Danny Meyer Hires for Warmth, Then Looks After the Team. Your Clinic Can, Too.

Three everyday ways to hire for the caring Meyer says no one can teach, then look after the people who bring it.

What you’ll take away

The problem: Interviews reward the skills you can see. The caring patients remember is harder to spot, and Danny Meyer says it can’t be taught. It is also easy to stop tending once the hire is made.
What to remember: Hire for the warmth Meyer says can’t be taught, then care for the team the way you want them to care for patients. Patient safety and clinical care are never second.
What to do differently: Name the emotional skills first, then score them in the same short, paid role-play for every finalist. Show care in growth and pay, and make looking after each other everyone’s job.

Skills are easy to see in an interview. Caring is not. A clinic hires a front-desk coordinator who learns the scheduling system in a week. A month later, a patient calls to ask when her biopsy results will be back. She gets a correct answer in a flat voice and a quick goodbye. The system could be taught. Caring how that call felt, in Danny Meyer’s view, cannot. And at four o’clock on a short-staffed day, when nobody has looked after the team either, what warmth is left runs thin. Hire for the caring on purpose, then look after the people who bring it. Meyer’s restaurant company puts that order of care in its mission.

Late afternoon in a warm, unbranded restaurant dining room, with light coming through a tall window on the left. A young woman in a soft blue sweater, her dark hair in a low ponytail, holds a stemmed wine glass up to the light by its stem and points at a small smudge near the rim, absorbed. On the right, a few steps away beside the wooden service station, the floor manager in a navy blazer holds a folded white cloth and watches her with a quiet, pleased smile. — Illustration of the practices described below, not of real people or events. Dialogue is illustrative.

Evening service in the same dining room, the pendant lamps lit and a few diners blurred in the background. The same young woman, now in a white shirt and a long charcoal apron, holds a tray with two covered plates in both hands and looks at her teammate, brows slightly knit. Beside the service station, a taller server in the same uniform holds the water pitcher in one hand and opens his other palm toward her in a calm go-ahead gesture, with a steady smile. — Illustration of the practices described below, not of real people or events. Dialogue is illustrative.

Danny Meyer hires for the part he says can’t be taught. Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) dates to 1985, when Meyer opened Union Square Cafe.² He sets out his hiring philosophy in “The 51 Percent Solution,” a chapter of his 2006 book Setting the Table. He looks for “51-percenters”: people who lean 51 to 49 toward the emotional side of hospitality rather than technical skill. Caring comes first, by a hair. Table-setting can be taught to anyone, he argues; real care about getting it right cannot. His image for that care: a waiter who checks a glass for smudges.¹

He names the caring he is looking for. Meyer lists five emotional skills he hires for: optimistic warmth (kindness and thoughtfulness), intelligence (a hunger to learn), work ethic (the drive to do every task right), empathy (reading what others feel and the effect you have on them), and self-awareness and integrity (knowing what drives you and owning what is right).¹

Seeing those skills takes time. Technical skill shows up fast, Meyer writes, but emotional skills usually reveal themselves only after a good stretch of time with a person, often on the job. He traces most of his company’s hiring misses to misjudged emotional skills, and says naming the skills you want before you start does a lot to improve your chances. Hires who fail, in his experience, are usually unwilling rather than unable: more “I won’t” than “I can’t.”¹

The idea still leads the company’s hiring page. USHG’s careers page, read in November 2026, says technical skills “are vital, but they can be taught.” It looks for people “just a bit more hospitality-minded (51%) than technically skilled (49%)” and now calls them “100%ers.”³

Then the company looks after its own people first. USHG’s mission pairs its purpose, making lives better through what it calls Enlightened Hospitality, with how it runs the business: its people look after one another first. Its About page calls the company “employee-first.”² In a March 2025 keynote, Meyer called raises and promotions “the single best way to take care of our employees.”⁴ As HR Dive reported the keynote, he said leaders help their people most by making each teammate answerable for how they treat the others. As he sees it, a returning guest’s experience is “directly correlated” with how “jazzed” the team is with each other.⁴

The parts depend on each other. Hiring for warmth brings in people who notice the smudge. Teaching gives that care the skill to act on. Looking after the team, and holding everyone to looking after each other, means the people giving care are cared for too. None of it is easy: an interview rewards polished answers, and on a full day, looking after the team is the first thing to slip. In a clinic, staff first describes where leaders put their own care. It never puts patient safety or clinical care second.

Principles of Excellence

Hire for what can’t be taught. Meyer’s hiring philosophy leans slightly toward caring over technique, because caring, he says, is the part no one can teach. USHG’s careers page still calls technique essential and teachable.^{1, 3}
Name the warmth you want. Meyer lists five emotional skills by name. They take time with a person to read, and naming them up front, he says, improves the odds.¹
Look after the team first. USHG’s mission puts looking after one another first, and Meyer ranks raises and promotions first among the ways to look after staff.^{2, 4}
Make caring for each other the job. Meyer says leaders help their people most by making each teammate answerable for how they treat the others.⁴

3 Exceptional Practices for your Clinic

Name the warmth before you interview, then score it. Meyer names five emotional skills and says reading them takes real time with a person, often on the job. Writing them down first turns a gut feeling into behavior two people can score. When you hire a front-desk coordinator, the practice manager and the front-desk lead pick two of the five, such as empathy and optimistic warmth, and write down what each sounds like on the phone. Every finalist gets the same short, paid role-play, with the same time limit and the same score sheet: a teammate plays a worried patient calling about redness around her surgery site. Score only what each finalist says and does. Does she notice the worry, stay kind and pass the call to the nurse with the clinician-written script, rather than judging it herself? The 49 percent still counts, so check scheduling and privacy basics too.
Show care in growth and pay, not slogans. Meyer ranks raises and promotions above every other way of looking after staff. A real next step, in terms someone can count, tells them the practice sees a future for them. When a medical assistant has mastered rooming and clinical photos, the practice manager and her supervising dermatologist sit down with her and map the next role, such as assisting in Mohs surgery: the skills to learn, who will teach them, what the role pays and a date to review her progress. Her pay is discussed with her alone.
Make covering for each other part of the job. In Meyer’s view, a leader’s strongest move is making teammates answerable to one another for the care they give. When help is expected and noticed, it stops depending on who feels generous that day. When the Mohs suite falls behind, the lead MA says so at the midday huddle and assigns cover: an MA from the general clinic turns over rooms and restocks trays, within her training, and no chaperone, consent or cleaning step is skipped to catch up. On Friday, the practice manager names one moment someone covered for a teammate, and helping others counts in every review.

Explore the Evidence Further

Explore the Evidence Further. All 14 sources, with methods, findings and clinic applications

Fourteen sources, grouped by kind of evidence: Meyer’s own account of how he hires, what USHG says today, reports of what happened when staff care met the staff, and research on staff wellbeing, service and hiring from hospitals and other businesses. Each row gives the design and its main caution, the key finding, why it matters and a way to apply it. Study names link to the original sources, and the full references close this section. None of these sources measured hiring or staff care in a dermatology clinic, so every application is our proposal, not a tested intervention.

How Meyer hires: his own account

Study or source	Setting, design and sample	Key finding	Why it matters	How to Apply It to Your Derm Clinic
Meyer, “The 51 Percent Solution” (excerpt from Setting the Table)¹	Book excerpt: Danny Meyer’s own account of USHG’s hiring philosophy, from his 2006 book, excerpted by Nation’s Restaurant News on 5 February 2007. The excerpt was read in full; the full book was not opened. It reports his experience and judgment up to 2006, with no outcome data.	Meyer hopes to hire “51-percenters”: people who tilt 51 to 49 toward emotional hospitality rather than technical skill. This is his hiring philosophy, a picture of priority rather than a documented scoring weight. He names five emotional skills: optimistic warmth, intelligence (curiosity), work ethic, empathy, and self-awareness and integrity. Technique can be taught, he argues, but deep care cannot, and he pictures it in a waiter inspecting wine glasses for smudges. In his experience, failed hires are more often unwilling than unable. He traces most of USHG’s hiring mistakes to misjudged emotional skills; those skills usually take a good stretch of time with a person to judge, often on the job, and naming them up front “greatly increases your odds,” in his judgment. He hopes to hire “hospitalitarians”: people energized, not drained, by caring for others.	It is the founder’s own statement of what he hires for, and why it is hard to see.	Proposed: name the emotional skills you want before the interview, and score them in the same short, paid role-play for every finalist.

What USHG and Meyer say today

Study or source	Setting, design and sample	Key finding	Why it matters	How to Apply It to Your Derm Clinic
Union Square Hospitality Group, About page²	Company web page: Undated company page, read 10 November 2026. It states the company’s current message, not how it is practiced, and reports no outcomes.	The mission pairs USHG’s purpose, making lives better through Enlightened Hospitality, with how it operates: its people look after one another first. The page traces the company to 1985, when Meyer opened Union Square Cafe, and calls it employee-first.	It shows the order of care is still the company’s stated purpose in 2026.	Proposed: make looking after each other an explicit team expectation, and say just as plainly that patient safety and clinical care are never second.
Union Square Hospitality Group, Careers page³	Company web page: Undated company page, read 10 November 2026. A stated hiring principle and a list of benefits; how they are applied and who is eligible are not stated, and none of it was independently checked.	The page treats technique as important but teachable, and says USHG wants people whose balance tips a little toward hospitality over technique, 51% to 49%. It now calls them “100%ers” (the 2006 book’s term was 51-percenters). Its benefits list names health, dental and vision coverage, discounted meals in its restaurants, paid leave for new parents, a 401(k) matched up to 5%, celebrations at service milestones and a relief fund for staff going through hard times.	The 2006 hiring idea is still the company’s stated rule, under a new name, alongside concrete forms of care.	Proposed: keep the technical basics as a required check, and show care in benefits and growth people can see.
Wassel, HR Dive report of Meyer’s 2025 keynote⁴	Trade news report: HR Dive, 26 March 2025, reporting a keynote Meyer gave on 19 March 2025 at Qualtrics X4 in Salt Lake City. Some points are the reporter’s paraphrase. Meyer spoke as founder of both Shake Shack and USHG. These are his stated beliefs, not measurements.	Meyer ranked raises and promotions above any other way of caring for employees. In HR Dive’s account, he said senior leaders should not try to engineer how staff feel about their work; leaders do the most good by making staff answerable to one another for how colleagues are treated. For returning guests, he said, the experience is closely tied to how “jazzed” team members are about their coworkers: a belief he stated, not a measured correlation.	It is Meyer’s current account of what caring for a team looks like in practice.	Proposed: tie growth to a real next role and pay step, and count how each person helps teammates in their review.

When staff care met the staff: two reported episodes

Study or source	Setting, design and sample	Key finding	Why it matters	How to Apply It to Your Derm Clinic
Dai, “Danny Meyer Admits Large Portion of Staff Left Over No-Tipping Changes”⁵	News report: Eater NY, 6 February 2018, relaying Nation’s Restaurant News’ report of Meyer’s remarks at an industry conference in Plano, Texas, in early February 2018. The original NRN report is behind a registration wall and was not read. The figures are Meyer’s own, second-hand; the period is unspecified; a USHG spokesperson defined “legacy” staff.	Meyer said that 30 to 40 percent of USHG’s “legacy front-of-the-house staff” (five to eight years with the company, per a spokesperson) left “over a period of time” after Hospitality Included, and that back-of-house pay rose about 20 percent. The figure counts one group, not the whole workforce, and does not show why people left.	In a company built around looking after its team, its founder reported that many long-serving staff left after a change to how it paid them.	Proposed: show each person privately what a pay or schedule change means for them, and hear their concerns, before it starts.
Manning, “Union Square Hospitality Group walks back arbitration agreement mandate”⁶	Trade news report: Restaurant Dive, 26 February 2020, relaying Eater’s reporting, which was not opened. A reported reversal, not a court finding or a reading of the contract. The replacement conflict-resolution program was not followed up.	USHG withdrew a mandatory arbitration agreement it had just brought in. It would have stopped staff from bringing class-action suits against USHG, with sexual harassment claims exempt. According to Eater, staff had been told to sign it or be let go. Amid rumors of a planned protest by Gramercy Tavern staff, the company’s president said it would be dropped. A spokesperson said USHG is “built on listening to our team members.”	A staff-facing policy was reversed after the people it affected objected, which is the conversation testing with staff first is meant to have sooner.	Proposed: ask the people a policy affects before it goes live, not after they push back.

Staff wellbeing and patient experience in health care

Study or source	Setting, design and sample	Key finding	Why it matters	How to Apply It to Your Derm Clinic
Vahey and colleagues, “Nurse burnout and patient satisfaction”⁷	Cross-sectional study: 820 nurses and 621 patients on 40 units in 20 urban US hospitals, published 2004. Inpatient care; an association at one point in time, not an intervention. Abstract only.	Where nurses described enough staff, good administrative support and good working relations with doctors, patients were more than twice as likely to be highly satisfied with their care, and burnout among those nurses was significantly lower.	In health care, how the team is supported goes together with how patients rate their care.	Proposed: treat staffing and support for the team as part of patient experience, and ask the team what gets in the way.
Kutney-Lee and colleagues, “Nursing: a key to patient satisfaction”⁸	Cross-sectional study: 430 US hospitals, using HCAHPS patient surveys, published 2009. A hospital-level association, not an intervention. Abstract only.	The nurse work environment showed a significant relationship with every HCAHPS patient-satisfaction measure, and the number of patients per nurse was linked to how patients rated the hospital overall and whether they would recommend it.	Workload and work environment track with every patient-rated measure in this sample.	Proposed: plan cover for the busiest sessions so one room falling behind doesn’t fall on one person.
Salyers and colleagues, “The relationship between professional burnout and quality and safety in healthcare”⁹	Meta-analysis: 82 studies of 210,669 health-care providers across disciplines and countries, through March 2015. Pooled correlations from observational studies. Abstract only.	Burnout was associated with lower quality (r = -0.26) and lower safety (r = -0.23), effects the authors describe as small to medium.	Burnout and safety move together, so caring for the team and protecting patients belong on the same list, never in competition.	Proposed: keep every safety step when covering for a teammate: chaperones, consent and cleaning are never the shortcut.
Hodkinson and colleagues, “Associations of physician burnout with career engagement and quality of patient care”¹⁰	Systematic review and meta-analysis: 170 studies of 239,246 physicians worldwide, through May 2021, published in the BMJ in 2022. Observational studies with high heterogeneity; the patient-dissatisfaction estimate rests on 8 studies (1,002 participants). Abstract only.	Physician burnout was associated with about twice the odds of patient safety incidents (odds ratio 2.04, 95% CI 1.69 to 2.45) and of patient dissatisfaction (odds ratio 2.22, 95% CI 1.38 to 3.57).	The same pattern appears for physicians, not only nurses.	Proposed: include clinicians when you ask the team what would help, not only support staff.

Service businesses and hiring: research from other settings

Study or source	Setting, design and sample	Key finding	Why it matters	How to Apply It to Your Derm Clinic
Brown and Lam, “A meta-analysis of relationships linking employee satisfaction to customer responses”¹¹	Meta-analysis: Pooled service-industry studies relating measures from employees to measures from their customers, published 2008. Customers of service businesses, not patients; not tested in clinics. Abstract only; effect sizes not read.	Where employees were more satisfied with their jobs, customers tended to be more satisfied and to rate service quality higher. The strength varied with the type of service and the study method. In a statistical path model fitted to the pooled group-level data, the whole link ran through how customers rated service quality: a statistical result from correlational studies, not a tested causal pathway.	It is well-known evidence that staff and customer satisfaction move together, and it describes an association.	Proposed: pair a staff-care change with a service change patients can feel, and check whether that measure improves.
Hogreve and colleagues, “The service-profit chain: a meta-analytic test of a comprehensive theoretical framework”¹²	Meta-analysis: Journal of Marketing, 2017; a meta-analytic test of the service-profit chain in business settings, not patients. Abstract only (Crossref record); the number of studies and the effect sizes were not read.	All proposed links were statistically significant, but their size varied considerably, partly by type of service. Internal service quality reached service performance through several routes beyond employee satisfaction, and the authors say this challenges the idea that firms should always maximize employee satisfaction.	Staff satisfaction is one route among several; the systems and support people work with count too.	Proposed: fix the tools and handoffs your team names, not only morale.
Joseph and Newman, “Emotional intelligence: an integrative meta-analysis and cascading model”¹³	Meta-analysis: General workforce studies, published 2010. Ability-based and self-report measures of emotional intelligence differ. It does not establish whether front-desk clinic work counts as high emotional labor. Abstract only.	Ability-based emotional intelligence predicted job performance inconsistently: positively in jobs high in emotional labor and negatively in jobs low in it.	Emotional skill matters more in some jobs than others, so it is worth defining for each role rather than assuming.	Proposed: define the warmth each role actually needs, written as behavior you can observe.
Sackett and colleagues, “Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection”¹⁴	Re-analysis of meta-analyses: General personnel selection, not health care, published 2022. A methodological re-analysis. Abstract only.	Earlier estimates of how well selection methods predict job performance were overcorrected and so too high; average validities drop by .10 to .20, and structured interviews came out ranked first among selection methods.	It supports asking every finalist the same questions and scoring them the same way; it does not validate any clinic rubric.	Proposed: use the same role-play, time limit and written score sheet for every finalist.

Across all fourteen sources:

None measured hiring or staff care in a dermatology clinic.
What USHG does comes almost entirely from Meyer or the company: a 2006 book excerpt, two undated company pages read in November 2026 and a reported 2025 keynote. None reports measured outcomes for USHG staff or guests, and the 51-49 split expresses Meyer’s hiring philosophy, not a validated scoring weight.
The two staff episodes are reports, not findings: the turnover figure is Meyer’s own, relayed second-hand, for one group over an unspecified period; the arbitration reversal is a trade-press account relaying another outlet.
The health-care and service studies are observational associations, read at abstract level. They cannot show that caring for staff causes better patient experience, service-business customers are not patients, and the links vary by setting and run through more than staff satisfaction.

Principles of Excellence: related evidence from other settings

The main text explains Meyer’s practice in plain English. These sources describe it or study related ideas elsewhere; none measured USHG’s results.

Point in the brief	Related evidence
Hire for what can’t be taught.	The 51-percenter hiring philosophy and the wine glass (book excerpt, Meyer’s own account).¹ The 51% and 49% statement under the name 100%ers (company page, 2026).³
Name the warmth you want.	The five emotional skills and why they take time to read (book excerpt).¹ Emotional skill predicted performance positively in high-emotional-labor jobs (meta-analysis, abstract only).¹³ Structured interviews ranked first among selection methods (re-analysis, abstract only).¹⁴
Look after the team first.	The mission and the employee-first approach (company page).² Raises and promotions as the best care (reported keynote).⁴ Listed benefits (company page).³ Better nurse work environments went with higher patient satisfaction (cross-sectional studies, abstract only).^{7, 8} Two reported episodes when staff-facing changes met the staff: Meyer’s figures on long-serving front-of-house departures after a pay change, and an arbitration agreement rescinded after staff objected (news reports).^{5, 6}
Make caring for each other the job.	Leaders making teammates answerable to one another for the care they give (reported keynote; reporter’s paraphrase).⁴ Staff and customer satisfaction are associated, with links that vary and run through several routes (meta-analyses of business settings, abstract only).^{11, 12} Burnout went with lower quality and safety (meta-analyses, abstract only).^{9, 10}

Our clinic suggestions: proposed, not tested

The three practices and today’s action are our suggestions for a dermatology practice, not a tested program.

Suggestion	What it draws on
Name the warmth, then score it: two named skills and the same short, paid role-play for every front-desk finalist, with the same time limit and score sheet, scored on what each one says and does, with the call passed to the nurse.	The five skills and the time they take to read (book excerpt).¹ Structured interviews ranked first (re-analysis, abstract only; general selection, not this rubric).¹⁴ Emotional skill and emotional labor (meta-analysis, abstract only).¹³ The clinic scene is an illustration, not a documented case.
Growth and pay, not slogans: a mapped next role for an MA, with the skills, the teacher, the pay and a review date, discussed with her alone.	Raises and promotions as the best care (reported keynote).⁴ Listed benefits (company page).³
Covering for each other is the job: assigned cover when the Mohs suite falls behind, within training and with every safety step kept, and covering counted in reviews.	Teammates answerable to one another for the care they give (reported keynote).⁴ Workload and work environment went with patient ratings (cross-sectional study, abstract only).⁸ Burnout went with lower safety (meta-analysis, abstract only).⁹
One action today: ask two teammates what would make it easier to look after patients, and fix one thing by Friday.	No study tested this one-day step. It applies the mission’s aim that its people look after one another first (company page)² and the association between staff support and patient ratings (cross-sectional studies, abstract only).^{7, 8}

Sources

Meyer D. Meyer: ‘51-percenters’ have five key emotional skills necessary to provide excellent hospitality (excerpt from Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, 2006). Nation’s Restaurant News. 5 February 2007. nrn.com
Union Square Hospitality Group. About. ushg.com. Undated page; accessed 10 November 2026. ushg.com
Union Square Hospitality Group. Hospitality Careers. ushg.com/careers. Undated page; accessed 10 November 2026. ushg.com
Wassel B. Report of Danny Meyer’s keynote at Qualtrics X4 (19 March 2025). HR Dive. 26 March 2025. hrdive.com
Dai S. Danny Meyer Admits Large Portion of Staff Left Over No-Tipping Changes. Eater NY. 6 February 2018. ny.eater.com
Manning L. Union Square Hospitality Group walks back arbitration agreement mandate. Restaurant Dive. 26 February 2020. restaurantdive.com
Vahey DC, Aiken LH, Sloane DM, Clarke SP, Vargas D. Nurse burnout and patient satisfaction. Med Care. 2004;42(2 Suppl):II57-66. PMID 14734943. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Kutney-Lee A, McHugh MD, Sloane DM, et al. Nursing: a key to patient satisfaction. Health Aff. 2009;28(4):w669-77. PMID 19525287. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Salyers MP, Bonfils KA, Luther L, et al. The relationship between professional burnout and quality and safety in healthcare: a meta-analysis. J Gen Intern Med. 2017;32(4):475-482. PMID 27785668. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Hodkinson A, Zhou A, Johnson J, et al. Associations of physician burnout with career engagement and quality of patient care: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ. 2022;378:e070442. PMID 36104064. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Brown SP, Lam SK. A meta-analysis of relationships linking employee satisfaction to customer responses. J Retailing. 2008;84(3):243-255. doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2008.06.001. Abstract (ideas.repec.org)
Hogreve J, Iseke A, Derfuss K, Eller T. The service-profit chain: a meta-analytic test of a comprehensive theoretical framework. J Mark. 2017;81(3). doi:10.1509/jm.15.0395. doi.org
Joseph DL, Newman DA. Emotional intelligence: an integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. J Appl Psychol. 2010;95(1):54-78. PMID 20085406. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Sackett PR, Zhang C, Berry CM, Lievens F. Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. J Appl Psychol. 2022;107(11):2040-2068. PMID 34968080. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov