Will Guidara gave an electrifying keynote to open the 2025 Bar & Restaurant Expo on Tuesday, March 25 in Las Vegas. Guidara is a renowned restaurateur, bestselling author, co-producer of the FX series The Bear, and former co-owner of the legendary Eleven Madison Park.
In his keynote, Guidara dove into his concept of "unreasonable hospitality" and offered actionable insights on team culture, guest experience, and more.
What is Unreasonable Hospitality?
Guidara kicked off his presentation by acknowledging that the only real competitive advantage in hospitality comes through consistently investing in relationships, which can take time. "Unreasonable hospitality is just my way of articulating the idea that we should throw ourselves wholeheartedly at the pursuit of those relationships," he said.
He went on to say that unreasonable hospitality also involves meticulously enhancing every guest touchpoint, from greeting to bill presentation. "At the beginning, we did what felt obvious. We looked at how we were greeting people when they walked in the door, how we were taking their orders, how we were delivering their food. But one day, I had a moment of realization that we were focusing only on the most obvious touchpoints in the guest journey, which by definition, were the same ones our competitors were focusing on," said Guidara. "Very few organizations actually understand what every touchpoint in the experience is because they've never taken long enough to genuinely understand the experience as a whole."
With this realization, Guidara started to build on our first actionable takeaway.
Rethink the Check Drop
At the very end of the list of guest touchpoints is the presentation of the bill, and this goes for each and every restaurant or bar. "And yet, in spite of the fact that every restaurant has that touchpoint in common, I've almost never seen it approached with any creativity or any intention," said Guidara. "I think that's in part because we have a flawed belief system that the transactional moments can't also be connective."
Guidara says there's also the challenge of determining when to drop the bill. If you wait too long, guests start to get impatient, but if you drop it too soon, they may feel like they're being rushed out. Together with his team, Guidara brainstormed ways to make what is often a pain point into a highlight.
What they came up with was this: When it was clear a guest was done but had not yet asked for the check, a server would go to the table with a bottle of cognac, pour a splash into each glass, and tell the guests to help themselves. They would then leave the check.
"Small change, profound impact. First, no one ever had to wait for the check again. Second, no one could ever think we were trying to rush them out," said Guidara. "It didn't cost us very much. Rarely did anyone drink more than that splash of cognac we poured into their glasses. And yet, at the moment where we dropped off a big check, we matched it with a gesture of profound generosity, keeping the value proposition intact."
What You Can Do
Now, you may be thinking, "That's great for Will, but my restaurant can't afford to be dropping bottles of cognac on every table."
Which is probably true, especially as we face down tariffs. But it's the gesture that counts, the act of adding value and generosity to that final touchpoint. With that in mind, adding something as small as a mint to your check could make a huge difference.
Don't believe it? Guidara shared a study to prove his point. "Have you ever been to a diner and you get the little red and white pinwheel mint with the check? That's innovation, yes, it's actually really impactful innovation," said Guidara. "Cornell University did a study. They compared 1000 diners that give a mint with the bill to 1000 that don't. The ones that did, on average, had 18% more tips than the ones that didn't. It's proof that generosity begets generosity."
Guidara's advice? "Identify one touchpoint that you've never even considered. Just make it a little bit more awesome, and look at the impact it can have."
Bring Your Entire Staff to the Table
When Guidara was examining ways to improve upon each touchpoint of the guest experience, he didn't do it alone, and he didn't do it with just his managers—he brought his entire team to the table.
"We included everyone on the team because there's this famous quote by a retired naval captain named David Marquet. He said, in most organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority," said Guidara. "The only way to brainstorm truly innovative ideas, if you are in the business of serving other people, is to bridge the gap between authority and information, and that only happens when you truly empower your people on the front line."
It's also important to keep your team engaged. You can do this through the power of just talking about hospitality and sharing your joy and excitement for it. Guidara says, "passion begets passion," and, "what gets talked about is what gets thought about."
He also says it's just as important to show hospitality to your employees as it is to your guests. "It's impossible to know how good it feels to give hospitality until you first know how good it feels to receive it," said Guidara. "The most scalable investment we can make when it comes to hospitality is in the people that work for us, because once they know how good it feels, they want to pay it forward."
Lastly, he recommends giving employees a taste of what it's like to offer unreasonable hospitality to guests to get them hooked.
What You Can Do
To keep your employees engaged and appreciated, focus on the preservice meeting. Guidara says that while most restaurants have this meeting, they often waste it on training or operational concerns. There is a time and place for these things, but it shouldn't be in this meeting.
The preservice meeting should instead focus on inspiration, recognition, and team building. Seek to inspire your team and share stories of exemplary things other employees have done.
"When they are done well, it's when the people we work with cease being a collection of individuals and rather come together as a trusting team," said Guidara. "If you don't have some version of a daily huddle or a preservice meeting, I encourage you to find the time to bring one to life, and if you do, but it's been a while since you've approached it with a renewed sense of creativity or intention, I really encourage you to give it another look."
Be a Dreamweaver
If you're a fan of The Bear, you may remember the scene in Season 2, Episode 7 when a table at fine dining restaurant Ever remarks that they will leave Chicago without having a chance to try the city's famed deep-dish pizza. The staff orders a deep dish from a local spot, transforms it into a plate worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant, and serves it as a "surprise" to the table.
The scene was directly inspired by a moment from Guidara's career, when he served a table of foodies a hot dog from a New York street cart when they remarked they hadn't tried one. "I had never seen anyone react the way they did to that hot dog. That was a moment for me where I realized that creating the right experience is not about giving more, it's about being more thoughtful," said Guidara. "All it required was being present, hearing what they said, doing something with that, not taking ourselves so seriously that we wouldn't serve a hot dog in a four-star restaurant, and recognizing that the greatest gestures are specific to the individual."
Guidara decided this idea of a surprise was something he wanted to do all the time. "But here's the thing—nothing will ever take root unless you make it as easy as possible for your team to deploy," he said. "So we added a position to our team, someone who was in the dining room every single night with no operational responsibility outside of helping everyone else bring their ideas to life. We called the position the Dreamweaver.
"And when we did that, a couple things happened. One, the people on our team had never been more engaged in their work. A, because they were actually creatively contributing to the product they were selling, and B, we were making so many people so unbelievably happy."
What You Can Do
We get it, hiring someone to solely eavesdrop on tables for ideas to surprise customers is probably not feasible for your bar or restaurant. But that doesn't mean you can't implement this concept into your establishment.
Guidara recommends you do what he calls "pattern recognition of recurring moments." What this means is to recognize the experiences that recur in a restaurant—someone is late, a four-top goes down to a three-top because someone stays home sick, people get engaged, etc.
"These are all recurring moments, and if you can identify them in advance and decide what you want to do every single time that thing happens, you can start creating magic all the time," said Guidara.
He used the example of a couple getting engaged in a restaurant. Oftentimes, the restaurant will offer them free champagne. What if you upped that experience by also giving sending them home with the glasses they toasted with?
By being creative, rethinking the guest experience, and allowing your entire team to weigh in, you're bound to find some magic—and profits—in your establishment!
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