Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is February 27, 2025, and my guest is author Will Godera.

He is the former co-owner of 11 Madison Park, which under his leadership was named the

Best Restaurant in the World. He is the host of the Welcome Conference, co-producer of the Emmy Award

winning series, The Bear, and is recipient of the Wall Street Journal

Innovator Award. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Unreasonable Hospitality,

the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect, which is our subject for today.

Will, welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you so much. Really a pleasure to be here.

On the surface, your book is part memoir and part behind the scenes, look at what it's like to work at and create one of the best restaurants in the world.

But it's really about how to manage, how to lead, how to deal with people.

And as the president of a small college, dealing with leadership issues and management, I found

this book incredibly inspiring, and it's a page turner, which is no small feat.

Explain the title.

What is unreasonable hospitality?

Unreasonable hospitality is my way of urging people across industries to make the choice to be in the hospitality industry.

And the way to do that is just to decide to be as relentless and as creative and as intentional, as unreasonable in pursuit of how we all make people feel as,

well, every successful person I know already is in pursuit of the product they're serving or the service they've crafted.

...