Unreasonable Hospitality
Will Garcia
In a world obsessed with margins, dashboards, and short term ROI, the very thing most companies cut first is what actually builds loyalty, reputation, and long term growth.
And slowly, quietly, the human moments that turn customers into believers are optimized out of existence. What remains may be operationally impressive, marginally sound, but emotionally invisible.
The irony is that the parts we’re taught to remove in the name of efficiency are the same parts that build trust, and reputation. The kind of loyalty no retention campaign can manufacture.
These things don’t spike a metric immediately.
They compound quietly over years.
A book from the most unlikely of places
Like many others, I too was pulled into FX’s The Bear. Between a long-standing love of food and years spent working in hospitality, the series had me quite nostalgic. Between the relentless pace and unfiltered language of the series aside, there was one subtle detail that caught my attention. Richie, reading Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara.
It turned out to be incredible, and I wish I had read it sooner.
Not just because of the behind the curtain stories of fine dining at the highest level, but because of how deeply it challenged the way we think about service and loyalty towards customers. At its core, the book revolves around a deceptively simple question:
Free candy doesn't cut it anymore
The 5% that changes everything
This is the essence of unreasonable hospitality. Small, intentional gestures that turn transactions into stories and raving customers.
Guidara summarizes this philosophy with what he calls the 95/5 rule:
Run 95% of your operation with ruthless discipline.
Reserve the remaining 5% to be unreasonably generous, creative, and memorable.
That final five percent is where loyalty is born. It’s where your brand stops being a commodity and starts becoming a memory. It’s where customers stop comparing you on price and start recommending you on emotion.
The uncomfortable truth is that most companies never use their 5%. They optimize it away. They standardize it. They spreadsheet it into extinction or it's just viewed as cost.
But the brands we remember, trust, and return to are built inside that five percent.
Trivial details can be your most loved feature
One of the most memorable stories in the book takes place at the Museum of Modern Art café. There, Guidara introduced small blue, paddle shaped icecream spoons.
They were significantly more expensive than standard cutlery, offered no operational advantage, and would never survive a conventional procurement review. Yet those tiny spoons became the most talked-about detail of the entire experience. Guests mentioned them, photographed them, and most importantly, brought friends back specifically to experience both the ice cream and “those little blue spoons.” A trivial detail became a viral loop before virality was a metric.
This is the essence of unreasonable hospitality. Small, intentional gestures that turn transactions into stories and customers into advocates.
That warm fuzzy feeling inside.
What I got out of it
As business professionals we have been conditioned to treat cost as a negative word as it always alludes to a reduction of profit. We're cost-cutting, budgeting, optimising everything that we can.
It forced me to think about where I could actually spent money and time which can't directly be measured, but acts as a quality of life upgrade to the service you are providing.
If you build products and services that people love, even without it having a direct ROI, you'll have customers coming back time and time again.
What you can think about for your business
Here are a few questions to get your mind racing.
- What small “irrational” detail could become/is your most loved feature?
- What story do customers tell about you today, and what story should they be telling instead?
- Where have you optimized away the moments customers could fall in love with your brand?
- If your customers had to describe you in 1 word, what would it be?
- If you had 5% of company profits available today for generosity and creativity, what would you spend it on?
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