Hurst exults: 'We're glad you're here!'
Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 22, 1990 by Milford Prewitt
Hurst exults: `We're glad you're here'
Mike Hurst drew attention to himself the old-fashioned way. He disrobed in public.
At the outset of his speech at MUFSO, the president of the National Restaurant Association took off his tie, suit coat, suspenders and shirt.
But he stopped at his T-shirt, which bore the slogan, "We're glad you're here." The disrobing was a crafty way to wake up a morning audience with a highly energetic address that pushed the importance of service and humans over profits and costs.
"The national priority of our business should be customer focus,"
Hurst said. "We have to stop learning to process people and instead
learn to serve them. Hospitality is the gift of friendship, and it has
to begin with the people we hire.
"We have to manage for people, not profit. We have to manage, not from the back door, but from the front door."
