---
title: "Serve what you want to receive"
description: "A test for whether an offer is authentic."
canonical: https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/unreasonable-hospitality/serve-what-you-want-to-receive/
updated: 2026-11-03
---

# Serve what you want to receive

> A test for whether an offer is authentic.

Will Guidara's framework, from Unreasonable Hospitality, pp. 226 to 240.

Framework 15 of 15 from [Unreasonable Hospitality](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/unreasonable-hospitality/index.md) by Will Guidara. Category: Offers and pricing.

## The steps

1. **Do not serve only what you want to serve.** That is showing off.
2. **Do not serve only what you think others want.** That is pandering.
3. **Serve what you genuinely want to receive.** That is where authenticity comes from, and it changes as you change.

## Where it comes from

From chapter: Chapter 20: Back to Basics, pp. 226–240

Visiting top restaurants worldwide, Guidara and Humm add crescendos and a sense of place to EMP, relaunching with a New York themed tasting menu in September 2012 and scripted speeches that Pete Wells savages in a Critic’s Notebook. Guidara owns two mistakes, going too far and taking away the team’s ability to read the table, the same lack of trust he showed with the GM role. They win four stars from Wells in 2015, but slip to fifth on the 50 Best list. Counting ninety interruptions in a fifteen-course menu, Guidara concludes they are no longer serving what they want to receive, and pares back to a mission of being the most delicious and gracious restaurant in the world, a seven-course menu and a dialogue with no menu. EMP is named best restaurant in the world in 2017.

## The animation

24 seconds, 4:5, no sound.

- MP4: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/unreasonable-hospitality/serve-what-you-want-to-receive.mp4
- MP4, dark: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/unreasonable-hospitality/serve-what-you-want-to-receive-dark.mp4
- Still: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/unreasonable-hospitality/serve-what-you-want-to-receive.png
- Still, dark: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/unreasonable-hospitality/serve-what-you-want-to-receive-dark.png