Unreasonable Hospitality Creates Unreasonable Success
Will Guidara's book about running a world-class restaurant has a lesson that applies far beyond the restaurant floor. The work itself isn't what clients remember most. It's how you made them feel along the way.
Guidara's core idea from his book is simple. Once you've met the baseline of doing good work, the real differentiator is what he calls "unreasonable hospitality," small, thoughtful, slightly excessive gestures that no one expects and everyone remembers. For a restaurant, that might mean a surprise dish inspired by something a guest mentioned in passing. For any service business, the equivalent moments are hiding in plain sight throughout the client relationship.
Every project has emotional high points: the first proposal, a key milestone, the final handover. Each one is a natural moment to do something a little unreasonable. That could be a small, personal gift tied to something the client mentioned in passing. A handwritten note referencing a detail from a conversation weeks earlier. A gesture that arrives not because it was owed, but because someone was paying attention.
None of this needs a big budget. It needs attention. For a business that lives on repeat clients and word of mouth rather than heavy marketing spend, that attention is the marketing. A client who feels genuinely cared for doesn't just leave a good review. They become the person who tells their friends, their colleagues, their network about the business that "really got it."
As an architecture firm, you might hand-deliver a small scale model of a client's finished extension, give them a framed print of the original concept sketch partway through the build rather than at the end, or send a short note referencing something personal they mentioned at the first site visit.
The best gestures often combine a tangible treat with something made specifically for that client. Handover day on a finished extension, for example, is a natural moment for this. A small box of chocolates on its own is a nice touch, but pairing it with a simple before-and-after set of photos, the original space next to the finished one, plus a short handwritten note pointing out one specific detail that mattered to them, turns a generic gift into something that feels made just for them. The combination costs very little but signals real thought, which is exactly the point.
In a market where most firms compete on portfolio and price, hospitality is hard to copy. It isn't a tactic bolted on at the end of a project. It's a habit of noticing what would make someone feel seen, and then, once in a while, doing something a little unreasonable about it.
If you’d like help improving your marketing, sales, and approach to hospitality, get in touch for a chat.