highlights from Danny Meyer’s autobiography via David Senra:

1. I had an uncontainable drive to win.

2. The inception of Shake Shack actually began with a humble hot dog cart. Small as the project was, I took this cart quite seriously. I was asking myself, "Who ever wrote that rule that you can't push the envelopes of excellence and hospitality for something as ordinary as a hot dog cart? Could a hot dog cart ever be anything more than just a hot dog cart?”

3. I had learned to trust my own instincts and to make them explicit for others.

4. Mary Kay would teach her salespeople that everyone goes through life with an invisible sign hanging around his or her neck reading: Make me feel important.

5. "Opening this new restaurant," I said, "might be the worst mistake I've ever made." Stanley Marcus (of Neiman Marcus) set his martini down, looked me in the eye, and said,

"So you made a mistake. You need to understand something important. And listen to me carefully: The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled."

His words remained with me. I repeated them over and over to myself, and it led to a turning point in the way I approached business.

6. Stanley's lesson reminded me of something my grandfather Irving Harris had always told me: “The definition of business is problems." His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business life: success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively.

7. I feel the entrepreneurial spark when some instinct tells me that a certain dining "context" doesn't currently exist but should exist. I then ask myself a series of questions that force me to examine and challenge the status quo-and then change it. Each question begins with these five words: "Who ever wrote the rule...?”

8. What mattered most to me was trying to provide maximum value in exchange not just for the guests’ money but also for their time.

9. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing. I was born to go into business for myself — and I was destined to find a business that would allow me to share with others my enthusiasm for things I find pleasurable.

Setting the Table