The Middle Market Transformative CEO Features Union Square Hospitality Group's Danny Meyer

RSM US LLP (“RSM”) – the nation’s leading provider of audit, tax and consulting services focused on the middle market – and The CEO Forum Group are pleased to announce the first episode of “The Middle Market Transformative CEO,” featuring guest Danny Meyer, founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. The episode, which aired over 25 nationally-syndicated AM radio stations on Sun., June 24, is now also available as a podcast.  

During the show, co-hosts Robert Reiss, founder and CEO of The CEO Forum Group, and RSM Chief Economist Joe Brusuelas, speak with Meyer about critical opportunities and challenges facing the restaurant sector, one of the most dynamic industries in today’s economy.  

Among the key topics discussed during this episode of “The Middle Market Transformative CEO” are: finding skilled and available labor in the current market; leveraging new technologies to gain customer and workforce insights; continuously innovating and reinventing restaurants; approaching the tipping economy differently; identifying key characteristics that define a transformative CEO and relaying advice for other companies.

“The key concept to understand is that service is part of your product, it’s not separate from your product,” said Meyer, while explaining why hospitality is more important than service. “Service is a way to describe the technical delivery of your product. Hospitality is, while you had this great product that did what it was it supposed to do, how did you make all of your stakeholders feel? Did you make people who work there say, ‘My life got better because I had that job’? Did you make your customers feel that their lives got better because your product existed? And did your investors say the same thing?”  

“If you have really happy investors, they like to reinvest for your growth, and then your employees get to grow professionally and financially,” continued Meyer. “That’s the cycle we like to create, and that’s much more about hospitality. I think that service and product gets you to the starting gate, but in and of themselves, they don’t win the race.”

For more insights from this month’s Middle Market Transformative CEO, listen to the full episode.