Danny Meyer
Founder & Executive Chairman, USHG. On 3 shows, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestorauthor@dhmeyer ↗ushg.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Danny Meyer is best known for developing acclaimed New York City dining institutions—including Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern—and founding the global fast-casual burger chain Shake Shack. He also pioneered the philosophy of "enlightened hospitality," authored the bestselling book Setting the Table, and co-founded the growth equity fund Enlightened Hospitality Investments.
3shows
5appearances
58statements
10resolved
5supported
2contradicted
50%fully supported
38said about them ↓ Everything Danny Meyer said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Meyer: Hospitality exists when you believe the counterparty is on your side
“Hospitality exists when you believe That the person on the other side of the transaction is on your side.”
Meyer: Business hospitality must prioritize employees before serving customers
“In business, I think that the first people who need to receive hospitality are the people who work in an organization, because if when you come to work, You feel like your colleagues are on your side, your boss is on your side, that people genuinely want to se…”
Meyer: Hiring evaluations weight emotional hospitality quotient at 51% and technical skill at 49%
“The way we ideally get to a hundred, 49 of those points are going to be how well someone does the job they do. How good of a cook are you? If you can make the best bowl of pasta I've ever had in my life, You get 49 points. That leaves 51 points if you want to …”
True hospitality means treating people exactly how they want to be treated
“Real empathy actually rejects the old golden rule. The old golden rule says do unto others as you would have done unto you. The hospitality golden rules, which is driven by empathy, says do unto others as you believe they would want done unto them.”
Meyer: True Hospitality Requires Customizing Regimented Systems for Each Guest
“The only way that you can feel like I'm on your side is if I customize it for you, because you're different than everybody else in the world. The temperature that you like is different than everybody else's temperature. The lighting is different. The sound is …”
Meyer resolves service mistakes using awareness, acknowledgment, apology, action, and generosity
“So the five A's of mistake making are be aware. That's the first one. If you're not aware, you're nowhere. I've made many, many mistakes that I didn't even know I made, and the person on whom I made the mistake might have been carrying around a bad feeling for…”
Danny Meyer: Leaders define culture by who they promote, not just performance
“The most powerful thing I think a leader does is to signal through the people that they hire and promote what are the behaviors that they want to propagate. If you are super careful about promoting not just the people who are great at what they do, but the peo…”
Meyer: Entrepreneurs are naturally blind to downside risk
“I've come to learn that a hallmark of being an entrepreneur is that you are upsided, as in, you can only see up. You don't see what could go wrong”
Meyer requires cooks to have six core emotional hospitality skills
“I don't let our chefs hire that pasta cook unless they believe that the pasta cook has those six emotional skills, meaning that now you've got someone who's really good at what they do and who is motivated to do that thing because they are happier themselves w…”
Meyer: Chipotle was the first national chain to offer real gastronomy
“Well, Chipotle, I think Steve and Chipotle really deserve an enormous amount of credit for really being the first national chain to break the barrier that fast food could not be It's gastronomic. There's real cooking that takes place in real time”
Keeping unprofitable businesses open unfairly deprives employees of raises and promotions
“In keeping it open two years longer than I should have, where we couldn't make ends meet, I was actually doing something incredibly unfair, which was to keep people on the team just because they were so loyal, and they were not getting raises, and they were no…”
Full-service restaurants require at least 80% occupancy to turn a profit
“The economics of a restaurant are such that you can really only turn a profit when you're at least at 80% occupancy”
Danny Meyer never intended to scale Shake Shack beyond a single cart.
“That implies that I ever decided Shake Shack was going to be a scaled concept, because I didn't. I won't go into the whole story but it started as a hot dog cart. This was the summer of 2001. We didn't open a second Shake Shack for five years.”
Danny Meyer offered all Shake Shack employees pre-IPO shares at $21.
“A hundred percent of everyone on our team at that point got a chance to buy stock at the strike price, which was 21 dollars. The first trade happened at 46 dollars.”
Danny Meyer initially feared scaling would inevitably lead to bankruptcy
“I made the assumption that Doing anything for a second time, or doing a second thing for the first time, or doing anything that looked like growth beyond one business would obviously lead me down the path. Of bankruptcy.”
Gramercy Tavern's launch caused Union Square Cafe's first Zagat rating decline
“So I opened Gramercy Tavern, and the very first year that it opened, we got horrible reviews. Union Square Cafe, for the first time ever, dropped in the Zagat survey.”
Danny Meyer: USHG once held 4 of NYC's top 10 favorite restaurants
“I'll never forget, there was a year where we had four of the top 10 of New York's favorite restaurants, maybe five.”
Danny Meyer calls the first Shake Shack his most lucrative mistake
“Well, the first Shake Shack was kind of a mistake, probably the best mistake, certainly the most lucrative mistake I'll ever make in my life, but it was truly to try to prove to myself that hospitality was not a fluke.”
Meyer: Suppliers support businesses in proportion to the interest shown in them
“Our suppliers are going to take exactly as much interest in us as they believe we're taking in them. And when they know we're on their side, they're going to want to see us succeed.”
Meyer: Promoting the wrong people damages organizational culture manyfold
“Because every time someone gets a promotion, the rest of the organization is watching very carefully and asking, so that's who I have to be if I want to get a promotion in this company. That's how I have to behave. That's what kind of values I have to put out …”
Meyer: Shake Shack Remained a Single Unit for Its First Five Years
“We didn't have a second Shake Shack for five years, by the way. We had one Shake Shack for the first five years, and, you know, the next 300 plus Shake Shacks have all happened in the 16 intervening years after that. Or maybe the 11 years after that. Yeah, I t…”
Meyer spent $240K on lease and $500K on Union Square Cafe buildout
“240,000 dollars. For the 14 years, and then I spent 500,000 dollars building it, and that was it.”
Meyer structured early family funding as debt to retain 100% equity
“To my mom's credit, my aunt's credit, my uncle's credit, we all structured this as a loan, which was great, because they then put me in a position where I could actually own all the equity after I paid off all the loans.”
The other half of the tape: Danny Meyer's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 37 times in 8 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 25Dan Kluger 8Gary Hirshberg 2Shane Parrish 1
Statements about Danny Meyer, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 28
the Knowledge Project 9
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode
2023 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2021 16 mentions in 1 episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 9 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Danny's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Founder & Executive Chairman, USHG | 3 | 23 | 0% 0/4 | full record on Masters of Scale → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder & Executive Chairman, USHG | 1 | 19 | 75% 3/4 | full record on How I Built This → |
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Founder & Executive Chairman, USHG | 1 | 16 | 100% 2/2 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |