Will Guidara

Will Guidara grew up around New York's restaurant industry and knew by his early teens that he wanted to study hospitality at Cornell University, where he later earned his degree from the School of Hotel Administration. He started his career on the floor at Wolfgang Puck's Spago in Beverly Hills, then spent years in New York with Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group before becoming General Manager of Eleven Madison Park in 2006. In 2011, Guidara and chef Daniel Humm purchased Eleven Madison Park and founded the Make It Nice hospitality group, which grew to include NoMad New York, NoMad Bar, NoMad Los Angeles, and NoMad Las Vegas. A year earlier, at the 2010 World's 50 Best Restaurants ceremony, Eleven Madison Park had debuted at a crushing number 50. That night, Guidara and Humm wrote on a cocktail napkin: "We will be number one in the world." Guidara added two more words: "Unreasonable Hospitality." It became the philosophy that defined everything that followed: EMP earned four stars from The New York Times, three Michelin stars, and in 2017 was ranked number one in the world. Guidara left the Make It Nice partnership in 2019 and turned his attention to sharing what he'd learned. In 2019 he founded Thank You, a hospitality-consulting firm that brings restaurant-grade service principles to organizations far outside restaurants, from hotels and retailers to financial institutions and healthcare providers. In 2022, he published the New York Times bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, distilling his EMP years into a practical philosophy any business can apply. A companion volume, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide, followed in 2026. Guidara now serves as a co-producer, writer, and occasional on-screen guest on FX's Emmy-winning series The Bear, brought on for his deep restaurant-industry expertise. He also founded and hosts The Welcome Conference, an annual hospitality gathering held at Lincoln Center in New York City. Most recently, Guidara was named a strategic hospitality partner for the Oakland Athletics' new Las Vegas ballpark, working with Aramark Sports + Entertainment to design a first-of-its-kind, all-inclusive hospitality experience for the venue. He lives in Nashville with his wife, chef Christina Tosi, and their family.