Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara

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Author: Will Guidara

Unreasonable Hospitality argues that great businesses don’t win only by being efficient or competent. They win by making people feel seen, valued, and surprised in ways that are personal, thoughtful, and hard to forget.

Will Guidara is a restaurateur and former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, the New York restaurant he helped turn into one of the most celebrated dining rooms in the world. His core point is simple: service is delivering the product correctly, but hospitality is how you make people feel while you do it.

That matters because most businesses compete on things that are easy to copy—price, speed, features, and convenience. Genuine care is much harder to copy. When a company notices what matters to people and acts on it, customers remember it, talk about it, and come back.

Doing your job well is expected. Making people feel important is what sets you apart.

In the real world, customers usually remember the human parts of an experience more than the technical parts. They remember whether someone listened, whether a problem was handled with grace, and whether the company made an extra effort at the right moment. That turns a normal transaction into a story people retell.

If this idea resonated with you, share it with your network.

Start by separating service from hospitality in your own business. Ask two questions: are we good at the job itself, and do people feel good while working with us? Those are not the same thing, and weak hospitality often hides behind strong execution.

Next, map the customer experience and find one place where you can add thoughtfulness without adding much cost. That might be a better welcome, a smarter follow-up, a handwritten note, a small surprise, or a faster fix when something goes wrong. Keep it personal, not flashy.

Then train your team to notice clues. Teach them to listen for preferences, frustrations, milestones, and offhand comments. The goal is not scripted charm. It is real attention. People remember when a business makes them feel understood.

After that, give employees permission to act. Set a few clear guardrails, then let them solve problems and create moments without climbing a ladder of approvals. Hospitality gets stronger when good judgment can move quickly.

Finally, treat internal culture as part of the customer experience. Praise generosity, calm problem-solving, and personal care. If you only reward speed and output, you will get speed and output. If you reward thoughtfulness too, you will build something people talk about.

Guidara provides a whole lot more useful info in Unreasonable Hospitality. Here are three reasons you might want to read the full book:

Consider skipping this book if you want a tactics-heavy book focused mostly on finance, operations, or growth metrics.

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