The Inn at Little Washington served its first meal on January 28, 1978 in the middle of the worst blizzard of the decade. The dining room was a converted gas station in the tiny Blue Ridge Mountain village of “little” Washington, Virginia, population 150 or so. Rent for the building was $200 a month, and entrées on that debut menu topped out at $4.95, approximately 1/50th of what the Inn’s current tasting menu will set a (teetotaling!) diner back.
Since that time, Patrick O'Connell's independently operated double Five Star (Forbes rating), double Five Diamond (AAA rating) restaurant and inn have risen in stature and footprint to reign supreme in the Mid-Atlantic as a dining and lodging destination for kings and queens, presidents and vice presidents, titans of business and foodies of every stripe.
This year, the Inn will be celebrating its 40th anniversary with a series of star-studded galas at venues ranging from George Washington's Mount Vernon to Vaux-le-Vicomte, one of the world's most magnificent palaces near Paris, a memoir from O'Connell, and an 8-part television special (network and timing still TBD).
“40th anniversary” is such a rare turn phrase to hear in the restaurant business, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’ve typo-ed and added a zero to the Inn's time in business. Very few restaurants survive into their fifth decade and those that do tend to be the reliable, no-frills Italian place on the corner, the family run 24-hour diner known for its mean patty melt, and so forth. Close to zero survive this many years when operating at Patrick O'Connell's level.
Certainly, there have been some close calls over those 40 years: O'Connell's tumultuous breakup with his once-life-and-business partner Reinhart Lynch required some precarious and daring financial moves, culminating in a $17-million buyout that left O’Connell as the sole owner. And it’s hard to know how close O’Connell may have come to a monumentally off-brand move, when he was courted by the Trump family to open a marquee restaurant at the Trump hotel in DC. (Negotiations between O’Connell and the Trumps fizzled out, perhaps saving O’Connell from a fate similar to those suffered by restaurateurs Jose Andres and Geoffrey Zakarian, who ended up spending millions in legal fees to extricate themselves from similar agreements with the Trump organization.)
To survive and continue to grow for so many years, you have to be doing a lot of things right–things that anyone else in business who would like to still be in business 40 years from now and still doing pioneering work can learn from. Speaking with O'Connell on the occasion of the Inn's anniversary, here are some of the insights I've gathered into what it takes to survive, and thrive, decade after decade, in a customer-focused business.
Faira the Cheese Cow in the Inn At Little Washington dining room
Inn at Little Washington1. Success requires a balancing act between change and constancy. "Our guests feel as though The Inn is their second home,” says O’Connell, “even if they only dine here once a year–or even once every five years. If we suddenly changed half the things on our menu, or eliminated Faira [the Inn’s famous cheese cow cart, who roams the dining room–mooing as she goes–when it's time to serve a cheese course], they’re sure to get disoriented. But newness is essential as well. It fosters creativity and prevents stagnation,” among the company’s employees, while keeping the “story” of the Inn evolving for guests as well.
2. Be a conduit for customer relationships, and be sure to set customers at their ease. Some restaurants believe the chef is the star of the show, but O’Connell’s approach is to let the restaurant serve as a stage set and backdrop for the interactions of its guests, doing everything they can to make them feel comfortable as they settle into the Inn environment.
“We do everything we can to avoid intimidating our guests,” says O’Connell. “For example, we avoid using French terminology because we aren’t a French restaurant and it tends to be off-putting. We want our guests to be able to focus on each other, rather than on trying to navigate the alien experience that a ‘fancy’ restaurant can sometimes be.”
3. In a customer-intensive business, talent development is everything. I’m impressed–even more than I am by the upcoming celebrity anniversary events–by another get-together O’Connell has planned for this year. It's something that few in his position would have thought of, let alone follow through on: he's holding a multi-day, Woodstock-like summer festival and reunion of former employees and chefs from the last four decades.
This is quite a demonstration of magnanimity and open-mindedness as an employer: to not only tolerate the “graduation” of employees but to celebrate their ongoing successes outside of your own institution. O’Connell’s celebration of and development of talent within the Inn is indisputably one of his strengths. “We attempt to search out the hidden talents in our team and to find ways to highlight them in much the same way a theatrical producer might,” O’Connell tells me. “We’re always hoping to discover each individual’s ultimate potential.”
4. Celebrate even small operational improvements, and keep at them, every single day. O’Connell tells me he can be satisfied with a day of work as long as he’s improved just one little thing, whether it’s making progress in the garden that supplies his kitchen or successfully deploying a new culinary technique. This step-by-step approach has shown visible results, particularly of late, as O’Connell and his team have methodically expanded the Inn’s campus to now encompass 18 separate buildings and, in conjunction with their 40th anniversary, to beautify a town street (recently gifted to the Inn by the town) with lampposts and an allee of trees.
5. Focus on one customer at a time. This aspect of O’Connell’s approach, perhaps more than anything, is why so many people see the Inn at Little Washington as “their” restaurant, and continue to support it year after. O’Connell frequently expounds on this theme, on the importance in customer service of learning to focus completely and totally on one customer, even if only for a matter of seconds. It’s how O’Connell and his talented and highly-trained employees manage to–sincerely–make their thousands of repeat guests continue to think of the Inn as their own, year after year.
6. Be part of your community, even when it takes work. Sometimes the small-town politics in Washington, Virginia, population 133 (where the Inn provides nearly all of the tax revenues through a food and lodging tax) seem to demand even greater diplomatic skills than might be necessary in its nearby namesake, the nation’s capital, especially when a single entity finds itself (as the Irish say) the “tallest poppy in the field.”
In this part of the world, change is highly suspect and preferably dealt with in small doses. “It’s sometimes said in our county [Rappahannock County, Virginia, home of Little Washington] that you have to live here 30 years before you’re no longer considered an “outsider,” O’Connell tells me, with a resigned smile. “Happily, on the eve of the Inn’s 40th anniversary, I’m finally beginning to feel like an insider—or maybe you should print that as Innsider, with two n’s.”
