Unreasonable Hospitality: What a World-Class Restaurant Can Teach Us About Consulting and Business | Jay Wiessner
Unreasonable Hospitality: What a World-Class Restaurant Can Teach Us About Consulting and Business
Going beyond good service to create relationships clients remember
What does one of the world's great restaurants have to teach an ISO consultant, manufacturer, aerospace company, cybersecurity firm, or virtually any other business?
More than you might think.
In his book Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara explores a deceptively simple idea: providing excellent service is important, but the organizations people truly remember are the ones that make them feel genuinely cared for.
The philosophy grew out of Guidara’s experience leading Eleven Madison Park in New York City. One of the best-known examples occurred when his team overheard guests mention that during their trip to New York they had never managed to try a classic New York street hot dog. The restaurant's team went out, bought one, brought it back, and incorporated it into the guests' fine-dining experience.
The hot dog itself wasn't particularly valuable.
The fact that somebody listened was.
That distinction has powerful implications far beyond the restaurant industry.
The philosophy behind Unreasonable Hospitality is increasingly being applied across industries because products and services can often be copied, while the feeling created through genuine attention and care is much harder for competitors to duplicate.
And nowhere is that more relevant than in consulting.
Good Service and Great Hospitality Are Not the Same Thing
A central idea associated with Unreasonable Hospitality is the distinction between service and hospitality.
Service is primarily concerned with what you do.
Hospitality is concerned with how people feel while you are doing it.
In consulting, good service might mean:
Delivering the project on time
Providing technically accurate advice
Responding promptly
Preparing the required documentation
Conducting a thorough audit
Helping the client achieve certification
Those things matter enormously.
But increasingly, they are also the price of admission.
A qualified consultant should understand the applicable standard. An auditor should conduct an effective audit. A cybersecurity consultant should understand the applicable controls.
The opportunity to differentiate ourselves occurs in what happens around those technical deliverables.
Did we listen?
Did we understand what the client was really worried about?
Did we make a complicated process easier?
Did we anticipate a problem before the client encountered it?
Did we explain something rather than simply tell the client that it was wrong?
And when the project was finished, did the client feel as though we were genuinely invested in their success?
That is where service begins to become hospitality.
What Unreasonable Hospitality Looks Like in Consulting
Consultants are typically hired for expertise.
But expertise alone doesn't necessarily create loyalty.
A technically brilliant consultant who makes the client feel intimidated, ignored, or dependent may successfully complete an engagement while still failing to create a lasting relationship.
We believe great consulting should accomplish both.
At My ISO Consultants, our work includes certification-readiness consulting, management-system implementation, training, auditing, ongoing system maintenance, cybersecurity, and related services across more than two dozen standards and specialty areas.
But the real product isn't a procedure, an audit report, or even an ISO certificate.
The real product is helping the client become more successful.
That changes the relationship.
Instead of asking:
"What does our contract require us to do?"
We should also ask:
"What can we reasonably do that would make this client's life easier?"
That's a very different question.
Listen for the Consulting Equivalent of the Hot Dog
One of the most useful lessons from Unreasonable Hospitality is learning to notice the small pieces of information people give us.
Clients tell consultants things constantly:
"Our quality manager is retiring next year."
"We always struggle with corrective actions."
"Nobody understands this procedure."
"Our employees hate our document-control system."
"The president doesn't really understand ISO."
"We're worried about the certification audit."
Those may sound like casual comments.
They aren't.
They are opportunities.
An ordinary consultant might acknowledge the comment and return to the scope of work.
An exceptional consultant thinks:
Is there something we can do about that?
Perhaps it's sending the client a training resource.
Maybe it's spending another ten minutes explaining root-cause analysis.
Maybe it's identifying a simpler way to structure a procedure.
Perhaps it's reminding the client about an upcoming requirement before it becomes urgent.
Sometimes it may simply be calling someone after a difficult audit and asking:
"How did it go?"
None of these actions needs to be expensive.
The important part is that they're personal.
They communicate:
We heard you. We remembered. And we care.
The Best Consultant Doesn't Try to Make the Client Dependent
There is another important way this philosophy should apply to consulting.
Some consulting models unintentionally encourage dependency.
If the consultant is the only person who understands the management system, that's not necessarily evidence of successful consulting.
Great consultants transfer knowledge.
They simplify.
They teach.
They help clients understand why requirements exist instead of merely telling them what to do.
At My ISO Consultants, this fits naturally with our belief that a QMS should become part of an organization's everyday operations rather than functioning as a separate collection of documents maintained solely for an auditor. Our own training materials emphasize integrating the QMS into daily operations and using audits and continual improvement to make the organization stronger.
The goal shouldn't be:
"You can't do this without us."
It should be:
"We're going to help you become better at doing this."
Ironically, that approach often creates a much stronger long-term client relationship.
Don't Just Identify Problems. Help Solve Them.
Anyone can point out what's wrong.
That's particularly easy in auditing and compliance.
A far more valuable consultant identifies the problem and helps the client understand the path forward.
Our internal-auditing philosophy reflects exactly that idea: don't merely identify issues; help organizations develop actionable plans for improvement.
That is another form of hospitality.
Imagine two auditors identifying the same nonconformance:
One says:
"This doesn't comply. You'll need to fix it."
The other explains:
"Here's why this is a problem. Here are a couple of ways I've seen organizations address it. Let's talk about which approach would make the most sense for your operation."
The technical finding may be identical.
The client experience is completely different.
Build Systems for Hospitality Without Making It Feel Systematic
There's an apparent contradiction here.
Hospitality needs to feel personal, but businesses also need processes that make excellent experiences repeatable.
That is actually very similar to quality management.
Good systems don't eliminate human judgment.
They create the conditions that allow good judgment to happen consistently.
Guidara’s broader hospitality work encourages organizations to examine the individual touchpoints throughout the customer journey and identify opportunities to improve them.
A consulting company can do exactly that.
Consider the client's journey:
Inquiry → Proposal → Kickoff → Implementation → Questions → Audit → Certification → Post-Certification Support
At every stage, ask:
What is the client experiencing right now, and how could we make that experience better?
Not more elaborate.
Not necessarily more expensive.
Better.
The Principle Applies to Every Business
The lesson isn't limited to consulting.
Every organization has customers, employees, suppliers, partners, or other interested parties.
That means virtually every organization has an opportunity to practice hospitality.
A manufacturer
A manufacturer can communicate immediately when a delivery problem occurs instead of waiting for the customer to discover it.
A software company
A software provider can recognize that a customer repeatedly struggles with a feature and proactively offer help.
A distributor
A distributor can understand a customer's production schedule well enough to recognize when an unusual order might signal a looming shortage.
A medical-device company
A medical-device organization can make regulatory compliance easier for its customers by anticipating the documentation they're likely to request.
A manager
A manager can remember what's important to an employee and recognize when that person needs support without waiting for them to ask.
The specific gesture changes.
The principle doesn't.
Pay attention.
Care.
Then act.
Hospitality Is Also an Internal Leadership Philosophy
The concept shouldn't stop with customers.
Employees experience our organizations too.
A company cannot realistically expect employees to provide extraordinary care to customers while consistently treating those same employees as interchangeable resources.
If we want people to notice opportunities to help clients, leadership must create an environment where employees have permission to notice, think, and act.
That means trusting people.
Recognizing exceptional effort.
Giving employees room to solve problems.
Listening to their ideas.
And occasionally asking:
"What can I do to make your job easier?"
Hospitality ultimately becomes part of culture.
And culture eventually becomes visible to customers.
There Still Have to Be Boundaries
Being unreasonable about hospitality doesn't mean being irresponsible about business.
It doesn't mean unlimited scope changes, giving away professional services, ignoring contractual requirements, or allowing clients to abuse employees.
A sustainable version of unreasonable hospitality requires judgment.
The objective isn't to spend unreasonable amounts of money.
It's to demonstrate an unusual amount of attention.
Sometimes the most memorable thing you can give a customer costs almost nothing.
A phone call.
An introduction.
A helpful template.
A reminder.
A five-minute explanation.
A resource they didn't know existed.
Or simply remembering something they told you six months ago.
The value of the gesture isn't necessarily proportional to its cost.
From Customer Service to Customer Loyalty
Most businesses say they provide excellent customer service.
That's admirable.
But perhaps the better goal is to create customers who say:
"You won't believe what this company did for us."
That's a much higher standard.
And it creates something advertising alone cannot buy: a story worth telling.
At My ISO Consultants, we've long referred to our approach as the "My ISO Family." Our own materials describe that philosophy as becoming a partner to clients, providing ongoing support and understanding their unique needs rather than simply functioning as an outside consultant.
Unreasonable Hospitality gives us another way to describe why that philosophy matters.
Whether we're implementing a management system, conducting an internal audit, helping an aerospace manufacturer prepare for ISO or AS9100 Certification, supporting ISO 27001 or CMMC cybersecurity requirements, or simply answering a question from a longtime client, there's an opportunity to provide something beyond technical expertise.
We can make people feel supported.
And that's not only good hospitality.
It's good business.
A Challenge for Every Business
Here's a simple exercise worth trying.
At your next management meeting, don't only ask:
"How can we improve customer service?"
Ask three different questions:
Where in our customer's journey are they most likely to feel confused, frustrated, or anxious?
What could we do at that moment that they wouldn't normally expect from a company like ours?
How can we empower our employees to recognize and act on those opportunities themselves?
The answers probably won't require a huge budget.
They will require attention.
And perhaps that's the biggest lesson from Unreasonable Hospitality:
Exceptional businesses don't simply complete transactions. They create experiences that remind people they matter.
That's a philosophy that belongs just as much in a consulting firm, factory, laboratory, aerospace company, software business, or corporate office as it does in a world-class restaurant.
Because whatever business we're in, we're ultimately in the people business.
