Quotes from Danny Meyer

People use restaurants to do business, to do politics, to socialize.

If somebody doesn't want to cook at home or has more family members than they have room for, then it's great to be in a city that's got restaurants that are actually busy on the holidays.

A great restaurant doesn't distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes but by how well they handle those mistakes.

I think that Shake Shack wouldn't exist had it not been for Twitter. I don't think you would have gotten a hundred New Yorkers to stand in line for an hour if they couldn't have made their time really productive and organized snowball fights, ordered free hot chocolate, and, you know, Instagrammed photos.

Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions - for and to - express it all.

If you're constantly making business decisions on behalf of your investors first, ultimately you're going to wear down your other stakeholders. It's going to be potentially hurtful for your employees and your customers and the community you do business with.

In one respect, it's easier to open a restaurant in New York because you get more media attention than anywhere else. Almost everyone will try a new place once, irrespective of the reviews, because it's a spectator sport.

Comfort food is absolutely moving upscale.

More and more, museums will look at restaurants and chefs differently - as if they are curating art.

Museums are like sports stadiums, hotels and hospitals: they are in the category of captive-audience dining.

When I was young, I had no choice as to what I was eating.

Union Square Cafe is all soul, not brain.

My history has been to grow the roots as deeply as you can before going on to the next thing. That's why it took 10 years to go from Union Square Cafe to Gramercy Tavern, and another 10 years to go from Blue Smoke's first location to its second, and five to go from Shake Shack 1 to Shake Shack 2.

Long before Starbucks popularized the phrase 'the third place' - somewhere to interact outside of work and home - it was neighborhood restaurants that helped to define places like Union Square.

I opened Union Square Cafe when I was just 27 years old, and my first hope was simply that it would stay in business. My higher hope was that in its lifetime, it might grow to play an essential role in the lives of its stakeholders.

I feel like not knowing Joe Torre is a hole in my New York experience.

A delicious meal cooked by a colleague for many others nourishes not only the body but also the soul.

Wearing a baseball cap or sleeveless shirt in a white-tablecloth restaurant is rude and makes other diners upset, just like someone on a cellphone.

Diners are upset that restaurants aren't honoring reservations, and a lot of restaurants help bring this on by overbooking.

I gasp for air if I don't get to breathe Italian air once a year.

When the economy goes sour, there are three different kinds of restaurants that do well: the smaller-scale neighborhood restaurants that don't ask much of you; those that have banked enormous goodwill by offering great value during the boom; and those with proven records of excellence, a sure thing.

There are a zillion variables to a hamburger. What part of the animal went into it. What coarseness. What temperature.

Every restaurant needs to have a point of view.