement and support from Tom, I began to outline what I considered nonnegotiable about how we did business. Nothing would ever matter more to me than how we expressed hospitality to one another. (Who ever wrote the rule that the customer is always first?) And then, in descending order, our next core values would be to extend gracious hospitality to our guests, our community, our suppliers, and finally our investors. I called that set of priorities enlightened hospitality. Every decision we made from that day forward would be evaluated according to enlightened hospitality.”

“Why do we care for our stakeholders in this particular order? The interests of our own employees must be placed directly ahead of those of our guests because the only way we can consistently earn raves, win repeat business, and develop bonds of loyalty with our guests is first to ensure that our own team members feel jazzed about coming to work. Being jazzed is a combination of feeling motivated, enthusiastic, confident, proud, and at peace with the choice to work on our team. I place the interests of our investors fifth, but not because I don’t want to earn a lot of money. On the contrary, I staunchly believe that standing conventional business priorities on their head ultimately leads to even greater, more enduring financial success. And, just as important, it’s the kind of success that adds tangible value to the lives of a wide range of stakeholders. As business or organizational logic, enlightened hospitality can be applied far beyond the restaurant industry.”