Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions - for and to - express it all.

Life is a series of waves to be embraced and overcome.

At the base level, a burger is a piece of meat and a bun with something on it. It's simple but it seems to make a lot of people happy.

A cocktail done right can really show your guests that you care.

Constant, gentle pressure is my preferred technique for leadership, guidance, and coaching.

Union Square Cafe is all soul, not brain.

You wouldn't have the same art on the walls at every restaurant or the same waiter uniforms. Neither should you have the same service style at every restaurant.

Hospitality is almost impossible to teach. It's all about hiring the right people.

Steak and its accompaniments - wine, vegetables, potatoes and generous desserts - is a primal source of pleasure to which many people can relate.

Festive cocktails mean color, lots of color.

Human nature doesn't change. When enough people are comfortable enough financially, there is going to be human nature that wants to spend more money on better quality and, to some degree, status symbols as well.

The most important thing you can do is make the distinction between customer service and guest hospitality. You need both things to thrive, but they are completely different.

Hospitality exists when you believe that the other person is on your side.

During one of his uncannily well-timed impromptu visits to my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, Pat Cetta taught me how to manage people. Pat was the owner of a storied New York City steakhouse called Sparks, and by that time, he was an old pro at running a fine restaurant.

If you develop a dialogue with me and take an interest in me, I'll want to give you the business. It's human nature.

'Fine casual' means taking the cultural priorities that fine dining, at its best, believes in.

Hospitality knows no gender or race.

If you're constantly making business decisions on behalf of your investors first, ultimately you're going to wear down your other stakeholders. It's going to be potentially hurtful for your employees and your customers and the community you do business with.

A great restaurant is one that just makes you feel like you're not sure whether you went out or you came home and confuses you. If it can do both of those things at the same time, you're hooked.

I opened Union Square Cafe when I was just 27 years old, and my first hope was simply that it would stay in business. My higher hope was that in its lifetime, it might grow to play an essential role in the lives of its stakeholders.

I feel like not knowing Joe Torre is a hole in my New York experience.

I never get sick on airplanes, which is incredible. You're basically in a flying petri dish.

Sometimes, early in their careers, chefs make the mistake of adding one too many things to a plate to get attention. If a chef is just coming up with wiz-bang gimmicks on their plate, that has nothing to do with bringing real pleasure to people.

I think that more and more and more really talented restauranteurs and chefs from the fine dining world are going to try their hand at fine casual. They're going to say, 'Why not us?'

When I was young, I had no choice as to what I was eating.

I think that Shake Shack wouldn't exist had it not been for Twitter. I don't think you would have gotten a hundred New Yorkers to stand in line for an hour if they couldn't have made their time really productive and organized snowball fights, ordered free hot chocolate, and, you know, Instagrammed photos.

If someone said, 'You've got to eat your next two meals at American fast-food restaurants,' I would do one meal at Chipotle and one meal at Popeyes fried chicken.

I gasp for air if I don't get to breathe Italian air once a year.

Comfort food is absolutely moving upscale.

What you can do is present existing flavors in a fresh way, in a fresh context.

How can you franchise hospitality?

When push comes to shove, baseball is one of my favorite things in the world.

Good service means never having to ask for anything.

My history has been to grow the roots as deeply as you can before going on to the next thing. That's why it took 10 years to go from Union Square Cafe to Gramercy Tavern, and another 10 years to go from Blue Smoke's first location to its second, and five to go from Shake Shack 1 to Shake Shack 2.

Gramercy Tavern appeared on the cover of New York Magazine the day we opened, and it was five deep at the bar with people who were not necessarily here to dine. They just wanted to kinda sniff out the hot, new restaurant.

The cooking standards for Italian food are less demanding than for French. All you need are some fried mozzarella and five pastas, and you're in business.

In an age when so many groups are rolling out restaurants faster than your local baker makes donuts, my goal is that each restaurant feels hand-crafted. That they have their own soul.

In one respect, it's easier to open a restaurant in New York because you get more media attention than anywhere else. Almost everyone will try a new place once, irrespective of the reviews, because it's a spectator sport.

There are three things that people pick up on the instant they walk into your home on Thanksgiving. They will be able to feel the human energy. They'll smell the food. And they will see, instantly, the table.

One great worker equals three not-so-great workers, so it's worth paying terrific people not just for today but to find people that we think have upward mobility to become tomorrow's leaders.

Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I've been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I'm an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays.

Shake Shack started off as a summer hot dog cart in Madison Square Park. It was not meant to be a company - it was completely accidental. It started off as an expression of community building.

Use your time well. Everyone gets time equally. It doesn't matter how much money you make.

I couldn't sit in a chair in an office all day.

A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters.

I adore going to a very, very fancy restaurant - as long as the spirit is genuine, like it's their pleasure to welcome you.

Museums are like sports stadiums, hotels and hospitals: they are in the category of captive-audience dining.

My favorite place is whichever sidewalk is beneath my feet because I am just constantly fascinated by walking and looking and learning. If I've already walked a street five times, then the next five times I walk it looking up, and I learn something about the cornices.

You can't let challenges argue you out of doing what you know is the right thing.

It's the job of any business owner to be clear about the company's nonnegotiable core values. They're the riverbanks that help guide us as we refine and improve on performance and excellence. A lack of riverbanks creates estuaries and cloudy waters that are confusing to navigate. I want a crystal-clear, swiftly flowing stream.