Ever since opening Union Square Café in 1985 ate the age of 27, Danny Meyer has been considered one of the New York restaurateurs who influenced how hospitality changed from a legacy of either snobbism on the one hand and sit-‘em-serve-‘em on the other. He wanted his waitstaff to truly enjoy their job and to do so with a Midwestern cordiality—he was born and bred in St. Louis, Missouri—and expected that guests would respond accordingly.
      During college Meyer traveled with his father on business trips and studied international politics. After giving up his dream of becoming a pro baseball player, he pursued hospitality positions in Chicago and New York, then went to Italy and France to learn to cook.
      The success of Union Square Café propelled him, slowly, to open other restaurants that became highly regarded in and outside of New York, including Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke (BBQ), The Modern at MOMA, Manhatta in the Financial District and Maialino trattoria.  His opening of Shake Shack almost on a whim resulted in a national chain of 328 of the hamburger and milk shake eateries.
         Meyer is author of Setting the Tables (2006) about restaurant hospitality and co-authored The Union Square Cafe Cookbook (1994) with his business partner, chef Michael Romano. He has served on the boards of Share Our Strength and City Harvest.
        I interviewed Meyer, now 66, about his career and the state of the restaurant industry in 2024. 

 

After your dream of being a baseball player faded, did the idea of hospitality become a true passion?

After realizing that becoming a pro baseball player wasn’t in the cards for me (snuffed out that dream as a 12-year-old), I considered becoming a baseball announcer. Next, I thought about being a news broadcaster, and maybe even running for public office. The night before taking my LSAT (back in those days, having a law degree was considered de rigueur to go into politics) I was out for dinner with my aunt and uncle at Elio’s on the Upper East Side. My uncle saw that I was in a crummy mood—after all, I needed to abstain from drinking their Chianti in order to be fresh the following morning. He asked me what was bugging me and when I said, “I have to take the LSAT early tomorrow morning.” He shrugged and said, “Of course, you do. You want to be a lawyer, don’t you?” I responded, “No.” Whereupon he got kind of angry with me, and asked, “Do you have any idea how long you’ll be dead?” Me: “No.” “I don’t know either,” my uncle responded. “But I do know that you’ll be dead a hell of a lot longer than you’ll be alive! Why on earth would you pursue something you’re not interested in doing?!”  I answered, “Because I have no idea what else I could do.”  "You’ve got to be kidding,” he answered.  “All I’ve ever heard you talk about your entire life has been restaurants and food.” It still didn’t register and I looked at him blankly. “Open a restaurant, for God’s sake,” he said!

Turns out, I had been unwittingly getting quite an education in restaurants and hospitality my entire life—as my father designed custom driving tours in France for a living, became the first American agent for Relais de Campagne (later Relais et Châteaux) and we often had French people living in our home, not to mention a French poodle named Ratatouille.

Before opening USC, what was your experience in restaurants?

I had scant experience working in restaurants before opening Union Square Cafe (below). In fact, I’d only worked in one New York City restaurant, Pesca, an Italian seafood restaurant on East 22nd Street, and for just 8 months. I was the assistant lunch manager, earning $250 per week, and it was there that I knew this business was for me.  It was at Pesca that I met Michael Romano, the future chef of Union Square Cafe, who introduced me to the Flatiron neighborhood, and, crucially, on my last night of work there (before heading to Italy and France to cook for three months), had a date with a waitress/actress named Audrey Heffernan. Audrey has been my wife for nearly 36 years.   

What did you feel was lacking in the NY restaurant scene when you conceived of USC?

In the 1980s, New Yorkers had some stark dining choices: on one hand there were classic Italian and French places that typically started with “Il, Le, and La,” and that were designed primarily for wealthy socialites to celebrate, congregate, and consummate; on the other, there were the inheritors of the post disco, post-night club scene: big loud restaurants designed for people who wanted to see and be seen, where the food quality was almost beside the point. I sensed a big, gaping hole with plenty of room for a restaurant that offered excellent food, wine and dining value, with a dining experience delivered by friendly, knowledgeable and unpretentious servers, in a welcoming and warm environment.

You have been given a lot of credit for changing the quality and style of service at USHG and your other restaurants. What did you do?

We’ve always focused on hiring people who love what they do.  Cooks and servers who are passionate and curious about the products we prepare, and who are happiest when they help make others feel better. In the very early days of Union Square Cafe, our “help wanted” advertisements sought people "who have fun taking service seriously.” Over the years, we’ve taken that same approach to creating lots of restaurants with all kinds of different dining styles: Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke (below), Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Maialino, Manhatta, The Modern, Marta, Ci Siamo and even Shake Shack.  I hope that they all have our “thumbprint.” I hope that no matter the setting or food, you can expect to be served by someone who is genuinely happy to see you, knowledgeable about our food and drink, and passionate about helping you to have an experience that will send you home raving and wanting to return.

Was the California style of service an influence?

I wanted to open a restaurant that, if only it existed, would be my favorite restaurant. And at that point, my favorite restaurants were bistros in France, Italian trattorias and the new breed of “bar and grills” that were opening in San Francisco and Berkeley. I loved restaurants where you could eat and drink really well, without the stuffiness and pretension. Even the name, Union Square Cafe, hearkened to San Francisco. In 1985 San Francisco’s Union Square was a far more prestigious address than its namesake in New York.

Although I’m sure you have easy access to investors, you usually take a long while before opening another restaurant. Why?

Raising money is not the governor on opening a new restaurant. It’s having the right idea for the right location and the right team members who are ready for a new step in their hospitality careers. We hope that any restaurant we open will endure, and stand the test of time. And as you’ve seen, with the exception of Shake Shack and now Daily Provisions, most of our restaurants are one of a kind.

Did you believe that Shake Shack would be a one-unit place or a national chain?

Shake Shack began as a hot dog cart, which was conceived as part of a piece of a public art installation commissioned for Madison Square Park in 2001. It wasn’t until the summer of 2004 that we converted the hot dog cart into a permanent kiosk and called it Shake Shack.  The goal was to raise money for the park (a percentage of each sale is paid to Madison Square Park Conservancy) and to provide a reason for people to use the park from morning till night, thereby helping to keep it populated and safe. It was never a dream to have more than one, and in fact, we didn’t open our second Shake Shack for nearly five years. We hoped we could shorten the lines by moving some of the demand to the Upper West Side. Ironically, the lines only got longer, and that’s when we began to plan our third and fourth!

During Covid many in  the industry believed it could not survive after the closures. How has it changed?

Restaurants got an amazing lifeline when the city first green lighted outdoor dining sheds. Even now, when most diners feel completely safe dining indoors, the outdoor dining presents an alternative way to enjoy your favorite restaurant, and also extends the size of your dining room, mitigating some of the sky high rents restaurants often face. Many full service restaurants that never sold food for delivery now do so. Some even ship their food across the country via Goldbelly. The good news is that people are more eager than ever to be social. And with many working from home, the need for that social interaction has created a new phenomenon: 5:30 and 6:00 have become the most sought-after times to dine out, replacing 7:30 and 8:00 as the most prized reservation times.

Compared with other industries, do restaurateurs possess a special resiliency?

I think so. There have been so many times I’ve seen our industry reeling from events beyond our control: 9/11, the Great Recession, Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and we always somehow find our way back. Sometimes it seems we are like one of those inflatable clown punching bags that just keeps popping back up after taking hit after hit.

Some in the media and industry say you’d have to be crazy to open a restaurant today (see the NY Times interviews with 30 chefs). Is that true? Are mom-and-pop restaurants doomed?

Not at all, or they wouldn’t keep opening! In some ways, I think many of the restaurants that opened after the pandemic are in really good shape. They never had to lay off their staff, as so many did during the pandemic. And they’ve signed more rational leases—unlike the ones signed when the city had more office workers and foreign tourists. Today’s leases are based on today’s actual urban density.

Everyone is complaining that it’s impossible to find good workers, from the kitchen to the front. Is this true, even if a waiter can make $100,000 a year?

There’s no question that our industry faced an enormous challenge finding and retaining talent over the past several years. But I’m thrilled that our restaurants are back to pre-pandemic levels of employment, our dining room teams are far more diverse, and our turnover rates are far lower than they had been. One factor is that with inflation comes higher compensation opportunities. It also helps that we offer full health insurance, family leave for both birth parents and a 51% dining discount at any of our restaurants for all of our employees.

The food media has been predicting the demise of fine dining for years, but high-end restaurants from French and Italian to steakhouses seem to be packed every night. Why?

People can only eat so many home-delivered meals before they once again crave experience over convenience. We are social beings, and restaurants continue to offer the best place—not just to cook, serve and do the dishes, but to provide uplifting settings in which people can be together, making memories with other people.

The food media has, often under attack, turned largely to covering small, ethnic restaurants and even ignored fine dining restaurants, e.g., Christophe Bellanca’s place, Fasano, Cucina 8 1/2, Peak, L’Avenue at Saks, Mollusca, Duomo 51, Genesis House, and just about every new steakhouse. Does this deter you from opening a restaurant like USC or Gramercy?

I do believe there is an opening for a professional restaurant beat that covers legacy restaurants rather than just those that are new. Really good restaurants should be able to stand the test of time, to develop soul and to improve with age. Covering only what’s new is like a wine critic only reviewing barrel samples of a new vintage.  For example, The Modern, now in its 20th year, is better than it has ever been, and I believe our last review was over a decade and three chefs ago.  In terms of what kinds of restaurants we open and operate, I am not at all deterred by what people do and don’t cover. What matters is whether we have passion for the project, and whether we believe the new restaurant has the potential to become an essential part of New York’s dining landscape.

What do you have in the works?

We’ve been having so much fun honing our existing places: Manhatta, Ci Siamo (above), Gramercy Tavern, The Modern, and Union Square Cafe are all playing at the top of their games. People have fallen in love with Daily Provisions, and it has been a thrill to bring it to a handful of New York neighborhoods. Most recently we opened in Cobble Hill and in a few months we’ll open on the Upper East Side and in Jersey City. It would be amazing to one day bring Maialino back to Gramercy Park.  We're working hard to make that happen. People really miss it!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN