Restaurateur, Entrepreneur, Author of Unreasonable Hospitality
Will Guidara: Biography at a Glance
- Will Guidara is a Restaurateur best known for Eleven Madison Park, The #1 Restaurant in the World.
- Guidara is the founder of thank you, a hospitality agency that helps companies beyond restaurants and hotels make the choice to be in the hospitality industry.
- He is also hosts the Welcome Conference, the annual hospitality-driven event that brings together the best minds from the world of hospitality.
- His book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, teaches the essential lessons in hospitality that can be applied to any business.
- He purchased Eleven Madison Park with partner Daniel Humm, and under their leadership, the restaurant received numerous accolades, including four stars from the New York Times, three Michelin stars, and the highest ranking on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2017.
- Will went on to open the legendary food and beverage spaces at The NoMad Hotel, which have received a three-star review from The New York Times, one Michelin star, and a James Beard Foundation award.
Videos
Biography
Will Guidara is the co-owner of Make It Nice, a hospitality group that currently includes Eleven Madison Park, the NoMad restaurants, and Made Nice.
A native of Sleepy Hollow, New York, Will has been immersed in the restaurant industry since the age of thirteen. A graduate of the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, Will began his dining room training at Spago Beverly Hills and attended culinary school in the north of Spain. He then went on to various roles throughout Union Square Hospitality Group, previously serving as general manager of Eleven Madison Park. He is also the co-founder of the Welcome Conference, an annual hospitality-driven event held in Manhattan that brings together the best minds from the world of hospitality for a day-long discussion.
Humm and Guidara purchased Eleven Madison Park, and under their leadership, the restaurant has received numerous accolades, including four stars from the New York Times, three Michelin stars, and was given the highest ranking on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2017. EMP has also received seven James Beard Foundation awards, including Outstanding Service and Outstanding Restaurant in America.
Will went on to open the food and beverage spaces at The NoMad Hotel with Daniel Humm. At The NoMad New York, they have received a three-star review from The New York Times, one Michelin star, and a James Beard Foundation award. The duo then opened The NoMad Bar, which has earned a top spot on the World’s Best Bar list, followed by Made Nice, a counter-service restaurant located in the NoMad neighborhood.
His latest book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, teaches the essential lessons in hospitality that can be applied to any business.
Will and Daniel have also co-authored four cookbooks together: Eleven Madison Park: The Cookbook, I Love New York: Ingredients and Recipes, The NoMad Cookbook, and Eleven Madison Park: The Next Chapter.
Topics
Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world.
How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? In this conversation, Guidara details the radical reinvention that centered around memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality. From surprising a family with a magical sledding trip to Central Park after their dinner to converting a dining room to a beach for a couple whose vacation was canceled, Guidara shares stories of how doing more paid off long run.
Guidara believes every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and shows us how we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences.
The Secret Ingredients of Great Hospitality
Why Hospitality Is Today’s #1 Leadership Skill
We know that people and teams excel at a high-level when they feel in community with each other – aligned and connected. In the corporate workplace, this used to happen organically but in today’s post-pandemic world where most work is done remotely, the conditions of the game have changed – which means leaders must change how they’re playing the game. Today’s leaders need to be skilled at very intentionally creating the conditions for their teams to come together, to genuinely connect – and that’s what is at the heart of hospitality. Leaders who know how to take a collection of individuals and make sure they operate as a team will create more connected, inspired, effective, and happy employees. By applying ideas honed over the course of his career operating the world’s #1 restaurant, Will helps others do whatever it takes to be better hosts, and thus better leaders.
Giving More vs. Less: Why Hospitality Is The Greatest Tool In Problem-Solving
Too often, when we’re faced with a pernicious problem in business or our lives, we fall back on the tried-and-true: push harder, be more efficient, and cut back. Imagine, that instead, you asked yourself: what is the hospitality solution? What if you forced yourself to be creative, to develop a solution that worked because of—not in spite of—your dedication to generosity and extraordinary service? These are usually harder to execute, and coming up with them will definitely call on your creative side. But they’re almost always a win. During times of struggle – particularly in today’s economic climate – people tend to operate from a place of fear. In this talk, Will makes the case for why this is the perfect time to root your decisions in hospitality and give more, not less.
How To Build A Brand Centered On Unreasonable Hospitality
For most of America’s history, we functioned as a manufacturing economy; now, we’re a service economy—more than three-quarters of our GDP comes from service. So, whether you’re in retail, finance, education, healthcare, computer services, or communications, you are in the business of serving other people. Making good products is no longer enough, and serving efficiently is no longer enough – now, it’s how you make the people you work with and those you serve feel that matters most of all. In this talk, Will will share why he believes our world is on the precipice of becoming a hospitality economy, and how every business can choose to be in the business of hospitality, by transforming ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences.
