Will Guidara didn't build Eleven Madison Park (EMP) into the world's best restaurant with superior tech. He did it by training his team never to squander an opportunity to connect, truly connect, with a customer.
One brilliant example, from his bestselling book Unreasonable Hospitality, is a case in point: when a couple dining in EMP mentioned their parking meter was running out, Guidara sent someone outside to feed it. The gesture cost next to nothing, but it was a gesture that compounded. Word spread.
This story cuts through the noise of modern loyalty strategy. We've outsourced connection to algorithms and abandoned the human instinct that drives real retention: making someone feel like they belong.
Another gem from Guidara's book really spoke to me: what he calls "The 5% Rule".
Guidara's philosophy? Run 95% of your budget down to the penny. Obsess over efficiency. Then, and this is critical, spend the other 5% unreasonably.
Guidara implemented this ruthlessly. While Finance scrutinized every major expense, he designed custom gelato spoons for one site: a gelato outlet at New York's MoMA. The spoons made no business sense as they were considerably more expensive than the standard ones you buy by the thousand from a wholesaler, but they became a reason people returned.
In a world in which every marketing dollar must be attributed, optimized, and zeously defended, I think Guidara is really onto something: the "unreasonable" gesture can be an untapped loyalty lever.
It's what nobody else is doing, which is precisely why it works. Customers notice what's unmeasurable and intangible because of how it makes them feel. They don’t feel like an ID in a customer segmentation dashboard - they feel valued.
There's a bad habit in too much of modern product design: endless addition. Another email. Another feature. Another notification. And user fatigue compounds as we all get overwhelmed by pings and updates. And the thing about overwhelmed customers? They don't always complain, many just quietly disengage when things get too complicated.
My mind wanders to the example of a large, much-loved national carrier who overhauled their loyalty program with complex new point categories tied to ancillary purchases. In optimising for metrics, they broke the simplicity, making a much admired program feel overly complicated and transactional instead of encouraging and rewarding loyalty.
Simplicity is rare. Simplicity is memorable. So is making people feel like they belong.
