In The Culture Code, author Daniel Coyle recounts the story of when Senator Bob Kerrey ate at one of the Union Park restaurants owned by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer. Inexplicably, the salad of Kerrey’s guest had a bug nestled in the lettuce.
The next day, Kerrey was at another of Meyer’s restaurants and his salad came out with a small piece of paper that said: “Ringo”. The waiter told Kerrey: “Danny wanted to make sure you knew that Gramercy Tavern wasn’t the only one of his restaurants that’s willing to garnish your salad with a Beatle.”
And now, all these many years later, the story lives on – not as an example of how horrible the restaurant was to have bugs, but rather how well the incident was handled.
Things will go wrong. The question is whether your clients will be talking about your beetle or your Beatle in response.
Source: The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, 2018, p. 202.
