By Emily Glazer

In Personal Board of Directors, top business leaders talk about the people they turn to for advice, and how those people have shaped their perspective and helped them succeed. Previous installments from the series are here .

Danny Meyer's restaurants have shaken up dining options in sports arenas, museums and even on airplanes. He founded Shake Shack in New York's Madison Square Park. Now, he's setting his sights on rejuvenating the revolving restaurant atop the Marriott Marquis in Times Square and making investments elsewhere in the industry.

Meyer's first restaurant -- Union Square Cafe in New York -- catapulted him into a career as a serial restaurateur. He has opened famed New York spots including Gramercy Tavern, The Modern restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art and Papa Rosso at Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets. He is founder and executive chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group, which operates more than a dozen eateries and invests in companies including Joe Coffee, e-commerce food business Goldbelly and the Salt & Straw ice cream chain.

Meyer, 66, grew up in St. Louis and was exposed to food and travel from a young age through his father's travel agency. During Meyer's first visit to France on a family trip, his mother insisted he keep a diary. "I wrote about falling in love with a fraises des bois (wild French strawberries), with crème fraîche, quiche Lorraine, crusty baguettes with amazing butter," he said.

Meyer graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., in 1980 with a degree in political science. During college, and after graduating, he benefited from his father's access to $48 round-trip tickets to anywhere Pan Am flew. He took several trips to places including Rome, Venice and Florence. While he loved food and travel, he flirted with careers in politics, broadcast journalism and sales after graduating -- and even took the LSAT as he considered law school. Meyer said he'll never forget a family dinner when the conversation turned to his career and he felt lost. "My uncle handed it to me," Meyer said, recalling him saying: "'You've got to be crazy. All I've heard you talk about your whole life is restaurants and food...you should open a restaurant.'" Meyer registered for a restaurant-management class a few days later.

Meyer started Union Square Cafe in 1985, when he was 27. Union Square Hospitality Group is rooted in what Meyer calls "enlightened hospitality, " which prioritizes the employee experience as a way to drive other success. It also differentiates hospitality -- the emotional response someone feels in a restaurant -- from service.

Meyer is chairman of the board of Shake Shack and serves on the board of restaurant-technology provider Olo. He previously was a director at OpenTable, Sotheby's and the Container Store, in addition to private and philanthropic organizations.

Meyer spoke about the people he turns to for guidance at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council summit earlier this month. When he needs advice, Meyer said, he seeks out people who tend to ask, "What could possibly go right?"

Here are four of his most trusted advisers:

Robert K. Steel Partner and vice chairman, Perella Weinberg Partners

Meyer said he met Steel, then deputy mayor of New York City, through a mutual friend around the time Meyer was thinking about eliminating tipping at his restaurants and raising prices across the board. The move was designed to benefit other workers not eligible for tips, including cooks, baristas and dishwashers. Over a plate of mini bagels, jam and cream cheese at Gracie Mansion, the two talked about various federal and state laws related to that.

Meyer also credits Steel with teaching him an important lesson in differentiating what Steel calls "difficult" and "unpleasant" problems.

"The whole idea is that difficult issues require lots of attention, lots of consideration, more fact gathering and analysis," Steel said. "Unpleasant, you kind of know the answer, you just don't want to deal with it, so you pretend it's difficult when it isn't difficult. It's just unpleasant."

Meyer said Steel's network is unmatched and Steel makes a point to connect people. That has been key for Meyer, including with government and developer ties. With Steel, Meyer said, a helpful person is "always a call away."

Ric Elias CEO and co-founder, Red Ventures

Meyer met Elias at the intermission of the musical "Hamilton" in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The creator of the show, Lin-Manuel Miranda, staged a production there as the territory was recovering from 2017's Hurricane Maria. Meyer and Elias became close, as did their families.

Elias has served as a consigliere and cheerleader for Meyer during some of his hardest career moves.

During the Covid pandemic, Meyer questioned what the future of the restaurant industry would look like. The two sat 12 feet apart in Meyer's office as Elias told him he was actually getting the greatest gift of his career. Meyer remembers Elias saying "You will never again have the opportunity...to take your boat out of the water, put it in a dry dock, inspect the entire underbelly, patch all the holes, clean up all the barnacles and make sure that when you put it back in the water it's going to be more seaworthy than it's ever been."

Ultimately Union Square Hospitality Group lost 80% of its staff and had to rebuild.

Elias was crucial again as Meyer thought about stepping down as CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. While the two dined together at one of Meyer's restaurants -- Manhatta -- Elias gave it to him straight. Elias said he remembered that Meyer's humility was getting in the way since he was trying to please everybody and it was compromising his ability to make the decision. "I said, 'Dude, you're Danny f -- ing Meyer. Make the decision that Danny f -- ing Meyer will make,'" Elias said. "He already knew the right answer. He just needed to be honest with himself."

Meyer started the process to step down as CEO soon after.

Billy Shore Founder and executive chair, Share Our Strength

Meyer and Shore have known each other for about 30 years, first meeting at Taste of the Nation, a culinary event to end childhood hunger. They both had worked in politics early in their careers and bonded over that shared connection. Meyer was on the board of Share Our Strength, a hunger-relief nonprofit co-founded by Shore, from the early 1990s until 2021.

Meyer said that Shore has helped him operate with a higher purpose. He's also inspired Meyer through one of his books, "The Cathedral Within," which discusses creating community wealth and going "beyond your own mortality" by building things that matter, Meyer said. That motivated Meyer to build Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, he said. After having a hot dog cart for three years, Meyer and his team transformed it into Shake Shack to create community wealth around Madison Square Park. The park became the business's landlord and a percentage of every sale went back into the park, which Meyer said gets close to $1 million in revenue every year from that one Shake Shack.

Shake Shack went public in 2015 and has more than 500 locations around the world.

"Being kind of a personal adviser to Danny, it'd be like being a voice coach to Taylor Swift," Shore said.

Meyer said Shore's books have also inspired him to write more. Meyer published "Setting the Table" in 2008.

Jocelyn Mangan CEO and founder, illumyn Impact

Sometimes the mentor becomes the mentee. That was the case for Meyer, who met Mangan while he was on the board of restaurant-reservation company OpenTable and she was an executive there in the early 2000s. The two kept in touch, and Mangan sought advice from Meyer while participating in the Henry Crown Fellowship at the Aspen Institute, where she was working on a project about diversifying boards of directors.

"What people don't realize half the time when they're asking me for advice on something is that I'm getting more from them than they're getting from me," Meyer said.

Meyer said Mangan's work motivated him to go beyond thinking about board diversity and start advocating for it. "There's a big difference," he said. "It's another thing to become an apostle for it."

The two have co-hosted more than 10 dinners designed to connect board-ready women with CEOs. Mangan has also introduced Meyer to a Union Square Hospitality Group board member and was involved in introductions for an Olo board member.

"While Danny Meyer does know, it feels like almost everyone -- at least in New York -- there are so many people that Danny doesn't yet know," Mangan said during the Journal's CEO Council event. She added, addressing Meyer: "And we were able to convene these amazing executives around tables and watch new contacts fold into your world."

Write to Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 27, 2024 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)

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