The Power of Daily Team Huddles: Lessons from the Michelin-Starred Kitchen
How a 30-minute Restaurant Line-up Transforms Culture and Elevates Customer Service
Every night, the acclaimed Eleven Madison Park restaurant comes alive with a symphony of aromas and culinary artistry. The team of chefs and servers hustle, striving to create memorable experiences worthy of their 3 Michelin stars.
But imagine you get to go behind the scenes at the world’s best restaurant, witnessing its fast-paced, at times hectic, and high-stress environment. How can you build a culture of service in that environment? Well, one way is a daily meeting called the line-up.
In his book “Unreasonable Hospitality,” celebrated restaurateur Will Guidara peels back the curtains of his Michelin-starred establishment, sharing the secrets behind the restaurant’s meteoric rise to success. One of the most potent tools in their arsenal is their version of the daily team huddle — the pre-meal line-up. It’s a concept that reaches far beyond the confines of the kitchen, transcending industries and organizational hierarchies.
As the owner of a service business and a leader of high-performance teams serving coaches and athletes, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the power of these daily huddles.
They reflect my own experiences using a daily huddle and I believe are one of the most powerful things you can do to build your culture. So since I love cooking and restaurant examples, let’s explore the benefits of adopting the daily huddle, using the restaurant lineup as a guiding metaphor.
Alignment: From Individuals to a Team
In every fine-dining restaurant, a pre-meal or line-up meeting is held before service begins. The staff gathers to discuss menu details, communicate important information, coordinate roles, and ensure everyone is prepared for a smooth service. Led by the manager or head chef, it covers menu knowledge, upselling, pairing suggestions, and emphasizes service standards and safety.
But the line-up at Eleven Madison Park is much more than an ordinary pre-meal meeting. It is the heartbeat of the restaurant’s culture, where every team member aligns their spirit with the shared vision.
“A daily 30-minute meeting is where a collection of individuals becomes a team,” says Guidara. “It sets a tone that is at least as important as what we say.”
This echoes my experience of daily huddles in our centers. Problems and challenges are often brought up during the huddle, and it can quickly become a constructive session to find solutions and tie them back to our purpose.
As a leader, one of my driving principles has always been the WHY — finding our clients’ why and following ours. It’s our mission and what we are striving for. The challenges we face daily present an opportunity to frame our responses around our why.
In any service business, alignment is the cornerstone of success. Just like a sports team before a game, a high-functioning team needs a harmonious blend of purpose, motivation, and shared knowledge.
A daily huddle serves as that chance to get everyone working from the same playbook. Guidara also talks about the line-up’s importance not just in daily execution but in how it helped build their service culture.
“A huge part of leadership is taking the time to tell your team why they’re doing what they’re doing, and I used pre-meal to get into that why. I spoke to the spirit of the restaurant and of the culture we were trying to build. I used those meetings to inspire and uplift the team, and remind them what we were striving for.”
When a team gathers for the line-up, led from your values and mission, something magical happens. It’s no longer just a group of individuals but a unified team, ready to tackle the day together.
The simple effort of a line-up serves as a powerful lever, transmitting force to build a strong service culture day by day.
The Power of Consistency and Inspiration
Often organizations turn to big retreats or events to build their teams. Motivational speakers and team-building activities are delivered in hopes that the team will bond and the culture will be instilled.
In my experience, those events can be useful, but they are big, time-consuming, and infrequent. Guidara was trying to create a team that knew the standards and had a culture of exceptional service.
“When initiating change, I look for the best lever. Whatever will allow me to transmit the most force with the least amount of energy. And there’s no better lever than a daily 30-minute meeting with your team.”
And that’s one of the powers of a daily line-up. In small, consistent doses, you get to talk about things that happened right and wrong. The teaching is daily.
A team member learns how you do things from their experiences in real situations. It doesn’t matter what the manual said, or what they were taught in their onboarding if it’s done differently in practice.
When you highlight how a team member’s decision reflects the values of your culture and the processes of your operations, you’re teaching and sustaining it.
When something could have been done better or differently, and you put it within that same context, you’ve turned a one-to-one lesson into a team-wide learning experience.
The Resistance
My experience is that spending time on a daily huddle is often met with resistance. There are always other things that need doing. In a busy center, the staff might already be stretched at times.
In commercial locations, there may be clients or patients that could be scheduled and revenue generated. Taking time out of the day and missing revenue or paying part-time staff for the meeting is hard. It can easily be seen as a waste.
For Guidara, the line-up became a conduit to transmit the why and the how of the restaurant’s culture, fostering a sense of meaning and direction for each team member. It reinforced the way they did things daily.
“stealing 30 precious minutes for pre-meal from an already over crammed workday was a big ask and sometimes my insistence on these meetings felt like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic…. in order to become a team we need to stop take a deep breath and communicate with one another if that meant using a more basic napkin fold or simplifying the butter presentation so everyone had time to meet that was a trade-off. I was willing to accept that. How connected we were as a team was more important to me than anything.”
Yes, there is a cost to a daily huddle.
But few things are more valuable than a consistent opportunity to teach and reinforce your values and operations.
It communicates consistent standards and provides the opportunity for repetition — a crucial aspect of learning and retaining information.
Fueling Performance and Celebrating Wins
Much like a car needs fuel to perform optimally, the team requires their tanks filled before they embark on serving the guests. A well-conducted pre-meal line-up fills the “gas tank” of the staff, priming them to deliver exceptional service. It communicates consistent standards and provides the opportunity for repetition — a crucial aspect of learning and retaining information.
But it doesn’t stop there. Guidara understands that a team member thrives when their efforts are acknowledged and celebrated.
“Those 30 minutes were our time to celebrate the wins, even the small ones. A time to publicly acknowledge when someone on the team was crushing it.”
Most people want to belong to a bigger group. They want to feel valued. They want their efforts to matter.
I find daily moments of recognition reinforce their worth, foster camaraderie, and motivation, helping turn a group of individuals into a tightly-knit team.
Thirty Minutes To Unlock Extraordinary
If a 30-minute daily minute meeting can help a restaurant become the best in the world, imagine what it could do for your service business.
The daily huddle is the catalyst that bridges the gap between a service business and delivering an exceptional service experience. It’s where protocols meet passion and where repetition amplifies excellence.
I’ve seen the power of the daily huddle transform a business and the team in it.
So, take a cue from Eleven Madison Park and ignite the power of the daily huddle in your service business.
Thirty minutes a day could very well be the key to unlocking the extraordinary within your team. It’s time to gather, align, inspire, and celebrate — one huddle at a time.
