Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

Will Guidara is a restaurateur and author. With chef and business partner Daniel Humm, he co-owned the Make It Nice Hospitality group, which owned and operated numerous restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, including their flagship, Manhattan’s Eleven Madison Park. In 2019, Guidara and Humm parted ways, with Guidara announcing plans to open his own restaurant group. Guidara’s credentials and experience provide a solid foundation for the ideas put forth in Unreasonable Hospitality. A graduate of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, he possesses formal training in hospitality management, supplemented by extensive real-world experience leading high-end restaurants. Most notably, Eleven Madison Park earned three Michelin stars and was named the world’s best restaurant in 2017. His leadership and innovations at EMP form the core case study of the book, giving him a credible platform from which to argue for a reimagined model of customer experience.

However, Guidara’s perspective is anchored in the world of fine dining, which inherently limits the generalizability of some of his recommendations. His concept of “unreasonable hospitality” often depends on a high staff-to-guest ratio, flexible budgets, and discretionary authority that many businesses outside the luxury hospitality sector cannot feasibly implement.