A tech company can learn from restaurants by treating product development like a kitchen, customer service like a dining room, and operations like corporate management. Both businesses struggle with thin margins and failure, but applying hospitality principles—excellence, value creation, disciplined spending—keeps them profitable and sustainable.
Can a tech company be a restaurant? You know, I think about restaurants, their commitment to service, their commitment to an absolutely outrageously great experience, especially at the high end of the business. But frankly, even at the low end of the business, like even Shake Shack wants you to have a really great experience having your burger and shake at Shake Shack. What does your company want? And then how do you organize it to be able to deliver that kind of experience? How do you make it, you know, kitchen smart in terms of the technology you're delivering? How do you make it dining room smart in terms of service you're providing to your customers? How do you make it corporate smart in terms of the way that you're managing the books? Because, you know, restaurants are actually famously not that profitable and have, you know, short lifetimes. And I gotta say, that's true for a lot of tech companies as well when they're not managed properly. So how can you put those ideas together with an idea of service, with an idea of hospitality, with an idea of achieving excellence and value for your customers so that you can be that 3-star restaurant?
