How I define “hospitality”

In the follow-on book to Unreasonable Hospitality, the Unreasonable Hospitality Field Guide, readers are asked to write notes all over the place. In the first few chapters, he asks the reader to write down their definition(s) of hospitality. I wrote down three things, each an example of what I consider hospitality:

Regular

To me, there’s no bigger compliment a business can give you than to call you a “regular.” What most businesses do, though, is they call the highest levels of their loyalty tiers things like “Platinum,” “Gold,” “Elite,” or some other word or phrase that sounds cold and metallic or plain old pretentious. What I have always loved about “regular” is how regular it is. Pedestrian. But also incredibly meaningful.

At Wingtip, we had three different tiers of membership that were based solely on the number of times you could visit the club. For folks that lived across the country, but wanted to visit on their occasional trip to San Francisco, we had a Visiting membership that was $50/month and allowed 5 visits per year (we weren’t super strict about it if someone visited a 6th time, but you get the idea). For members that lived or worked in the Bay Area, but not in San Francisco, and wanted a home base when in the city, we had a Social membership that was $200/month and allowed a handful of visits per quarter. Finally, for those that wanted unlimited visits, for $300/month, they were a Regular. That was the tippy top. Because, for me, that’s what I want to be called at my favorite establishments.

Lagniappes

Pronounced “LAN-yap,” the definition is: "a little something extra". It most commonly refers to a small, complimentary gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of purchase—like a baker tossing an extra pastry into a box.

The “baker’s dozen” is the quintessential example, but there are many more. Call me a sucker, but I always found myself incredibly loyal to any store, restaurant, or service provider that threw in an occasional treat, no matter how small. In fact, a small part of what may have motivated me to open my own men’s store was the fact that the men’s store where I was spending 10s of 1000s of dollars a year never gave me anything as a gift. Not so much as a pocket square or pair of socks.

What really made this dynamic crystal clear to me was a friend and former co-worker who used to go Lake Tahoe frequently to gamble. He would lose 1000s of dollars in sittings of blackjack or craps and rave about the suite he was comped, or the steak dinner he got as a gift. He could have used a fraction of his losses to just buy the room, but the fact that the casino “gave” it to him made it all worth it. Casino comps are a type of lagniappe.

At Wingtip, I tried to instill in the staff in both the store and the club that they would never be fired or reprimanded for offering a lagniappe to a customer. Man buys a suit for his wedding, maybe we throw in a tie of his choice, a pocket square at least. Someone else spends $700 on a pair of shoes, gift them a pair of our most addictive socks—he’ll probably be back for more. In the club, it might be a taste of a new wine or spirit, dessert or a cheese plate on the house.

The Purse Stool

In 2006, I was in New York on business and I decided to treat myself and a friend to a dinner at Daniel’s, Daniel Boulud’s flagship French restaurant in NY. It had two Michelin stars at the time. I will never forget, after sitting down, a restaurant staffer wheeled over a stool for my friend’s purse. Just for her purse. I was 30 years old at the time, had dined at my fair share of fancy restaurants, but had never seen anything like that. I don’t think I’ve seen it since (sure, some restaurants have a coat check, but many women want to keep their bag close to them, they just don’t want to set it on the table, or worse, on the floor). The Robb Report wrote an article about the trend in 2023, a good 17+ years after Daniel’s was doing it.

It should be no surprise that Daniel Boulud was one of Will Guidara’s mentors in the New York dining scene. The Purse Stool is a very creative gesture for demonstrating to their clientele that they can anticipate their needs. To Will, this is the essence of hospitality as he explains later in the Field Guide:

“Of all the definitions of the word I’ve given in this book, perhaps my favorite is this: Hospitality is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships.”

Indeed.