Speaker 1: Hi everyone. Well it's just me today. I'm sorry all
Speaker 1: you Brian Goldsmith fans, but he'll be back soon, so
Speaker 1: don't worry. Meanwhile, here's what's cooking. Literally, I just wrapped
Speaker 1: up an interview with Danny Meyer, who I love and
Speaker 1: honestly I have a little bit of a crush on him.
Speaker 1: He's a bit of a restaurant and hospitality icon. Sure
Speaker 1: he founded shake Shack, the global burger empire, but he
Speaker 1: actually made his name in fine dining many years before that.
Speaker 1: He opened his first restaurant, Union Square Cafe, one of
Speaker 1: my favorites back when he was just so Danny and
Speaker 1: I actually decided to meet at the new Union Square Cafe.
Speaker 1: When I got there, the place was jam packed full
Speaker 1: of diners enjoying late lunches, a few cocktails, Hey it's
Speaker 1: five o'clock somewhere, maybe a bit of espresso, all served
Speaker 1: on crisp white table cloths. There were even gingerbread houses
Speaker 1: by the entrance. We headed upstairs, then to a private
Speaker 1: dining room for our interview, and yes, a little taglia telly,
Speaker 1: is that how you say it? Our conversation covered a
Speaker 1: lot of ground, including Danny's famous approach to hospitality, why
Speaker 1: he's banned tipping at some of his restaurants, and how
Speaker 1: he gave birth to this new version of Union Square Cafe.
Speaker 1: We called this our thirty year old startup because the
Speaker 1: original Union Square Cafe had to close after three years
Speaker 1: because we couldn't re up our lease in the original
Speaker 1: spot on Street and we were just incredibly lucky to
Speaker 1: find a space within a stone's throw of Union Square
Speaker 1: and we reopened it a year ago. And this is
Speaker 1: our birthday, and well, happy birthday, Union Square. And let's
Speaker 1: talk of out the restaurant business, because you know so
Speaker 1: many restaurants open and closed, Danny, and so many people
Speaker 1: want to do this for a living, and you've done
Speaker 1: it so successfully. Tell me what the key is to
Speaker 1: a fantastic restaurant that stands the test of time. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to be falsely humble, but if I really
Speaker 1: knew the answer to that, we would have opened a
Speaker 1: whole lot more restaurants over the course of thirty plus years. Well,
Speaker 1: you've opened a lot, we have. And if if you
Speaker 1: take out shake Shack, which will open its in the
Speaker 1: United States this weekend in my hometown of St. Louis,
Speaker 1: which I'm excited about the fine dining, full service restaurants
Speaker 1: we have about We have about ten at this point,
Speaker 1: so that's that's a lot. It's about one every three years,
Speaker 1: but especially when you consider that I didn't open a
Speaker 1: second one Grammercy tavern until ten years, so it took
Speaker 1: ten years to open a second restaurant. This year alone,
Speaker 1: we've opened five new restaurants. So the learning curve was
Speaker 1: was steep and slow. And can we just interrupt this
Speaker 1: podcast because somebody just brought in a little bowl of
Speaker 1: pasta for me and I haven't eaten lunch, so I'm
Speaker 1: very excited. I'm not going to be here at a
Speaker 1: Danny Meyer restaurant. No, I'm not gonna have any wine,
Speaker 1: thanks Danny. Danny just did the wine sign. I think
Speaker 1: that I want to kind of keep my wits about
Speaker 1: me and not get too woozy while we're going to
Speaker 1: hear a lot of happy clanging and slurping as tell
Speaker 1: me what I'm eating. Because listeners, I wish you all
Speaker 1: could smell through your smartphones because or however you're listening
Speaker 1: to with amazing mushrooms and it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: a good illustration of what Union Square cafe is which
Speaker 1: is nothing fancy or formal. And there's a great Italian
Speaker 1: word which we first learned about from a hero of mine,
Speaker 1: Seth Godin, and he coined this, or he coined this
Speaker 1: about Union Square Cafe. The Italian terms spritsa and spreads
Speaker 1: a tora was a term used to describe a painting
Speaker 1: style in the fiftundreds in Italy, and what it meant
Speaker 1: was that the technique that it took to make those
Speaker 1: paintings came across as being quite simple, and yet it
Speaker 1: was actually pretty hard to put together. And he he
Speaker 1: uses the word to describe Union Square Cafe as well
Speaker 1: as what you're eating right now, the food spreta. There
Speaker 1: are so many restaurants and businesses that do the opposite,
Speaker 1: where they make a big scene, like, look at all
Speaker 1: the effort we put into this thing, and then you
Speaker 1: eat it and you go, I'd rather just have had
Speaker 1: a good bowl apasta somewhere. And so what he's saying
Speaker 1: with sprits a tour is what if you could make
Speaker 1: something that comes across as being simple, but it's actually
Speaker 1: just really really satisfying. That's what we try to do here. Well,
Speaker 1: I have to say it's working for me, Danny. And
Speaker 1: what is it? What's the word again, Spreta, This is
Speaker 1: really Sprea baby and enjoy. I also want to say
Speaker 1: that that we got so into thinking about that when
Speaker 1: we were reopening Union Square Cafe, that I took our
Speaker 1: leaders on a trip to all the places in Italy
Speaker 1: that had first inspired me when I was in my twenties.
Speaker 1: And we did that a little over a year ago,
Speaker 1: and we decided that we're going to bake our own
Speaker 1: bread here, which we weren't able to do with the
Speaker 1: first one, and we call our house bread. We call
Speaker 1: it spreads, and you're going to taste some of that today.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to do that. Well, this is delicious, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk with my mouthful, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to. You know, you talk about Italy,
Speaker 1: and I know you spent a year studying abroad. You
Speaker 1: went to Trinity, the alma mater. My husband, John Mulner,
Speaker 1: go Trinity Tigers right now, bantoms Bantom's John Muhlner, But
Speaker 1: make sure not sorry. My daughter went to Trinity High
Speaker 1: School and I think they're the Tigers. But anyway, you
Speaker 1: spent your junior year in Rome, and is that where
Speaker 1: you first became inspired to really become a restaurant tour
Speaker 1: I know your dad inspired you as well, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about him and a moment, But what did the
Speaker 1: Rome experience mean to you and do for you? I
Speaker 1: had spent time in Rome working for my dad as
Speaker 1: a tour guide when I was twenty and I was
Speaker 1: responsible for picking up the group tours at the airport
Speaker 1: in the morning. They'd be all cranky and jet lagged,
Speaker 1: and I found that I'd be with these people for
Speaker 1: four to six days, depending on what the tour was,
Speaker 1: And I had this crazy neurotic wiring where it mattered
Speaker 1: to me deeply to take the crankiest person from day
Speaker 1: one and turn them into the happiest person by the
Speaker 1: end of the trip. So all the tour itinerary said today,
Speaker 1: we're going to go to the Cameo factory. Tomorrow we're
Speaker 1: going to go to the So and So Museum, and
Speaker 1: I just kept taking the tours to my favorite trotterias
Speaker 1: around town, factories, well, the cameo factories. It's actually basically
Speaker 1: it's an opportunity for guys to get kickbacks from the
Speaker 1: cameo factory while you get this thing that you're going
Speaker 1: to put in a drawer and forget about for the
Speaker 1: next rest of your life. That Danny, So I decided,
Speaker 1: if it's okay for guides to be getting commissions, why
Speaker 1: not do it at Trotaria. So I was getting paid
Speaker 1: a thousand lira per head of every tour guest that
Speaker 1: I would bring into these restaurants, and it was completely legal.
Speaker 1: Um what was not legal was these people would come
Speaker 1: home and they would rave about the trip, and my
Speaker 1: dad's office would say, well, what did you love about it?
Speaker 1: And nothing they were raving about was on the itinerary
Speaker 1: he had sold them. So I almost lost my job.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. Anyway, after that, I went back studied
Speaker 1: Italian at Trinity College. Loved it, and Trinity has a
Speaker 1: campus in Rome, and we convinced our political science professor
Speaker 1: to do a special international politics class at Trinity, and
Speaker 1: so we studied Italian politics, study European politics. Yes we
Speaker 1: studied Italian and yes I studied Trotarias. Why did you
Speaker 1: go into policy, s Danny, if you were there studying
Speaker 1: international Well after I graduated from Trinity, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be either you when I grew up um, and I
Speaker 1: went to go look at journalism schools. I actually got
Speaker 1: a job at the NBC affiliate in Chicago right out
Speaker 1: of college, really working as a production assistant for the
Speaker 1: Sunday Morning Politics show. And on the very day I
Speaker 1: got offered that job, I was offered a job as
Speaker 1: Cook County field coordinator for John Anderson's nineteen eight campaign,
Speaker 1: John Anderson, who just passed to day and Uh. I
Speaker 1: decided I should take that job because it was a
Speaker 1: much loftier experience than I ever would have gotten with
Speaker 1: a Republican or Democratic candidate, because he had, you know,
Speaker 1: as an independent presidential candidate, he had absolutely no infrastructure whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So I got an amazing education. And then I was
Speaker 1: either going to go to law school or journalism school,
Speaker 1: but you decided to go to neither. I decided to
Speaker 1: go to neither and start making poster for a living.
Speaker 1: That's so funny, And so why that sudden turned back
Speaker 1: into or yeah, I guess to your roots of loving
Speaker 1: Trotarias or Tritorius. How do you say that, Trotia? Why
Speaker 1: did you decide to go back into food? I'm glad
Speaker 1: you did, by because I'm really enjoying this pasta seconds. No,
Speaker 1: thank you, I'm good. I'm good, But you don't mind
Speaker 1: if I continue? Do you know? I'd be offended if
Speaker 1: you didn't. But it's not really for me having gone
Speaker 1: back to those roots, because you have to understand we're talking. Um.
Speaker 1: I moved to New York in nineteen eighty. I my
Speaker 1: first night here was the night John Lennon was shot
Speaker 1: at the end of nineteen eighty. So not only was
Speaker 1: the city of very different city kind of a scary
Speaker 1: time here, but restaurants were not really an accepted career
Speaker 1: choice for someone with a liberal arts education. It just
Speaker 1: was nothing that had ever occurred to me that, in
Speaker 1: addition to cooking for my friends and for myself at home,
Speaker 1: that I should actually even consider for a minute going
Speaker 1: into this business. But the word foodie haven't been invented yet,
Speaker 1: I haven't The word foodie completely didn't exist. But I
Speaker 1: would also say that the notion of a valid entrepreneurial
Speaker 1: career choice was just completely off the table at that point.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was embarrassed and afraid and ashamed to
Speaker 1: tell my family that I might do this. Really a
Speaker 1: whole lot of other things I could have told him
Speaker 1: that they would have accepted a lot more quickly than this.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, but who has the last lap? Now?
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, obviously you've just been extraordinarily successful,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about sort of what you've
Speaker 1: learned in the restaurant business. You were twenty seven years old.
Speaker 1: I should mention when you started Union Square Cafe in
Speaker 1: you were so young it where did you have to
Speaker 1: think I can do this well? One of the I
Speaker 1: think one of the great hallmarks of an entrepreneur, and
Speaker 1: you either are or your not. It's not a good
Speaker 1: thing to be an entrepreneur. It's not a bad thing
Speaker 1: not to be one. But I think entrepreneurs are they're upsided,
Speaker 1: meaning that they're just incapable of seeing the downside. My
Speaker 1: eyes just couldn't see how this could fail. I knew.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is is that if it had failed,
Speaker 1: who would have cared? No one had heard of me,
Speaker 1: so in a weird way, the first time you do
Speaker 1: something as an entrepreneur, you only see possibility. I wasn't
Speaker 1: even thinking economically about this. I just knew it was
Speaker 1: going to work, and if it didn't, it would have
Speaker 1: been okay. With each subsequent restaurant. After that, you've got
Speaker 1: a lot more to lose because now you've got a
Speaker 1: brand you have to think about, got employees you got
Speaker 1: to care about. I should mention before you opened Union
Speaker 1: Square Cafe, you worked at Pesca and you were an
Speaker 1: assistant manager. I was the assistant lunch manager. And that's
Speaker 1: where you met your lovely wife, Audrey, who was a
Speaker 1: waitress there. So Audrey was an actress, um, which she
Speaker 1: still is. As a matter of fact, she just text
Speaker 1: me saying she got a little role on Billions, which
Speaker 1: she's very excited about. That's excited. So UM, Audrey and
Speaker 1: I met on my very very first day of work. Um.
Speaker 1: By the way, my interview at Pesca consisted of the
Speaker 1: owner looking me up and down for six seconds and
Speaker 1: saying you'll do that was my job interview. So on
Speaker 1: my very first day of work, I'm running down the
Speaker 1: steps to the reservation office because that was my first job,
Speaker 1: to take lunch reservations, and this beautiful woman was running
Speaker 1: up the stairs with a tray of butters that she
Speaker 1: had prepared for lunch, and we literally locked eyes on
Speaker 1: the stairway. It was like, you know, for about three seconds,
Speaker 1: she continued up. I continued down. I came home at
Speaker 1: night and I said, I'm gonna like this job. The
Speaker 1: next day she was gone, and I didn't even know
Speaker 1: how to ask, like I started looking at I didn't
Speaker 1: want to what happened to the lady with the butter right,
Speaker 1: So I started looking at the schedules surreptitiously. She's not
Speaker 1: on the schedule for the following week, or for the
Speaker 1: week after, or for the week after. I finally learned
Speaker 1: as I got to know people that she had gotten
Speaker 1: a role in Guys and Dolls. I think it was
Speaker 1: in Indiana, if I'm not mistaken. And so she was gone.
Speaker 1: That was it. About five months later, I'm answering the
Speaker 1: telephones and there's Audrey and calling to see if she
Speaker 1: can get back on the schedule, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can probably help arrange that for you. So we
Speaker 1: kind of flirted for another five months after that. She
Speaker 1: had a boyfriend I learned about that. We finally had
Speaker 1: our first date on my last night of work before
Speaker 1: I was going off to Italy and Francigo Cook and
Speaker 1: we've been married now for it. We'll have our thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary this year. That's so great four kids, four kids? Yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: and what's what's what do you think the secret to
Speaker 1: being having a good marriage for that many years is Danny?
Speaker 1: Because you know you're busy. I'm sure that it's hard
Speaker 1: with your schedule, her schedule. I'm sure you meet a
Speaker 1: lot of beautiful, glamorous people. I'm sure Autrey does too,
Speaker 1: by the way, in her line of work, kissing people
Speaker 1: on stage and two of her last place that's were
Speaker 1: you like, wait a minute, why I was more than that.
Speaker 1: In fact, once I went with my son and he
Speaker 1: like buried his head into my under arm during the scene.
Speaker 1: What kind of kissed was it? By the way, I
Speaker 1: was just handed another bowl of pasta. Do you all
Speaker 1: think I'm running a marathon or something that I'm part loading?
Speaker 1: That one? You definitely want to try that. That spreads
Speaker 1: a tour right there? That is Explain this. Explain this?
Speaker 1: What does it look like? It looks like spaghetti with
Speaker 1: Marinara sauce. That's it? Can you hear me? And spinning
Speaker 1: my spaghetti on my fork? Everyone like we have these
Speaker 1: sound effects. I remember the old days on the Today Show.
Speaker 1: You would take a of this and then the camera
Speaker 1: would focus in and you go, Oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: so good. You know, I used to hate when people
Speaker 1: would show me eating. This is the beauty of doing
Speaker 1: a podcast. Mm hmmm mmmmmmmm. That's delicious. I'm telling you all.
Speaker 1: She's smiling right now. I'm really really good. I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna eat the whole bowl. I should share
Speaker 1: with my producer Gianna. It's only right, right. But you're asking,
Speaker 1: what do I think the secret is? I I don't know.
Speaker 1: I saw a great interview recently with a couple that
Speaker 1: have been married sixty years, twice as long as Audrey
Speaker 1: and I have been married, and the uh, the wife
Speaker 1: had the best answer to that question, and I can't
Speaker 1: beat it. She said. The secrets very simple. I just
Speaker 1: always let him have my way. That's funny, and I
Speaker 1: pretty much always let Audrey have her way. Now we understand,
Speaker 1: there's there's a great moment in our marriage that was
Speaker 1: not fun at the time, but it was a good one.
Speaker 1: Audrey's got a remarkable design sense, just really good taste,
Speaker 1: and we had just renovated a new apartment. This is
Speaker 1: probably fifteen years ago or sixteen years ago. I made
Speaker 1: the mistake of coming home from the restaurant one night,
Speaker 1: and Audrey had bought these new soap dishes for our
Speaker 1: beautiful new bathroom. And I made a face at the
Speaker 1: soap dish and I said, are those are soap dishes?
Speaker 1: And Audrey just looked at me with eyes that could kill,
Speaker 1: and she said, may I just remind you that this
Speaker 1: is not one of your restaurants, and I'm not one
Speaker 1: of your employees. And I feel like I learned a
Speaker 1: really important division of labor at that point, which is
Speaker 1: that there's a lot to do at home. It's really
Speaker 1: hard work. Um, she's an incredible mom. She's incredible at,
Speaker 1: you know, balancing an acting career and keeping things moving
Speaker 1: in the house, which I couldn't do. I just don't
Speaker 1: know how to do that. So a big part of
Speaker 1: it is stay away from the stuff in eight years
Speaker 1: and taken care bit. And I think women, probably and
Speaker 1: some men who are listening to this probably really appreciate
Speaker 1: your saying that, because I think oftentimes that kind of work,
Speaker 1: which is really being CEO of a household, is really
Speaker 1: undervalued and you don't get a day off. That's true,
Speaker 1: you know. Today, for example, before she went back for
Speaker 1: another audition, she was prepping one of our daughters to
Speaker 1: have her wisdom teeth out on the phone for an
Speaker 1: hour with another daughter who just fell down the steps
Speaker 1: of Trinity College and sprained her ankle, taking our dog
Speaker 1: in to the to the vet to have some kind
Speaker 1: of procedure, right, And I'm sitting here getting to talk
Speaker 1: to Katie Kirk. So I'm not sure who has a
Speaker 1: better deal on that. But let's talk about your philosophy
Speaker 1: of the difference between service and hospitality. And I think
Speaker 1: this is so important, and you also talk about in
Speaker 1: your book I know that you wrote in two thousand
Speaker 1: six called Setting the Table the Intersection of Leadership and hospitality.
Speaker 1: When you say hospitality, what does that mean to you?
Speaker 1: And how does that how can that apply to all
Speaker 1: of us and how we live our daily lives. Well,
Speaker 1: I love the word. It's a complicated word, it turns out.
Speaker 1: But I learned a lot about this word in an
Speaker 1: odd way. Union Square Cafe, which at that time was
Speaker 1: seven years old, won the James Beard Award, the national
Speaker 1: award for outstanding service in America, and amongst other reasons,
Speaker 1: I felt like a complete impostor picking up that award
Speaker 1: because we had always been taught that not only was
Speaker 1: service everything, but waiters are in tuxedos and there making
Speaker 1: your pasta table side and all that kind of fancy
Speaker 1: stuff that we just never did. And I was like,
Speaker 1: how did we win that award? And then two years later,
Speaker 1: the Zagat survey comes out and Union Square Cafe had
Speaker 1: the tenth best survey service in New York, the twelve
Speaker 1: best food in New York, and the sixty best decor,
Speaker 1: and yet it was New York's third favorite restaurant that year.
Speaker 1: And I said, what are we doing that's making people
Speaker 1: react in a way that's greater than some of our parts.
Speaker 1: And I started thinking about this word hospitality and how
Speaker 1: it didn't exactly say the same thing as service. And
Speaker 1: I started looking into the word, and the word hospitality
Speaker 1: starts with s T, which on one hand it means guest,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand it means host, and on
Speaker 1: another hand it even means stranger, and on another hand
Speaker 1: it even means enemy. And so you go, how do
Speaker 1: I fit together guest, host, stranger enemy? Why are we
Speaker 1: talking about two sides of a coin? Why is that
Speaker 1: the root of everything from hospital or hospice or hotel
Speaker 1: but also the root of the word hostility. So I
Speaker 1: did a bunch of research on this, and nowhere in
Speaker 1: there was there anything that had to do with service.
Speaker 1: And so the two things that came out of it
Speaker 1: for me were when people were law our service, what
Speaker 1: they didn't know is that they were truly lauding our hospitality.
Speaker 1: The service is nothing more than a way to describe
Speaker 1: the technical delivery of the product. Did we spill on
Speaker 1: you or not, did we get the right food to
Speaker 1: the right person at the right temperature or not. Did
Speaker 1: we get your coat back or did we lose your coat?
Speaker 1: Those are all matters of service. Hospitality, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: has everything to do with how did we make you
Speaker 1: feel while we were delivering that technical service. And it
Speaker 1: hit me really hard, which is that we need to
Speaker 1: know what hospitality is. We need to understand that that's
Speaker 1: one of our core competencies, caring how people feel. It
Speaker 1: kind of went back to my early days as a
Speaker 1: tour guide. So it's what we think about, It's what
Speaker 1: we think about in all of our restaurants all the time.
Speaker 1: And then how does it impact life. I just think
Speaker 1: that especially in these years subsequent to having the Internet,
Speaker 1: which means that there are no secrets under the under
Speaker 1: the sun anymore. It used to be that you could
Speaker 1: be someone's favorite restaurant because you made roast chicken better
Speaker 1: than anybody else. But as soon as as soon as
Speaker 1: we got the Internet, the word got out immediately. Then
Speaker 1: you get pictures, you get tweets, you get Instagram, you
Speaker 1: get instant ability to plagiarize every good idea under the sun.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that the Internet hasn't done is
Speaker 1: to allow you to copy how someone made you feel.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to me that more businesses and more people
Speaker 1: don't understand this. You know, you go to a store
Speaker 1: and the salesperson ignores you, You You feel demeaned and sort
Speaker 1: of dehumanized and marginalized and annoyed, and then you leave
Speaker 1: and then you have a completely different experience it at
Speaker 1: another store where someone's super helpful and nice. And you know,
Speaker 1: I just don't understand why businesses really don't don't instill
Speaker 1: these values. It seems so crazy, especially in quote unquote
Speaker 1: service industry. Uh, you know, situations, it doesn't. And the
Speaker 1: best thing about hospitality is it doesn't cost him anymore
Speaker 1: to do it. You'll never see a line item on
Speaker 1: a p and L statement or an annual report for
Speaker 1: a public company and says, oh my god, we gotta
Speaker 1: stop being nice to people. It's costing us way too
Speaker 1: much money. We're going to take a quick break so
Speaker 1: I can finish my pasta and even lick the bowl.
Speaker 1: At this point we'll be back with more from Danny Meyer.
Speaker 1: And now back to my conversation with the one, the
Speaker 1: Only Danny Meyer. So do you give people who work
Speaker 1: here like personality tests, because honestly, they are the ones
Speaker 1: interfacing with the customer. And I imagine if you have
Speaker 1: a a nice server or is that what you would call? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a nice server. It means and I can speak from
Speaker 1: experience and say it makes all the difference in the world.
Speaker 1: It completely does. We don't yet have a way to
Speaker 1: measure something that we call h Q hospitality quotation, but
Speaker 1: we're working on it. We know what the six emotional
Speaker 1: skills are that are always president someone who's got a
Speaker 1: high HQ. And if you have a high HQ, like
Speaker 1: so many other things, I have no idea what my
Speaker 1: i Q is, but it doesn't really matter and I'm
Speaker 1: not better. What I'm trying to say is that, however,
Speaker 1: we got our h Q. We got it. But for
Speaker 1: me an HQ is a way to describe the degree
Speaker 1: to which it matters to you to make other people
Speaker 1: feel good. Well, I was going to say it also,
Speaker 1: you know it comes from the top. You know, the
Speaker 1: fish smells from the head, as they say. And I
Speaker 1: think you set a tone at your restaurants of the
Speaker 1: way you want to treat people, whether it's your employees
Speaker 1: right or your customers. And so I imagine what do
Speaker 1: you do when you hear that that somebody had a
Speaker 1: surly waiter, if it's in one of our restaurants, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've flipped my wig. I mean I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: happy at all if I hear that, And it means
Speaker 1: that Look, if whenever we have a guest complaint, and
Speaker 1: I've seen many of them over the course of my career,
Speaker 1: the first thing is I'm grateful that they cared enough
Speaker 1: to let us know. It's not fun if they do
Speaker 1: it in a public way, and you know, you're airing
Speaker 1: your dirty laundry on Twitter. But if they do that,
Speaker 1: that means that they're really angry. But I'm actually grateful
Speaker 1: because it means they're holding us to the same high
Speaker 1: standard we're holding ourselves you and I'd rather if if
Speaker 1: it half the thing happened, I'd rather know about it
Speaker 1: than not. Most people are good enough to write directly.
Speaker 1: So almost of every complaint I've ever gotten, even though
Speaker 1: it says it's about the overcooked steak or the undercooked salmon,
Speaker 1: or the over salted risotto, or the weight between the
Speaker 1: first and second course, or the you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: complaint is, it's almost never really that. It's almost always
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line, we did not make people feel
Speaker 1: like we were on their side. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day hospitality, we forget the Latin and Italian.
Speaker 1: It comes down to two things. Did you feel like
Speaker 1: we were on your side or not? And you can
Speaker 1: make it even simpler with one preposition for do you
Speaker 1: feel like we did something for you? Or do you
Speaker 1: feel like we did something to you? It's that simple.
Speaker 1: So when you go to a store and you feel
Speaker 1: like someone's being surly, do you think I feel like
Speaker 1: they were doing something for you. No, So if our
Speaker 1: service is good and it's the timings right and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, it still doesn't mean we did anything for you.
Speaker 1: That's what you expect services all the stuff you should
Speaker 1: expect from us. Sometimes we fail at service, and really
Speaker 1: good hospitality can actually overcome that. And hospitality trump service. Basically,
Speaker 1: what does it do? Trump's service? Yeah, I guess. So
Speaker 1: I'm dying to ask you about a few more buckets
Speaker 1: of of things. And one, of course, I think before
Speaker 1: I ask you about shake Shack, which I'm interested in
Speaker 1: and some of our listeners are as well. Tell me
Speaker 1: about this no tipping policy. You know, I know that
Speaker 1: that's been harder to implement than you thought. Um, and
Speaker 1: I guess, according to some people, has had mixed results. Um.
Speaker 1: So you decided to charge customers more for their food?
Speaker 1: Is that right? Eliminate tipping? Well, let's start with the
Speaker 1: last thing you said. We decided to eliminate tipping. And
Speaker 1: when you eliminate tipping, what you're basically saying is that
Speaker 1: the menu price covers all of my expenses with enough
Speaker 1: money to make a profit, right, including your employees, including
Speaker 1: the formerly tipped employees. Because when you go to a
Speaker 1: restaurant that accepts tips, it's a bizarre, mostly American cultural thing.
Speaker 1: And we've got this packed. Our restaurant industry has had
Speaker 1: a pact with the public forever which is the menu
Speaker 1: price is going to include your food, the tablecloth, the flowers,
Speaker 1: the rent, the chefs salary, but you're going to have
Speaker 1: to pay separately for the person who brought you the
Speaker 1: food that the chef cooked that won't be included in
Speaker 1: the price. And it's it's a system that as as
Speaker 1: we've watched, it become harder and harder and harder for
Speaker 1: really talented people to live in a city like New
Speaker 1: York and be able to pay the cost of living here,
Speaker 1: especially cooks, because they are not able to share in
Speaker 1: tips by law. And we have meanwhile seen that as
Speaker 1: manu prices have gone up year after year, Like if
Speaker 1: you looked at Union Square cafe menu prices, you'd want
Speaker 1: to eat at that restaurant every night of your life. Um,
Speaker 1: And what is a tip? It's a multiplier of menu prices.
Speaker 1: So escalating menu prices, escalating tip percentage. Waiters are doing
Speaker 1: pretty well, although it's somewhat dead end because you can't
Speaker 1: afford as a waiter or server to take a pay
Speaker 1: cut and become a manager, which is how your career
Speaker 1: would actually advance in hospitality, because tipped employees often make
Speaker 1: more money even than managers. Do. But meanwhile cooks are
Speaker 1: making almost exactly what they were making. So we said,
Speaker 1: enough of this, let's change the system. So you're right,
Speaker 1: it's been a challenge. It's been very challenging to get
Speaker 1: the math right because, um, you did ask. Did we
Speaker 1: just add not exactly? Some things we added more than
Speaker 1: some things we added way less than twenty Let's take
Speaker 1: a beer. Everyone knows what a beer should cost. We
Speaker 1: may not want to add to the beer, but we
Speaker 1: may be able to add to the salmon because maybe
Speaker 1: we were under charging for the salmon in the first place.
Speaker 1: So the challenge mathematically is how do you get a
Speaker 1: price on the menu for guests who are used to
Speaker 1: sing prices that they know they're going to have to
Speaker 1: add to. How do you get people used to sing
Speaker 1: a price and figure out what would that price be
Speaker 1: minus It's really hard for people to do that without
Speaker 1: getting whiplash just the minute they open the menu. And
Speaker 1: then how do you have enough money so that the
Speaker 1: servers who were used to getting high tips can now
Speaker 1: get an hourly wage, which approximates that how do we
Speaker 1: have enough money to pay our cooks more than they
Speaker 1: were making, And how do we have enough money to
Speaker 1: promote our starting managers so that you can actually have
Speaker 1: a career path if you're a server. So it's complicated,
Speaker 1: really really hard. Are many restaurants doing this now, Danny? Not? Really?
Speaker 1: Are they saying, uh, he's the guinea pig and we're
Speaker 1: not doing that? Yes? Yes, by and large, that's that's
Speaker 1: the answer. I've had a huge number of people come
Speaker 1: up to me and say thanks for running through the
Speaker 1: barbed wire for the to us. And I've I've looked
Speaker 1: shown my arms. I'm not all cut up. It's not
Speaker 1: really that bad. I have no regrets at all. And um,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't do it otherwise because I just think
Speaker 1: it's this is transparent, and I think we're we're at
Speaker 1: a point in time where tipping is now being seen
Speaker 1: as the anachronism that it is. Let me ask you
Speaker 1: about shake Shack, because wow, why didn't I think of that?
Speaker 1: It's so huge? How many of their how many of
Speaker 1: them are there now? Um, this weekend will be opening
Speaker 1: in my hometown of St. Louis number nine seven in
Speaker 1: the US, and then there's another seventy five or so
Speaker 1: internationally at this point, So who knew? Who knew? It started?
Speaker 1: Sort of as a food cart, right, Danny, It started, well,
Speaker 1: the whole thing was kind of just completely unexpected story.
Speaker 1: It started off as an art project. We were helping
Speaker 1: to take the lead with the restoration of Madison Square Park,
Speaker 1: and unlike Union Square Park, which has this fantastic green market,
Speaker 1: Madison Square Park didn't have an open piazza. But what
Speaker 1: it did have and what it does have are these
Speaker 1: beautiful walking paths with nineteenth century statues. And one day
Speaker 1: we said, why don't we join all these nineteenth century
Speaker 1: statues with really good contemporary art. We said, this is
Speaker 1: our front yard. This needs to be beautiful and it
Speaker 1: needs to be safe. So we turned to the Public
Speaker 1: Art Fund, which is a wonderful organization here in New
Speaker 1: York City, and they curated. They brought in a sculptor
Speaker 1: from Thailand who came up with this crazy idea of
Speaker 1: having taxi cabs on stilts with a working hot dog
Speaker 1: cart aside, and they needed somebody to operate the hot
Speaker 1: dog cart. He was trying to make a political statement
Speaker 1: that everyone in the world has either had to drive
Speaker 1: a taxi cab or was able to afford being driven
Speaker 1: in one. Everyone else in the world has either been
Speaker 1: able to afford to buy a hot dog or had
Speaker 1: to be the guy's selling one. So I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about the artist, but we said we'll sign up,
Speaker 1: we'll do the hot dog cart. And we were pretty
Speaker 1: slow back in those days, up in our private dining
Speaker 1: room at eleven Madison Park, and so we said, we'll
Speaker 1: do Chicago style hot dogs. I love them, and I
Speaker 1: figured what a great way to test out hospitality because
Speaker 1: Chicago hot dog has eight classic toppings. Katie's the person
Speaker 1: who likes everything except mustard, and Johnny's the person who
Speaker 1: likes everything except cucumbers, and could and so lo and behold.
Speaker 1: Every day we would have seventy or eighty people waiting
Speaker 1: in line. Peter Jennings covered it. Tom Brokeaw covered it.
Speaker 1: Dan Rather covered it. It was kind of like it
Speaker 1: was just just a little hot dog cart. Nine eleven
Speaker 1: happened right after that summer. Obviously, the city went into
Speaker 1: a deep depression in every respect, and the following summer,
Speaker 1: even though the taxi cabs were down, the community begged
Speaker 1: us to bring back this hot dog cart. So we did.
Speaker 1: That was two thousand, two thousand three. They begged us
Speaker 1: to bring it back. At third year, we did, and
Speaker 1: at that point I said, this is crazy. Why don't
Speaker 1: we turn this into a permanent thing. And so we
Speaker 1: raised the money philanthropically to build a kiosk twy twenty ft.
Speaker 1: We called it shake Shack. The deal was we would
Speaker 1: give it to the park. We would own the business.
Speaker 1: The park would become our landlords, so that a percentage
Speaker 1: of every dollar sale would go right back into the
Speaker 1: park and hopefully create a little revenue for the park.
Speaker 1: No one knew that this was going to turn into
Speaker 1: a viable business, much less a public company. People went crazy,
Speaker 1: they did, and it was not for five years that
Speaker 1: we opened a second one, because it was never meant
Speaker 1: to be a business like this today. So that was
Speaker 1: in two thousand four. Now here we are thirteen years later,
Speaker 1: with you know, well over a hundred fifty around the world.
Speaker 1: And I think most importantly, if you go back to
Speaker 1: the original vision, not only is Madison Square Park more
Speaker 1: beautiful and safer than ever, but that little shake Shack
Speaker 1: is now creating a million dollars in annual revenue for
Speaker 1: the park. And I just like, that's a great story,
Speaker 1: and I want to I want to do that one again.
Speaker 1: Somehow I'd like to do that too. Well. We had
Speaker 1: a lot of people sending questions that I think we're
Speaker 1: related to shake shack. So this is from someone from
Speaker 1: your hometown sent us a voicemail. Let's listen to what
Speaker 1: the question is. Hi, I'm a former St. Louis in
Speaker 1: and no Danny Myers too. Growing up in St. Louis,
Speaker 1: eating out as steak and shake was a great treat
Speaker 1: for my brother and myself. I'm wondering how much influence
Speaker 1: the steak in shakes of St. Louis head on Danny
Speaker 1: if he developed the shape shack. It almost seems like
Speaker 1: a dated version to me. Thank you well. The steak
Speaker 1: and Shake had a huge impact, as did fits his
Speaker 1: root Beard drive in UM, as did Ted Drew's Frozen
Speaker 1: About Ted Drew's Absolutely and Crown Candy Kitchen with their malts.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing that was just, I don't
Speaker 1: know so powerful for me, was this the only way
Speaker 1: when you're sixteen and you get your driver's license in St.
Speaker 1: Louis and it's, you know, the nineteen seventies, that you
Speaker 1: you get independence is to get in your car and
Speaker 1: go to a parking lot somewhere and hang out with
Speaker 1: your friends. And that's the kind of places we did
Speaker 1: it at. And and I realized that now it's two
Speaker 1: thousand four New York City. New Yorkers don't get in
Speaker 1: their car and drive around. But what if we could
Speaker 1: use a park, a public park like Passon Square Park,
Speaker 1: almost in the same way that I had grown up
Speaker 1: at places like Steak and Shake, using the parking lot
Speaker 1: where people get to hang out with people. And I
Speaker 1: realized that what Fast Food had done, you know, between
Speaker 1: the happy Day's era um and and today, was they
Speaker 1: hijacked the experience of people being with people. The whole
Speaker 1: point was get it quick, cheap, and then get out
Speaker 1: of there right and drive through. And and we said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we didn't invent hamburgers or hot dogs or milkshakes, but
Speaker 1: what if we could make them a little bit better,
Speaker 1: but then return the experience of people getting to be
Speaker 1: with people. And in the most convoluted way, the long
Speaker 1: lines at Shake Shack gave people an opportunity to be
Speaker 1: with people. And and it just, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: just works. I wish I had come up with that idea.
Speaker 1: We got lucky, you know, um, I love St. Louis
Speaker 1: By the way, I dated a boy from St. Louis
Speaker 1: at UVA, but I love you dated or he dated
Speaker 1: a friend of mine I can't really remember. But he
Speaker 1: also is kind of behind the St. Louis tradition. His
Speaker 1: name is Joe Switzer and Switzer's liquorice didn't didn't like
Speaker 1: a street smell like licorice because the Switzers. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: how many people know Switzers licorice? That was That was
Speaker 1: like the best. That takes me back to Spicer's five
Speaker 1: and ten, where I'd go for Switzer's liquorice and baseball cards. St.
Speaker 1: Louis must have been a really fun place to grow
Speaker 1: up with so many people I know I really like
Speaker 1: from St. Louis, like Bob Costas is from St. Louis
Speaker 1: and my friend Bou Kissinger who I went to v
Speaker 1: A with. But anyway, I digress. We have another question,
Speaker 1: you know book Kissner. Yeah, I think real name is Eileen.
Speaker 1: I think she went to the same school I went to,
Speaker 1: John Burrows. If I'm not that's so funny. And I
Speaker 1: also dated a boy from St. Louis name Buzzy Lane.
Speaker 1: What I think I know him too. I think he
Speaker 1: went to St. Louis Country Day School. He did. It
Speaker 1: was nice. We can play this game pretty well. Isn't
Speaker 1: that funny? The name game? All right? Here's another question
Speaker 1: from Daniel on Twitter. He says, my family of four
Speaker 1: loves Shake Shack, from their burgers to hot dogs, to
Speaker 1: the fries and the cheese sauce it. As a parent,
Speaker 1: I'm a little concerned about the number of calories they're
Speaker 1: taking in every time we visit. Are you thinking on
Speaker 1: expanding your menu to include a bit more healthier options? Amen, Daniel.
Speaker 1: I want to know the answer to that question. And
Speaker 1: do you want to start a new fast food restaurant
Speaker 1: which I know you call fast casual with me, Danny?
Speaker 1: That would really serve much healthier options. So a great question,
Speaker 1: and I think the most candid answer is that people
Speaker 1: don't like to eat healthy food. No. I think people
Speaker 1: do increasingly care about eating healthy food, and they should
Speaker 1: as do I as do as do my whole family.
Speaker 1: Because you're very I should say. People can't see you,
Speaker 1: but I'm sitting next to you and you're quite spelt.
Speaker 1: I know you take good care of yourself. I would
Speaker 1: weigh four pounds if I did what you do. I
Speaker 1: don't think you would, because I think that that good.
Speaker 1: So let me just start at the beginning. Shake Shack
Speaker 1: is not a health food restaurant, and I think that
Speaker 1: an one who says I've got a great diet, you
Speaker 1: should eat cheeseburgers and cheese fries and milkshakes every day
Speaker 1: of your life would get laughed out of town. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, I would say that I'm not at
Speaker 1: all interested in living a completely monastic, pleasure free life.
Speaker 1: And there are times when I want to have a
Speaker 1: good steak or a good cheeseburger, and I think what's
Speaker 1: important is when you do that, When you do make
Speaker 1: that choice, let it be something good. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things we take very very seriously at
Speaker 1: shake Shack is how do we source the ingredients. We
Speaker 1: made a big move to use beef that is completely
Speaker 1: all natural, which in this case sometimes that means nothing,
Speaker 1: but in this case it means hormone growth, hormone free
Speaker 1: and antibiotic free. Um every single ingredient we use. We have,
Speaker 1: our fries are now non GMO. We care deeply so that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have calories, I would say, here's the secret. Only
Speaker 1: have a half of a milkshake, but make it a
Speaker 1: coffee milkshake, and do it with French fries, and only
Speaker 1: do it. Only do that, like every now and then.
Speaker 1: The burgers are really not that high in calories. Next thing,
Speaker 1: you asked a really good question, what are we doing?
Speaker 1: First of all, here's what we're not doing. We're not
Speaker 1: going to become a full service restaurant, where we say,
Speaker 1: in order to make sure Katie and and whoever cares
Speaker 1: about this, in order to make sure they come every day,
Speaker 1: let's add salads and raw fish and all kinds of
Speaker 1: grilled chicken sandwich or something. So here we go. So
Speaker 1: we added a We added a fantastic chicken sandwich a
Speaker 1: year ago, um, which is killer if you've never tried it.
Speaker 1: It's not grilled, it's fried. We are we're playing actually
Speaker 1: right this minute in Brooklyn with a new grilled chicken sandwich.
Speaker 1: So you can try that and we'll see how people
Speaker 1: react to it. If you need a taste tester, give
Speaker 1: me a call. We get a lot of people who
Speaker 1: ask us, when can we we love your schomberg. We
Speaker 1: have a mushroom burger happens to have cheese in it,
Speaker 1: and so increasingly we're hearing from people who are vegan saying,
Speaker 1: is there something you can serve us other than just
Speaker 1: French fries. We love your French fries, but that's the
Speaker 1: only vegan thing on the whole menu. And so we're
Speaker 1: working on that as well, and we'll see if, if, if,
Speaker 1: someday we can come up with something that is cravable.
Speaker 1: And my metric for shake Shack are two things. It
Speaker 1: needs to be something that is plausibly something you would
Speaker 1: eat at a shack, right, So you're not going to
Speaker 1: get a avocado salad. I'm sorry, You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: go to Union Square Cafe for that. But let's say,
Speaker 1: and metric number two is it has to be cravable.
Speaker 1: So the schumburger made the menu because it looks like
Speaker 1: a burger, it eats like a burger. It's mushrooms and cheese,
Speaker 1: and it's something that as a carnivore I would even crave.
Speaker 1: So I want to come up someday, hopefully with something
Speaker 1: that is vegan and cravable, even to to omnivores. Having
Speaker 1: said that, I mean, I do think there's a big
Speaker 1: hole in the market, and I think you and I
Speaker 1: should discuss this after the podcast for a healthier fast
Speaker 1: casual restaurant, because I always say to Howard Schultz name drop.
Speaker 1: I know, but I know him a little because I've
Speaker 1: interviewed him a bunch of times. Like have some healthier
Speaker 1: options at Starbucks. They've started to, but I think, like
Speaker 1: you even have a healthy brand muffin that is a
Speaker 1: hundred calories. I would get it all the time at Starbucks.
Speaker 1: That would make me come to start right now. We've
Speaker 1: just invested in a company called Tender Greens, which is
Speaker 1: a California based company. They'll be coming to New York
Speaker 1: early in You've also invested in Sweet Greens. I know
Speaker 1: in Sweet, I know too much about you. It's it's
Speaker 1: actually scaring me. So now, I don't think that either
Speaker 1: of those two awesome places are what you would call
Speaker 1: fast casual. They're a little bit more than that. Um,
Speaker 1: And I do think you're right. I think there's there's
Speaker 1: a place for really cravable food that you could eat
Speaker 1: three times a day and feel good about yourself. So
Speaker 1: we have to wrap it up, but I want to
Speaker 1: dish with you for a minute. Who was your favorite
Speaker 1: customer you've had here at one of your restaurants. I mean,
Speaker 1: who did you You've met everybody, Danny, well obviously you,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, well okay, other than me, But who did
Speaker 1: you meet that just blew your socks off? Boy? So
Speaker 1: many which is pretty cool. But I have to say
Speaker 1: my childhood hero who um was Bob Gibson the picture
Speaker 1: for the St. Louis Cardinals. Um when he came to
Speaker 1: Union Square Cafe and I was at the game where
Speaker 1: Roberto Clementi lined a shot off of Gibson's shin and
Speaker 1: Gibson got up and pitched to the next three batters
Speaker 1: with a broken leg. Um, you want to talk about
Speaker 1: courage I saw in the area at at one point
Speaker 1: to one E r A. And the fact that that
Speaker 1: guy who I looked up to as a little kid
Speaker 1: was eating dinner and drinking wine in my restaurant, let
Speaker 1: me sit down and talk with him, and later became
Speaker 1: an investor in our barbecue restaurant, Blue Smoke. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty cool. It doesn't get much better than that,
Speaker 1: didn't How about somebody who maybe people who aren't baseball aficionados,
Speaker 1: would know about any celebrities, any movie stars, TV stars,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I mean, I don't even know
Speaker 1: where to start. Just remember thinking, wow, that's cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've had President Obama, um eating at my aleno, and
Speaker 1: how cool for him to stand up in front of
Speaker 1: the entire dining room and put his arm around me
Speaker 1: and say, I would not be president if it hadn't
Speaker 1: been for your grandfather who schooled me and zero to
Speaker 1: three early childhood education when I was when I was
Speaker 1: running for state Senate of Illinois, state senate, not even
Speaker 1: US Senate. That was pretty cool. It's also cool to
Speaker 1: have Michelle Obama come in, but it was pretty cool
Speaker 1: to have the Bush daughters in the restaurant. We're we
Speaker 1: played all sides, we played all sides of the aisle here.
Speaker 1: You're such a diploma. I will say this, it's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing to me that in thirty two years of
Speaker 1: being a restaurateur. UM, I don't know that I've ever
Speaker 1: served Donald Trump once that not all politicians care about food.
Speaker 1: Um if Donald, if Donald Trump came to your restaurant now, UM,
Speaker 1: I know you would be ever the gracious host you are,
Speaker 1: do you I don't actually you tell me. Of course
Speaker 1: we would, of course you would. It would It would
Speaker 1: be a very very awkward situation because I'm afraid that
Speaker 1: our staff members on a number of levels would would
Speaker 1: look askance at me. You know, one of the most
Speaker 1: important parts of our business is caring for the people
Speaker 1: who work here. And it's true that we do not
Speaker 1: take a political test of the people who work in
Speaker 1: our company, and we have people who are probably huge
Speaker 1: Donald Trump fans who work somewhere in our company. But
Speaker 1: I also have a sense that if he did nine
Speaker 1: in the restaurant, people would be incredibly professional, and they
Speaker 1: would also probably be somewhat uncomfortable. Well, Danny, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for letting us come and showing us what is
Speaker 1: the Latin word for hospitality again, speedy? Well you showed
Speaker 1: us and oh speedy. So thank you very much. It's
Speaker 1: really fun to talk to you. Before I think our
Speaker 1: production team I was so remiss in not breaking out
Speaker 1: in song during my interview with Danny Meyer. You know,
Speaker 1: when you have a good answer to an insult or
Speaker 1: something someone says to you, like thirty minutes later and
Speaker 1: you think I should have said this, while I'm thinking
Speaker 1: I should have sung this. Food glorious food, hot sausage
Speaker 1: and mustard. While we're in the mood cold Jelly and
Speaker 1: custard peace putting in SAVALOI, what next is a question?
Speaker 1: Rich gentlemen? Have it boys and diedgess John, excuse me?
Speaker 1: That was from Oliver the Musical, And the reason I
Speaker 1: know the words is I sang it at our sixth
Speaker 1: grade assembly with a bunch of other people. Please do
Speaker 1: not worry anyway. Thank you so much to our production team.
Speaker 1: You know their names by now. Gianna Palmer our producer,
Speaker 1: Gared O'Connell, our audio engineer, or Richie our production assistant.
Speaker 1: Where was Nora today? She was editing some other shows. Gosh,
Speaker 1: we keep them busy, busy, busy here people. Then of
Speaker 1: course Alison Bresnik, who always sticks the landing on social media,
Speaker 1: a little gymnastics Jarkin, Thanks Gianna, Emily Bena over at
Speaker 1: Katie Currect Media. And I would like to say thank
Speaker 1: you to BETHA. Moas, my assistant, who was here accompanying
Speaker 1: us on our interview today and who helps me out
Speaker 1: in so many ways every day. And a big thank
Speaker 1: you to Danny Meyer and the team at Union Square
Speaker 1: Cafe for letting me invade their fine establishment to tape
Speaker 1: this episode. Brian and I are the show's executive producers,
Speaker 1: Mark Phillips wrote our theme music, and remember you can
Speaker 1: email us with your guest ideas, questions and feedback at
Speaker 1: comments at current podcast dot com or leave us a
Speaker 1: voicemail at nine to nine to four four six three seven.
Speaker 1: Please keep it clean. People. Find Brian on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Goldsmith b and you can find me if you search
Speaker 1: Katie Curic on just about every social media platform. Now,
Speaker 1: we'll be back in two weeks for our year end
Speaker 1: episode with tennis champ Maria Sharapova. In the meantime, enjoy
Speaker 1: the winter solstice. I'll talk to you when the days
Speaker 1: are getting longer again. Thanks so much for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will tell Brian you all said hey,