Why Warby Parker and SoulCycle Are Flocking to This Tiny Conference By Foodies

Startups, tech companies, and marketers are turning to hospitality industry gurus for their next big idea

Illustration: Kyle Platts

When Will Guidara and Anthony Rudolf hatched the idea for a hospitality conference in 2013, theirs was a relatively modest ambition: to give their restaurant colleagues a day to share ideas and inspire one another. Rudolf had recently left a position leading operations at Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, the parent company of Per Se and the French Laundry; Guidara was then the co-owner and dining room mastermind behind the acclaimed New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park. The chefs they worked with traveled the world for festivals and symposia, collaborating and commiserating with others at the top of their craft. Wasn’t it time the service side of the equation got a little kumbaya too?

The first Welcome Conference took place in the summer of 2014 in a basement auditorium in the East Village. Rudolf and Guidara looked to TED Talks for inspiration, inviting leaders and experts in the field of hospitality to give short presentations with little in the way of visual effects. A professor from the Culinary Institute of America shared her research on the service profession; Guidara spoke about the importance of emotional presence. Shake Shack provided free frozen custard.

“We probably comped more tickets that first year than we sold,” recalled Aaron Ginsberg, who helped organize the initial conference and is now a managing partner.

The focus has never been on the mechanics of restaurant service, but rather the alchemy involved in creating and sustaining a broader ethic of warmth, generosity, and human connection that can apply to any commercial interaction.

At a time when virtually every media company and brand seems to be promoting its own version of TED, this little hospitality conference somehow caught fire. Tickets for the Welcome Conference’s sixth edition, which took place in June, sold out in under seven minutes. The event was held inside Lincoln Center’s Alice…