50 Inspirational Restaurant Quotes That Celebrate Food, Service, and Passion

"I’m working harder than ever now, and I’m putting on my pants the same as I always have. I just get up every day and try to do a little better than the day before, and that is to run a great restaurant with great food, great wine, and great service. That’s my philosophy."

- Emeril Lagasse

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

- George Bernard Shaw

"A great restaurant is one that just makes you feel like you’re not sure whether you went out or you came home and confuses you."

- Danny Meyer

"Food is our common ground, a universal experience."

- James Beard

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well."

- Virginia Woolf

"The best restaurants are places where you feel like you’re not being sold anything."

- Danny Meyer

"Food is not just eating energy. It’s an experience."

- Guy Fieri

"A good restaurant just makes you happy."

- Daniel Boulud

"Keep your face to the sun and you cannot see the shadows"

- Helen Keller

"Your attitude, almost always determines your altitude in life."

- Successories

"The one thing that you have that no one else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, and your passion. Start everyday your way."

- Successories

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

- Albert Einstein

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

- Socrates

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

- Abraham Maslow

"It takes courage to step off of the familiar to embrace the new and unknown future. But when you do, the possibilities are endless."

- Successories

"In the confrontation between the river and the rock, the river always wins...not through strength but by perseverance."

- Successories

"Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love."

- Craig Claiborne

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours."

- Ray Kroc

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job to make the customer experience a little bit better."

- Jeff Bezos

"Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible."

- Ronnie Oldham

"A leader's job is to look into the future, and to see the organization not as it is...but as it can become."

- Successories

"A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity."

- The Buddha

"Take time out every day to be thankful for the people in our lives that drive us toward the path of success and for those that have helped us get to where we are today. Have an attitude of gratitude."

- Successories

"Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude."

- Ralph Marston

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."

- Winston Churchill

"A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst...a spark that creates extraordinary results."

- Successories

"Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it."

- Lou Holtz

"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect It's successful outcome."

- William James

"It's not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you."

- Zig Ziglar

"The day is what you make it! So why not make it a great one?"

- Steve Schulte

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."

- Lou Holtz

"Believe you can and you are halfway there."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"You can have what you want if you help other people get what they want."

- Zig Ziglar

"A recipe has no soul; you, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe."

- Thomas Keller

"Make a customer, not a sale."

- Katherine Barchetti

"Good customer service costs less than bad customer service."

- Sally Gronow

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth."

- Muhammad Ali

"Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, service is invisible. You notice it only when something goes wrong."

- Dana Spiotta

"Although the skills aren’t hard to learn, finding the happiness and finding the satisfaction and finding fulfillment in continuously serving somebody else something good to eat, is what makes a really good restaurant."

- Mario Batali

"When you are able to shift your inner awareness to how you can serve others, and when you make this the central focus of your life, you will then be in a position to know true miracles in your progress toward prosperity."

- Wayne W. Dyer

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity."

- Douglas Adams

"The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders."

- Leo Burnett

"Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others."

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be."

- Og Mandino

"Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness."

- Leo Tolstoy

"The path to your own happiness is usually found in service."

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service gets great rewards."

- Elbert Hubbard

"The customer experience is the next competitive battleground."

- Jerry Gregoire

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better."

- Jeff Bezos

"Here is a simple but powerful rule: always give people more than what they expect to get."

- Nelson Boswell

"Food brings people together on many different levels. It’s nourishment of the soul and body; it’s truly love."

- Giada De Laurentiis

"The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people."

- Tom Peters

"If you love your customer to death, you can’t go wrong."

- Graham Day

"When the customer comes first, the customer will last."

- Robert Half

"Until you understand your customers — deeply and genuinely — you cannot truly serve them."

- Rasheed Ogunlaru

"Never underestimate the power of the human element. Whether it’s assisting a guest with a special request or a friendly greeting from staff members in the hallway, the people aspect plays a key role in guest satisfaction and loyalty."

- Ramez Faza

"A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all."

- Michael LeBoeuf

"The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary."

- Sam Walton

"If you make a sale, you can make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service in a customer, you can make a fortune."

- Jim Rohn

"Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement."

- J. C. Penny

"The most important adage and the only adage is, the customer comes first, whatever the business, the customer comes first."

- Kerry Stokes

"The kitchen is where we deal with the elements of the universe; it is where we come to understand our past and ourselves."

- Laura Esquivel

"The strength of the team is in each individual member... the strength of each member is in the team."

- Successories

"When a team of dedicated individuals makes a commitment to act as one...the sky's the limit."

- Successories

"Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, read Rule 1."

- Stew Leonard's Grocery Store Customer Policy

"It is our differences that bring us together. It is our differences that make our ideas more meaningful. It is our differences that create a team that is one of a kind."

- Successories

"Be strong enough to stand alone, be yourself enough to stand apart, but be wise enough to stand together when the time comes."

- Successories

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

- Helen Keller

"A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity."

- The Buddha

"Stand together as a team. With integrity, vision, and determination together you will succeed where others cannot."

- Successories

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

- Steve Jobs

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."

- Andrew Carnegie

"Profit is not the legitimate purpose of business. The legitimate purpose of business is to provide a product or service that people need and do it so well that it’s profitable."

- James Rouse

"You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day."

- Jeffery Gitomer

"Coming together is a beginning... Keeping together is progress... Working together is a success."

- Henry Ford

"To stand apart from the competition, you must first stand together as a team."

- Successories

"Problems become opportunities when the right people join together."

- Successories

"The only thing I like better than talking about food is eating."

- John Walters

"A restaurant is a fantasy—a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast."

- Warner LeRoy

"Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness."

- Auguste Escoffier

"Life is too short to miss out on beautiful things like a double cheeseburger."

- Channing Tatum

"The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook."

- Julia Child

"Great food is like great sex. The more you have, the more you want."

- Gael Greene

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."

- John C. Maxwell

"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating."

- Luciano Pavarotti

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."

- Steve Jobs

"Excellence is not a skill. It's an attitude."

- Ralph Marston

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

- Confucius

"Cooking is an act of love."

- Alain Ducasse

"A restaurant is where magic happens."

- Jose Andres

"Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul."

- Dorothy Day

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together"

- Vincent Van Gogh

"When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it."

- Bear Bryant

"Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together."

- James Cash Penney

"Hospitality is central to the restaurant business, yet it's a hard idea to define precisely. Mostly, it involves being nice to people and making them feel welcome. You notice it when it's there, and you particularly notice it when it isn't. A single significant lapse in this area can be your dominant impression of an entire meal."

- John Lanchester

"A good restaurant is like a vacation; it transports you, and it becomes a lot more than just about the food."

- Philip Rosenthal

"There's nothing like a home-cooked meal - nothing! When people ask me what the best restaurant in L.A. is, I say, 'Uh, my house.' It's more intimate. Food can connect people in a forever sort of way."

- Giada De Laurentiis

"If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it's the restaurant business."

- Anthony Bourdain

"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door."

- Albert Camus

"If you are a chef, you have an incredible responsibility in this world. Don't just open a restaurant to serve food. Include the community, and make sure that you are not taking advantage of what the planet has given us."

- Dominique Crenn

"Food is the most primitive form of comfort."

- Sheila Graham

"Good food is the foundation of happiness."

- Auguste Escoffier

"Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious."

- Ruth Reichl

"A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine."

- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

"The secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

- Mark Twain

"People who love to eat are always the best people."

- Julia Child

"In the restaurant business, you never want to have enemies, whereas it seems that many chefs have made personal enemies."

- Anthony Bourdain

"People are the core of every business. Businesses are based on relationships, and relationships are based on people. I would go to an average restaurant run by amazing people over an outstanding restaurant run by awful people."

- Marcus Lemonis

"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays."

- Henny Youngman

"So I went to the Chinese restaurant and this duck came up to me with a red."

- Tim Vine

"I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant."

- Chuck Close

"A Cannibal is a person who walks into a restaurant and orders a waiter."

- Morey Amsterdam

"One thing I've never said in my whole life is, 'Let's have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.'"

- Alan King

"Take the initiative and lead the way. You can make the difference."

"It is a fact that in the right formation, the lifting power of many wings can achieve twice the distance of any bird flying alone."

"The fondest memories are made when gathered around the table."

"A good meal soothes the soul as it regenerates the body."

"Life is too short to eat bad food."

"A restaurant is not a business; it’s a passion."

"The secret ingredient is always love."

"Eating well is a form of self-respect."

"A restaurant with no sign is a good sign."

"Eating out is fun. Eating in is essential."

"The only thing better than talking about food is eating it."

"Eating is a necessity, but cooking is an art."