The Art of Hospitality: What Jewish Organizations Can Learn from Fine Dining

Strategies for building lasting relationships and memorability

Sep 10, 2023

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Two components of value creation at Jewish organizations

The most well understood and appreciated aspect of value creation at Jewish organization is typically the yield of its programs. A JCC runs holiday programming for families with young children, a Hillel runs religious and non religious programs for college students, a Moishe House runs programs for adults in their 20s. In all of these cases organizations have a scheduled set of staged activities that attempt to serve a need for the cohort they serve.

Another component of value is the level of service or hospitality that participants perceive they are getting from the organizations they are interacting with inside and outside of programs. While a program is often a one to many phenomenon, service is often experienced on a 1:1 basis. Everyone experiences service in different ways.

A few Jewish examples:

The product of a soup kitchen is the food that it feeds families in need. At the same time there are workers at that soup kitchen that have 1:1 interactions with participants that shape their impression of the experience.
A synagogue may run services on Shabbat, a religious school, and a minyan in the morning as its products, but the staff of the synagogue also provide 1:1 service of different degrees to its constituents. Service in the context of a synagogue might relate to how quickly staff gets back to members when they have a question or more substantively relate to how personally seen by the Rabbi a member feels.
The product of a day school is typically seen as the output of the education provided to children and the programs run for families at that school. Service at a day school might relate to how a family feels seen by teachers and administrators. Feeling personally known in this environment is often shaped by the service experience.

In my experience Jewish organizations tend to focus heavily on the quality of the product they provide. There is plenty of merit in this type of investment. There is a big difference between a program like a kids concert with a subpar performer vs one that feels engaging. A religious school that claims to cover basic Hebrew fluency but that doesn’t deliver is a let down. A JCC that puts on a Hanukkah program that is sparsely attended and less than spirited has not executed on its basic responsibility.

In short, programs exist in failure states that can erode confidence in an organization. Programs are an important means of pulling people in and making them feel like their time was used productively. At the same time, rarely do programs tend create memorable impressions. Instead, it is often personalized human interactions that stick out from the clutter.

Lessons from fine dining

In renowned restaurateur Danny Meyer’s book, “Setting The Table: Transforming The Power of Hospitality in Business”, he argues that the baseline product, or in his case the food appearing on the table, can only get you so far in creating memorable experiences that fuel loyalty and word of mouth. Meyer writes:

“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 a guest’s side requires listening to that person with every sense, and following up with a thoughtful, gracious, appropriate response. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top.”

Meyer makes the argument that unlike a product, which has inherent limitations on the degree of its memorableness, the 1:1 experience given has the capacity to drive an indelible impression. Meyer goes on to talk about the value of building relationships and exceeding customer expectations as part of those relationships as the element that truly differentiates good from great restaurants.

Hiring for emotional intelligence

The question for Jewish organizations is how we might instill memorability through service experiences. The challenge is that service or relationship building is often experienced as the byproduct of dozens if not hundreds of interactions participants have with the staff of our organizations. Because service is experienced as a personal phenomenon it stands to reason that staff need to possess the ability to adjust their tact based on the person they are serving at that moment. The organization’s ‘brand’ in some way is inspired by the tone and tact of those communications.

This idea of adjusting tact to meet someone where they are is often referred to as ‘emotional intelligence’ and reflects soft skills that can be partially developed, but that often reflect a person’s natural ability to show empathy and care toward other people. As such hiring is the most substantive lever an organization has to move the dial.

Meyer writes:

“...the real secret of success is to hire people to whom caring for others is, in fact, a selfish act. I call these people hospitalitarians. A special type of personality thrives on providing hospitality, and it’s crucial to our success that we attract people who possess it. Their source of energy is rarely depleted. In fact, the more opportunities hospitalitarians have to care for other people, the better they feel.”

In the Harvard Business Review article, “How to Hire For Emotional Intelligence” the author, Annie McKee, talks about hiring techniques that can isolate strength or weakness on this dimension.

She advocates for conversations with references that ask for specific examples of demonstrations of emotional intelligence and probes on how the candidate treats other people. The author also reviews techniques for deliberately interviewing for emotional intelligence. She says that often we think we’re interviewing for emotional intelligence, but we allow people to be vague in their responses and fail to ask good follow-up questions. Candidates talk about idealized notions of themselves, without talking about how they really behave.

The antidote to this phenomenon is the idea of behavioral interviewing which can be a powerful way to learn about people’s competencies and see how they demonstrate those competencies on the job. Questions that reflect this methodology typically start with a phrase like “Tell me a time when…”. As the candidate launches into a story the interviewer can assess authenticity by asking lots of questions and seeing how adept the candidate is at responding.

In the case of hiring, the analogy from Jewish non-profit to the for-profit world is reasonably straightforward. The challenge can be possessing the will to take the time necessary to incorporate properly assessing emotional intelligence into the hiring process. The market for high quality talent for non-profits can feel tight which creates a temptation to simply assess technical skills and be done with it. It’s worthwhile examining the importance of this set of skills for your organization and adjusting timelines and energy for hiring accordingly.

Surprise and delight

Another dimension of service worth examining is the question of how to exceed customer expectations in a memorable way. In another excellent book by one of Meyer’s proteges called “Unreasonable Hospitality”, Will Guidara, goes on to explain the concept of “Legends”. Short for instances where the restaurant had been “legendary”, this is the term Guidara coined among his staff to denote experiences where a staff person created a memorable experience for guests. Here are a couple examples he gives of creating moments of delight for customers.

If they knew a guest was from out of town and gathered enough from the conversation to know they were just beginning their trip they’d surprise them with tickets to the observation deck of the empire state building. They also printed maps that pointed out lesser known eateries that had their restaurant’s stamp of approval.
In another story a table spent the better part of their meal talking about a movie they’d loved and forgotten about, and by the end of the meal the restaurant had dropped off a DVD of that movie with their check.

What do these examples have in common?

a) In each instance the guest was surprised and delighted with a service experience that exceeded their expectations. They weren’t expecting the restaurant to do these things, but they did, and they were highly personal.

b) Neither of these ‘perks’ were inherently that expensive, but they did require thoughtfulness and some level of motivation from the staff to execute on them.

Guidara writes about “Legends”:

“With the Legends, everyone in the dining room had an outlet, too—they weren’t just serving plates of other people’s creativity; they had the opportunity to infuse the experience with their own. The Legends—whether you were watching other people do one or doing them yourself—made coming to work fun, and we were working way too hard not to have fun.”

Applications for Jewish organizations

I would argue that surprising and delightful service experiences present an untapped pathway toward memorability and word of mouth that is sorely missing at many of our institutions.

I want to use two organization types, non orthodox Day Schools and Synagogues, to demonstrate how this philosophy might be applied. I’m choosing these institutions because there are clear alternatives to each of these products for their constituents, they each have plenty of personalization opportunities, and both are experiencing negative demand trends. In short, they are both organization types that require new thinking to devise a means of retaining their constituents and attracting new ones.

Day Schools

While Day Schools struggle to attract new students into their funnel, when they do succeed it is commonly due to positive word of mouth. The challenge with word of mouth, however, is that it’s often hard to recall anecdotes that are truly impressive and memorable in a way that really inspires a prospective family.

Consider a few examples where ‘surprise and delight’ might create word of mouth opportunities:

A prospective family comes to visit the school - In a typical visit the admission lead or school head will meet the family in front of the school with open arms and might hand them a name tag or visitor pass.
- What if instead of that we handed each member of the family a real security badge with their photo already on it to make it look like they were already part of the community? What if the people they interacted with (not just the admission lead or school head) knew their name and a couple fun facts about them to make the tour more personal?
A new family moves to town - In a typical scenario a family might get set up with another family as a ‘buddy’ This is a very nice gesture, but one that might be seen as standard for a new family at a school.
- What if instead of just a buddy or a welcome package, the school head showed up at their door to hand deliver the package and maybe even bring them a cup of coffee one Sunday morning? What if the school figured out when their moving trucks were showing up and sent a team of a few school members to help them unpack boxes? [Admittedly you might want to ask them ahead of time on this one!]
Sick family member - Every once in a while a family member of a community family can be in the hospital for an extended period. When this happens the natural reaction of the school might be to pull together a card or gift basket to send to the person who is ill.
- What if the school went above and beyond to find not just a care package for the sick child, but also included gifts for that kid’s siblings? What if those gifts were personalized for the interests of both the sick child and their siblings?
Student coach - At least at my son’s school, middle school is the first time kids are asked to take part in organized competitive sports. Coaches do their best to teach basic skills to a group of kids.
- What if instead of group skills, a coach went out of their way to email parents a couple drills that their specific kid could benefit from? What if the coach made a personal connection with a local coach who could teach the child supplementary skills? What if the coach even offered to personally show up at the child’s house to work with them?

Synagogues

Synagogue service (not “services”) is often challenged by the large number of congregants relative to service based staff at the synagogue. Unlike a school or a camp where participant/staff ratios can run at 10:1 or even less, synagogues often only have 1-2 rabbis for 100+ congregants. Beyond clergy, other synagogue staff can run thin. Thus, we need to not only consider examples of personalization but a workflow that can function scalably.

Here are a couple examples to demonstrate how this concept could be applied.

Congregant memorability - This is one I’ve seen executed quite brilliantly by a local Rabbi who is fortunate to have a photographic memory. This Rabbi has an unbelievable ability to not only remember names but to remember relationships between people and related family anecdotes. He manages to conjure up these names and stories in opportune ways at a moment's notice.
- What if instead of relying on a Rabbi’s memory the synagogue had a system where synagogue staff could log interactions and personally identifiable information on particular congregants (“CRM” software typically serves this need)? What if this record could be referenced by synagogue staff and mobilized in particular contexts to personalize interactions? If a congregant has an upcoming simcha wouldn’t that synagogue rather have a data set to reference in preparation? If a Rabbi is asked to give a blessing for a milestone event at the bimah, wouldn’t they rather have personal information to lean on to exceed that person’s expectations?
Milestone gifts - Celebrating milestones with small to medium sized gifts have been part of the synagogue playbook for years. Back to the 1980s synagogues were giving out B-mitzvah gifts at the bimah. We’ve been trained to expect a certain type of gift to be given out in these situations. B-mitzvah = Kiddush cup and siddur. Birthday = Gift certificate to a local ice cream shop + note on synagogue letterhead.
- What if instead of form gifts we accumulated a set of personal knowledge on congregants and gave them gifts customized to them? What if we knew someone was a Green Bay Packers football team fan and we sent them a Green Bay keychain on their birthday? Maybe a kiddush cup feels appropriate at a bar mitzvah, but what if it was supplemented by something totally personal for that congregant? How do we take what the Rabbi learned about the B-Mitzvah person and turn that into some form of personalization that takes the families breath away?

These examples might not resonate with everyone. In no small measure the definition of ‘surprise and delight’ is related to the baseline level of service a person is receiving and is thus very personal per organization. The ‘surprise and delight’ aspect of service is often gauged based on feel, which is why the examples above might elicit a reaction of “We already do that”. If so, think of your own creative examples you can apply to your constituency.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of 1:1 connection in the running of a service business. Since most Jewish communal businesses are humans serving humans we should not ignore the opportunity associated with unique personalization and relationship building as a means of creating memorability. We can learn from industries who have expertise at making a connection with the individuals they serve and earn repeat visitors through their actions.

Will Guidara says following about service businesses that could just as easily apply to our Jewish institutions:

“When you work in hospitality—and I believe that whatever you do for a living, you can choose to be in the hospitality business—you have the privilege of joining people as they celebrate the most joyful moments in their lives and the chance to offer them a brief moment of consolation and relief in the midst of their most difficult ones. Most importantly, we have an opportunity—a responsibility—to make magic in a world that desperately needs more of it.”

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