Elite NYC restauranteur on why luxury spending won’t make people happy

Restaurant mogul Will Guidara on why the unexpected gift is better than the expensive one

Gift-giving can be a good way to learn how good you are at hospitality. And if you think success comes down to the amount being spent, you are setting yourself up for failure, according to one of the world’s most renowned restauranteurs.

Will Guidara, former owner of elite New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park, thought his soon-to-be wife would love the Cartier necklace he bought her for their one-year anniversary. Instead, she pretended to like it and only wore it once. When Guidara saw his wife’s disappointment at the New York Times ending its sudoku-meets-crossword-puzzle game “Boxing Match,” he hired the creator of the game to make another 50 levels that he printed out into a book for his wife. Guidara was surprised to see that his wife appreciated this gift far more than the thousands of dollars he spent on the necklace.

“That ‘Boxing Match’ book would not have made sense to give to another human being on the planet,” Guidara said in a conversation with Squawk Box” co-anchor Becky Quick at CNBC’s Work Summit last week. “She felt seen, she felt loved and she felt known,” he said.

The lesson, according to Guidare: The weight that money holds is incomparable to the weight that time holds to humans. Money can be made back, time can’t.

The unexpected is more valuable than the expensive

America is built on service relationships

America is a service economy. More than three-quarters of GDP are from service industries.

“When you look at those services, whether it’s financial services, computer services, health care, insurance, retail, everyone that does any of those things does the same thing for a living that I do. We’re all in the business of serving other people,” Guidara said.

Eleven Madison Park became the No. 1 restaurant in one influential world ranking not because its food was amazing or its service was technically perfect, “but because we did things that went far above and beyond for our guests,” Guidara said.

One night, Guidara recalled, he saw the kids of a family from Spain mesmerized by the snow falling outside his restaurant. By the time the family was done eating, Guidara had purchased sleds and had a car waiting outside to take them to Central Park to go sledding. Another time, a couple showed up at Guidara’s restaurant bummed because their beach vacation got canceled. By the end of the night, the private dining room was transformed into a beach for the couple to enjoy, with sand on the ground and a kiddie pool to dip their feet in.

Covid and solving problems as a hospitality model

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/05/elite-nyc-restauranteur-on-why-luxury-spending-wont-make-people-happy.html