Skip Enterprise Foodservice: Danny Meyer on Menuing New Foods
Danny Meyer explains why novel food brands like Booskous must seed independent chefs before pitching fast-casual chains like Cava.
Advice Line with Danny Meyer of Shake Shack
Restaurateur Danny Meyer joins Guy Raz on the Advice Line to share management insights from his book What Could Possibly Go Right? and advise early-stage founders. Together, they coach founders of a canned bourbon cocktail brand, a premium smoked salmon smokehouse, and a high-protein chickpea couscous startup on packaging hospitality, direct-to-consumer logistics, and food service expansion.
Key takeaways
- Bar Bruhis sought to scale Booskous, a high-protein chickpea and lentil couscous, by pitching fast-casual chains like Cava and Sweetgreen. Read more →
- Danny Meyer opened Union Square Cafe at age 27 in 1985 and thought his career was finished when Black Monday struck markets two years later in October 1987. Read more →
- Calling your startup team a "family" backfires because you cannot fire a family member without triggering workplace grief. Read more →
- Direct-to-consumer shipping for perishable goods introduces high customer churn if the cold chain breaks during transit. Read more →
- Janelle Bass faced a sharp drop in customer conversion whenever Ponyboy Slings left in-store tasting tables for crowded retail shelves. Read more →
5 articles from this episode
Danny Meyer on Surviving Downturns and the Irving Harris Rule
Danny Meyer explains why economic dips are temporary and shares the problem-solving lesson that carried Union Square Cafe through four decades.
Danny Meyer: Stop Calling Your Team a Family
Restaurateur Danny Meyer explains why treating a business like a family fails and shares his mathematical equation for company culture.
Why Perishable Food Brands Should Delay D2C Shipping
Guy Raz and Danny Meyer explain why early-stage food brands should master wholesale and scarcity before launching national D2C shipping.
Danny Meyer: How to Put Hospitality on a Retail Shelf
Danny Meyer and Guy Raz explain how canned RTD brands replace live bartending with founder identity and clever packaging microcopy.