Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Danny Meyer, the personable founder of the Union Square Hospitality Group (a collection of A-list New York restaurants that includes the Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern and the Modern), feeds some of the most demanding people on the planet. He recently talked with me about his new book, ``Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business.''

Campion: In your introduction, you give us a wonderful definition of hospitality.

Meyer: Our first hospitality transaction comes within moments of being born. We get eye contact, a smile, a hug and some pretty good food. We can go our whole lives and never really top that experience.

In my business, that's our job -- to do those things almost literally. We don't instruct our waiters to hug our customers. But, metaphorically, people want to feel they got hugged.

Campion: But some restaurants seem to thrive on hauteur -- on making guests feel lucky to get in. Does that work?

Meyer: It can work for a very, very short time. There are people who feel better about themselves when they can burst through the red velvet rope. But I don't think those businesses tend to stand the test of time.

Campion: Do you pay people more than your competitors?

Immigrant Labor

Meyer: We can't pay people more. We have the same downward pressures on what we can charge for a roast chicken as any other restaurant. I think the way we compensate more competitively is by virtue of the staff itself.

When you actually get to learn stuff and have fun in the process of being really good at something and do that with a wonderful team of people you respect and trust -- that's the kind of compensation money can't buy.

Campion: How dependent are restaurants at your tier on immigrant labor?

Meyer: We often lead off meetings of new employees by bringing a map of the world and asking people to put a pin where they came from. And we have found that we end up doing a better job by virtue of having a very diverse workforce.

Campion: You try to do something fresh each time you open a new place. The Shake Shack in Madison Square Park comes to mind. You serve burgers, hot dogs and frozen custard there. Do you think it's possible to do appealing, even healthy fast food on a McDonald's-size scale?

Serving Service

Meyer: When you get to that kind of scale a lot of things stop being possible. But one of the things I'm excited about with Shake Shack is a fresh approach in the kind of service and hospitality training that we put young people through. For many of them it's their first job.

We could create a different type of service experience for young Americans. It's not as though the only service in this country should be military service. What if we could add something to the dialogue by showing young people how important it is to be accountable to a team of people for the purpose of providing pleasure for others?

I would also ask another question. If you open a place that serves burgers, why can't that business also do something good for its community? A percentage of sales at Shake Shack goes right back into Madison Square Park.

Campion: Do you think it's possible to deliver appealing and healthy food in public schools?

Meyer: It's getting better, because people are asking questions like the one you just asked. My wife is on a committee at our sons' school to look at the quality and the healthfulness of the food, and they've been making a major difference. I've got a seven-year-old who comes home raving about the salad at lunch. Who ever heard of that?

Trans Fats

Campion: Here in New York there's been a huge controversy as the city moves to force restaurants to drastically cut the levels of trans fats. Does the city belong in restaurants?

Meyer: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. As a consumer, I like going out to restaurants and bars much more today than I did when I had to smoke somebody else's cigarettes secondhand.

My sense is that, to the degree that we know trans fats are incredibly bad for you and they're invisible in a lot of foods, you as a consumer may not have a choice. So there the government may have a role.

``Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business'' is published by HarperCollins (336 pages, $25.95).

(Kathleen Campion is host of Bloomberg radio's The Big Picture, which airs at 1 p.m. est.)

To contact the writer of this story: Kathleen Campion at kcampion@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 19, 2006 00:09 EDT