Danny Meyer and Maria Montessori would have been friends
I love taking trips to New York to visit our schools, but on my most recent trip my husband and I spent the weekend being quintessential tourists. We did things like visiting the Guggenheim, seeing a Broadway show and cheering on the NY marathon as we strolled through Central Park. In between these fun activities, we diligently planned out our lunch and dinners because for us a key component of travel is to eat really great food at really excellent restaurants.
Even though I’ve been to New York a lot of times, I had never eaten at one of Danny Meyer’s restaurants. So I was beyond excited to have lunch at his famous Gramercy Tavern. For those of you who don’t know, Danny Meyer is a legend. He’s a world-class restaurateur who has perfected the art of hospitality and wrote a bestseller business book called Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business.
I first read Setting the Table many years ago, when I was still a guide in the classroom. At the time, I had recently changed careers from business to education, and so found myself thinking about how customer service in retail settings related to the work of interacting with co-workers, parents, and students in an educational environment.
What I discovered is that it’s really not all that different. Whether in a restaurant or in the classroom, when you care deeply, and work really hard to understand and help others to solve their problems, you create value for them, earn trust, and build strong relationships. The way Danny Meyer talked about hospitality instantly resonated with my long-practiced and now natural style, both in business and as a guide.
Danny Meyer’s explains his approach this way:
“I was developing what I would call an ‘athletic’ approach to hospitality, sometimes playing offense and sometimes playing defense always wanting to find a way to win. On offense, we’d figure out creative ways to enhance an already good experience (extra desserts with inscriptions written in chocolate for birthdays, dessert wine for regulars). Playing defense, we got better and better at overcoming our frequent mistakes or a defusing whatever situation the guests might be angry about.
Increasingly, their anger was over not getting a reservation at a specific time. I was good at dealing with that, guided by my instinct to let the callers know I was on their side. ‘I’d love to put your name at the top of our wait list for eight o’clock’. I would say. Or “There are literally no tables at eight. Is there any way I could do this for you at eight-forty-five?’- which I knew sounded a little earlier than “quarter of nine”. Or ‘Can you give me a range that would work for you, so that I can root for a cancellation?’
The point was to keep the dialogue open while sending the message: I am your agent, not the gatekeeper!”
When I first read this passage many years ago, I immediately pictured Danny Meyer as a guide in a Montessori classroom. I imagined him observing diligently to figure out what was needed for each individual child. I imagined him planning lessons, thinking about exactly how and when he’d introduce a material to make the experience magical. And I imagined the care with which he’d deliver those lessons, watching the child as he did it, and creating the conditions for each child to be inspired to continue working independently in pursuit of deeper learning.
I also pictured Danny Meyer giving a school tour. I thought about how he’d navigate the best to way to share the news to a first-time parent that a Toddler classroom had a waitlist a mile long. I thought about how he’d explain our deposit policy to anxious parents worried about separating from their child. I imagined Danny Meyer writing a parent newsletter to highlight Montessori materials that have non-familiar names like “Racks and Tubes” and “Metal Insets” and “Spooning”, and how he’d build a bridge to the strangers he was trying to serve.
Danny Meyer, the restauranteur, is an advocate for the customer. He wants to give people the joy they seek, and he has immense, boundless creativity and persistence in finding a way.
Danny Meyer, the Montessorian, I believe would be the same way. He would put himself in the shoes of a child or a parent and try to understand their need. When he couldn’t get them exactly what they thought they wanted, he’d be 100% be on their side in finding an alternative. He’d listen deeply, and always follow up with a thoughtful response that helps find a way to satisfy their inner need. He’d practice the grace and courtesy that our program values so deeply. He might say to a child something like “I’d love for you to have snack now too, but I see that the snack table is full. Should we start a list of waiting friends? You can go back to your work, and when she’s done eating, Izzy will come get you when it’s your turn”.
Those new parents that can’t get in today because we have a waitlist? Danny would help them by offering them a spot with a confirmed start date nine months out, and promise that if anyone left unexpectedly before then he could pull their start date forward. He’d tell them about our homeschool program so that they could set up their home environment. He might suggest they try a Guidepost that is 30 minutes away, just until the spot here opened up, and ask if there was any way to make that easier. He may even get on the phone and helping them to secure a spot at another school in the meantime, while also inviting them to every event and share every parent newsletter while they wait to join.
I envisioned how Danny might share in a parent newsletter something like “Ha ha, yes, ‘spooning’ and ‘racks and tubes’ mean something completely different than you might think, let me show you”. How he’d try to connect our ideas to the existing values and concerns of families, and take their preferences seriously. If they want their child to have friends, he’d explained that self-confidence is the basis of healthy friendships. If they wanted kindergarten readiness, he’d explain our math and literacy programs, but also how the single-best form of readiness is the capacity to adapt and show how our environment offers that.
In all scenarios, when I picture Danny Meyer as a Montessorian, I see him as the agent of the child and the parent, listening and observing and showing them through words and actions that he cares deeply and is on their side.
In Setting the Table, Danny Meyer explains his approach as the difference between “service” and “hospitality”:
“Understanding the distinction between service and hospitality has been at the foundation of our success. Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel. Service is a monologue – we decide how we want to do things and set our own standards for service. Hospitality, on the other hand, is a dialogue. To be on guest’s side requires listening to that person with every sense and following up with ta thoughtful, gracious, appropriate response. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top”.
I think the distinction that Danny Meyer is making captures an important differentiation we aspire to as educators. We want more than just service—we want hospitality. We want a dialogue in which we discover what a child or parent wants, in which we follow the child or parent, and then using our pedagogy and practices, find out how to give it to them.
I think this perspective is particularly important for us because we as Montessorians do not believe that the primary relationship of a child (or parent) is not with us, but with reality. Our job is to heighten their experiences, to offer them the opportunity to have those moments of joy that make their life great. As Maria Montessori wisely stated, “Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment.” When we orient ourselves to the inner needs of our customer, whether a child or family, we are better able to help them satisfy those needs.
I think if Maria Montessori and Danny Meyers were contemporaries, they would have found common ground in their approaches and undoubtedly would have been friends. At the very least, Maria Montessori would have enjoyed a great meal and experience at one of Danny Meyer’s restaurants. I sure did.
Have a great weekend,
Jocelyn