Welcome to my next instalment of my visit to Eleven Madison Park and unreasonable hospitality.

You may recall in a previous post that I shared how Will Guidara (author of Unreasonable Hospitality and previous owner of Eleven Madison Park), and his business partner Chef Daniel Humm transformed this venue to be voted Number 1 restaurant in the world in 2017.

You can read the full post here but in case you don’t have time I will recap it for you below.

Legendary Moments

Will Guidara talks about creating experiences that he calls legends that go above and beyond what people are expecting. The result is that they will share the story of that experience for the rest of their lives. They didn’t want to leave these to chance so they systemised the process and gave their employees creative autonomy to deliver them.

In May this year, Janine Garner and I dined at Eleven Madison Park, and we had both read the book so our expectations, especially around these legendary moments, were very high.

My Kylie Story

The night before we dined my favourite pop star Kylie Minogue was in town. I made a casual comment to our Maître d’ about Kylie being in New York and whether she might be dining tonight at the restaurant. Spoiler alert, she wasn’t but he did ask me if Kylie would be my choice if I could only choose one person to have dinner with. I said yes.

After our main meal and before dessert we were asked if we wanted a tour of the kitchen. We accepted with enthusiasm and were shown around the kitchen and had a great conversation with the head chef.

We were then asked if we would like to see the wine cellar. Once again, we were keen. As we walked down the aisle containing floor to ceiling bottles of wine, we noticed that they were playing Kylie’s Padam Padam. To our delight there were Pisco Sour’s awaiting us when we reached the end of the cellar. They are Kylie Minogue’s favourite cocktail.

They then presented us with a printed trivia quiz titled, Who’s the real KYLIE-MINOGUE-IT-ALL? Janine and I had to try and answer the 10 questions. After completion we were presented with a certificate that read OFFICIAL MINOGUE-IT-ALL certified by Eleven Madison Park. Of course it was duly signed to make it official.

Systemised Customer Experiences

The reason I am sharing this is to highlight the fact that creating unexpected customer experiences can be systematised and still maintain their impact.

They are not doing this for every diner as some people just want to come and eat and that is it.

They also do not have a stack of Kylie Minogue quizzes out the back. However, I have no doubt they have a process for when something comes up in conversation to ask diners who they would love to eat dinner with. Then someone does a quick Google search and finds 10 questions on the person, prints up the quiz and the certificate. Then BAMM… about an hour later, you have the makings of an unforgettable experience.

Even with high expectations, this was truly an unforgettable experience. It’s another great example of how unreasonable hospitality created a magnetic story that we will be sharing for the rest of our lives. Well done team Eleven Madison Park.

It could be worth thinking about how you can create these unforgettable experiences for your customers.

P.S.

Do you think you are a Minogue-it-all? If so, here are the 10 questions.

1. What is Kylie’s middle name?
2. What character did she play in Neighbours?
3. True or False: The Locomotion was the biggest selling single of the 80’s in Australia?
4. How many waxworks of Kylie does Madame Tussauds have of her?
5. What is Kylie’s zodiac sign?
6. Kylie’s hit song Spinning Around was originally written for another artist – who was it?
7. What is the name of the INXS song that was inspired by Kylie?
8. What was the venue of her first live concert performance in 1988?
9. What are Kylie fans called?
10. True or false: a collective noun for Sydney gay men is known as a ‘Minogue of gays’?

Stay tuned for the answers in next week’s post… so don’t cheat and Google the answers!