Conversation with Restaurateur Danny Meyer ’80, H’24, P’20 Launches ‘TrinTalks’ Alumni Speaker Series

Restaurateur Danny Meyer ’80, H’24, P’20 returned to Trinity College to help launch TrinTalks, a new series of campus conversations in which alumni share stories about how Trinity shaped their career trajectories.

“Trinity alumni have taken what they learned here into an extraordinary range of careers, communities, and lives,” said Trinity College President Dan Lugo. “We want to bring them back, not simply to talk about what they have accomplished, but to talk honestly about how they got there. That means talking about the choices they made, the people who influenced them, the unexpected turns they encountered, and the setbacks and opportunities that shaped them along the way.”

Meyer—a former Trinity trustee, the Commencement speaker and an honorary degree recipient in 2024, the founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Setting the Table—spoke with Lugo on October 14, 2026, in Mather Hall’s Washington Room.

He told the gathering of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the College that in order to come to Trinity from St. Louis, Missouri, he had to convince an admissions director to take him off the waitlist. Meyer studied political science, enjoyed Trinity’s small class sizes and close interactions between students and faculty members, and took part in the Legislative Internship Program.

“The two things I knew I loved, coming out of Trinity, were politics and writing,” Meyer said. He worked in Chicago on an independent presidential campaign, where he gained valuable leadership experience, before moving to New York City and working as a salesperson.

As he was set to pursue law school, a few things changed his path. “I bombed my LSAT, but I would have been the worst lawyer in the world,” Meyer said. The night before taking the LSAT, his family could see he was unhappy, and he admitted that he didn’t actually want to be a lawyer. Meyer recounting his uncle telling him, “‘You know, all I’ve heard you talk about your whole life is restaurants and food. Why don’t you do that?’ And it had never, ever dawned on me. So I was, at that point, 25 or 26 years old—a long way from having graduated—and I still didn’t really see what was right under my nose.”

Meyer was inspired to bring together the food and culture from New York and Rome—where he studied at the Trinity College Rome Campus—with the hospitality from the Midwest, where he grew up. It was at his first restaurant, Union Square Cafe, where Meyer began practicing what he called enlighted hospitality, which became the subject of his first book, Setting the Table.

“I’m really proud of our food. But what we’re really selling is how we make people feel here,” said Meyer, who learned to embrace hospitality as a business principle and a leadership principle. “People want really good service, which is the technical delivery of the product. That’s what they expect. But what they fall in love with or not is the hospitality, which is how we made them feel.” Those who are great at hospitality, he added, know how to read the audience and to customize the experience for that audience.

Meyer also spoke about his most recent book, What Could Possibly Go Right? The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture, which was released in September. In the book, he shares his leadership philosophy and the tools he uses to build an energized, cohesive, and motivated culture. “Even when we’re solving problems, it does not help to begin with pessimism and cynicism and negativity,” he said. “I wanted to show that it doesn’t always go right, but that bringing that sense of hope is the best way forward—always.”

The cover of Meyer’s new book—featuring a looping line with an upward-facing arrow on the end—is meant to illustrate his optimistic outlook and commitment to perseverance. “There is no such thing as a straight line between point A and point B for any of us, in anything we do,” he said. “And there will be ups, and there will be downs. For me, the goal is that the downs don’t go quite as far down as the last one, and the ups might go up a little bit higher than the last one. And then you’re just putting one foot in front of the other, at least headed in the direction that you want to go.”

Lugo said that Meyer’s unconventional path—from political science major, to campaign worker, to salesperson, to restaurateur and author—made him a perfect person to kick off this series of TrinTalks, which will continue each fall and spring.

“For our students, TrinTalks offers a chance to see that there is really no single path from a liberal arts education into the world,” Lugo said. “It also creates opportunities to meet alumni professionals who can offer perspective, encouragement, and perhaps even mentorship, as students begin imagining what comes next. For our alumni, it’s an invitation to reconnect with the remarkable students and faculty who make Trinity what it is today. And at its best, Trinity is a community in which generations learn from one another, and that is what we hope TrinTalks will make possible.”

See more photos below.