The key to any successful business is to keep your employees happy and your customers even happier.
The same goes for your restaurant.
I’m bringing you the ultimate collection of 100 smart and inspirational quotes for restaurants to skyrocket your business and keep everyone motivated and satisfied.
Top 10 Quotes For Restaurants
1. “Good restaurant design is about achieving equilibrium between the food, service, and design – in effect, telling a complete story.” — David Rockwell
2. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder
3. “The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.” — George Carlin
4. “In a restaurant, choose a table near a waiter.” — Jewish Proverb
5. “A restaurant is a fantasy – a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.” — Warner LeRoy
6. “You can’t fully experience the joy of a five-course meal with a fast food mentality.” — Lebo Grand
7. “But what makes my job so great is there’s no one answer that’s right for every restaurant.” — David Rockwell
8. “The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.” — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
9. “A good restaurant is like a vacation; it transports you, and it becomes a lot more than just about the food.” — Philip Rosenthal
10. “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” — George Bernard Shaw
See also: 350 Awesome Food Captions For Instagram + Food Quotes
Inspiring Quotes For Employees
1. “I always say that I don’t believe I’m a chef. I try to be a storyteller.” — Jose Andres
2. “Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch. It’s a high-speed collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance.” ― Anthony Bourdain
3. “One thing I always say is being a great chef today is not enough – you have to be a great businessman.” — Wolfgang Puck
4. “There’s a bond among the kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.” — Gordon Ramsey
5. “The business of feeding people is the most amazing business in the world.” — José Andrés
6. “Food is one part of the experience. And it has to be somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the dining experience. But the rest counts as well: The mood, the atmosphere, the music, the feeling, the design, the harmony between what you have on the plate and what surrounds the plate.” — Alain Ducasse
7. “I realized very early the power of food to evoke memory, to bring people together, to transport you to other places, and I wanted to be a part of that.” — José Andrés
8. “Let’s face it: if you and I have the same capabilities, the same energy, the same staff, if the only thing that’s different between you and me is the products we can get, and I can get a better product than you, I’m going to be a better chef.” — Thomas Keller
9. “Fortunately, I knew the cardinal rule of getting on with one’s fellow cooks. It applies in any kitchen and can be summed up in two short words: bust ass.” — Jacques Pépin
10. “What motivates me is to leave a legacy. We need to learn to educate people and set an example.” — Cristina Martínez
11. “Put your head down and work hard. Never wait for things to happen, make them happen for yourself through hard graft and not giving up.” ― Gordon Ramsey
12. “Food is romantic. Soul. It’s about putting everything in your heart onto the plate. Hoping it’s perceived well. Honestly, it’s about passion. It’s about love.” — Hillary Sterling
13. “One of the reasons that people enjoy coming to a great restaurant is that when an extraordinary meal is placed in front of them, they feel honored, respected, and even a little bit loved.” — Marcus Samuelsson
14. “Customers don’t always know what they want. The decline in coffee-drinking was due to the fact that most of the coffee people bought was stale and they weren’t enjoying it. Once they tasted ours and experienced what we call “the third place”.. a gathering place between home and work where they were treated with respect.. they found we were filling a need they didn’t know they had.” — Howard Schultz
15. “Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” — Harriet van Horne
16. “Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference.” — Marcus Samuelsson
17. “I’m not impressed by any cooks who can brag about a filet mignon. A guy who can take the neck of a shank or can use tripe to make into something delicious is really interesting to me; that’s impressive.” ― Anthony Bourdain
18. “It’s amazing the relationships you forge in a kitchen. When you cooperate in an environment that’s hot. Where there’s a lot of knives. You’re trusting your well-being with someone you’ve never before met or known.” — Alexandra Guarnaschelli
19. “If cooking is what you love, do it with great vigor, pride, and excellence. It pleases me when I see guests conversing, noshing, happy and satisfied. I savor all the flavors of life.” — Kai Chase
20. “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” — Wayne Dyer
See also: 160 Motivational 4 Word Short Deep Quotes To Inspire You
Smart Quotes About Restaurants
1. “If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.” — Anthony Bourdain.
2. “The disparity between a restaurant’s price and food quality rises in direct proportion to the size of the pepper mill.” — Bryan Miller
3. “The quality of a restaurant’s food is inversely proportioned to the amount of fun its staff seems to be having.” — Dov Davidoff
4. “You’ve always got to work to your highest ability level. When times are great and restaurants are jamming, that’s when some restaurants get sloppy and take things for granted. Never take things for granted.” — Michael Symon
5. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” — Bill Gates
6. “When you go to a restaurant, the less you know about what happens in the kitchen, the more you enjoy your meal.” — Jeffrey Wright
7. “If you have a good experience in a restaurant, you tell 2 people. If you have a bad experience, you tell 10 people.” — Anthony Bourdain
8. “Bad restaurants find unique ways to be bad. Good ones are good in the same way: good food, nice staff, a pleasant room. The human capacity for finding unique ways to screw things up always amazes me.” — Jay Rayner
9. “Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I’m halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God….I could be eating a slow learner.” — Lynda Montgomery
See also: The 320 Absolute Best Sea Food Captions For Seafood Lovers
10. “Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.” — M. F. K. Fisher
11. “I never eat in a restaurant that’s over a hundred feet off the ground and won’t stand still.” — Calvin Trillin
12. “The reason why sensuality isn’t always an instantly digestible message is because, like a five-course meal in a five-star restaurant, it took time to prepare and therefore requires time to take it all in.” ― Lebo Grand
13. “People like consistency. Whether it’s a store or a restaurant, they want to come in and see what you are famous for.” — Millard Dlexler
14. “Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.” — P.G. Wodehouse
15. “Nouvelle cuisine, roughly translated, means: I can’t believe I paid $96 and I’m still hungry.” — Mike Kalin
See also: Most Exciting List Of Top 220 Funny Cooking Quotes
16. “Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.” — Anthony Bourdain
17. “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
18. “The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.” — Alain Ducasse
19. “Every restaurant is a theater, and the truly great ones allow us to indulge in the fantasy that we are rich and powerful. When restaurants hold up their end of the bargain, they give us the illusion of being surrounded by servants intent on ensuring our happiness and offering extraordinary food. But even modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. Restaurants free us from mundane reality; that is part of their charm. When you walk through the door, you are entering neutral territory where you are free to be whoever you choose for the duration of the meal.” — Ruth Reichl
20. “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” — Oscar Wilde
See also: 160 Best Dinner Captions For Instagram You Can’t Resist
21. “It is equally important to mention the history when we curate dishes. While it’s great to go to ethnic markets, grab a whole bunch of ingredients, and throw them into a pot, you can’t call it or rename it a soup or stew without crediting where you got those ingredients from. For anyone to just add an ingredient thinking you’re making a dish, it’s important that you highlight the origins, feel and embrace the culture. Food tells stories and sometimes the history makes you appreciate a certain cuisine a little more.” — Millie Peartree
22. “Working in a restaurant means being part of a family, albeit usually a slightly dysfunctional one. Nothing is accomplished independently.” — Joe Bastianich
23. “A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member’s talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.” — David Ogilvy
24. “The design of a restaurant should embrace the identity of the chef, the nature of the cuisine, and the context of the restaurant itself.” — David Rockwell
25. “I judge a restaurant by the bread & the coffee.” — Burt Lancaster
See also: 280 Awesome Coffee Captions To Show Your Coffee Obsession
Restaurants Quotes For Customers
1. “Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” — Damon Richards
2. “It’s easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.” — Federico Fellini
3. “I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.“ — Nigella Lawson
See also: 60 Brilliant Wine Quotes That’ll Suit Your Taste Buds
4. “Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one’s belt buckled.” — Frederic Raphael
5. “You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day.” — Jeffrey Gitomer
6. “If you go to a restaurant and you go with people you like, your food will always taste really good.” — John Torode
7. “Look at your waiter’s face. He knows. It’s another reason to be polite to your waiter: he could save your life with a raised eyebrow or a sigh.” — Anthony Bourdain
8. “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
9. “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” — Donald Porter
10. “Anybody who doesn’t think that the best hamburger place in the world is in his hometown is a sissy.” — Calvin Trillin
See also: 200 Perfect Burger Captions To Rock Your Instagram Post
11. “Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers, I think is the core of what it means to live a civilized life.” — Adam Gopnik
12. “Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.” – Michael LeBoeuf
13. “I’m convinced that the main reason we’ve become so obsessed with restaurants is due to our basic need to get out of virtual space and into a real one. We’re not going out to eat merely to share food; we’re there to sit at the same table together, slow down, breathe the same air.” ― Ruth Reichl
14. “There is a difference between dining and eating. Dining is an art. When you eat to get the most out of your meal, to please the palate, just as well as to satiate the appetite, that, my friend, is dining.” — Yuan Mei
15. “Unless you are a restaurant critic… nobody cares what you had for lunch.” ― Susanne Whited
See also: 220 Perfect Lunch Captions For Instagram To Inspire You
16. “The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, ‘Could I get you your check?’ and we answered, ‘How about the menu first?’” — Erma Bombeck
17. “Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.” — Calvin Trillin
18. “Never trust the food in a restaurant on top of the tallest building in town that spends a lot of time folding napkins.” — Andy Rooney
19. “The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” — John Russell
20. “I was at this restaurant. The sign said ‘Breakfast Anytime.’ So I ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.” — Steven Wright
See also: 260 Best Breakfast Captions To Make Your Post Rock
Restaurant Quotes About Service
1. “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.” — Sam Walton
2. “Good service is good business.” — Siebel Ad
3. “If you really aren’t interested in serving others, you don’t need to be in the restaurant business in the first place.” ― S. Truett Cathy
4. “Good customer service costs less than bad customer service.” — Sally Gronow
5. “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” — Lewis Carroll
6. “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
7. “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
8. “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
9. “Like royalty disguised in rags, those who live to serve undertake a higher calling which most folks overlook.” ― Criss Jami
10. “Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.” — Tony Allesandra
11. “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
See also: 80 Inspiring Quotes On Joy To Turn Your Frown Upside Down
12. “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
13. “People expect good service but few are willing to give it.” — Robert Gately
14. “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
15. “Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.” ― H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
16. “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
17. “I don’t want to make food that only the top 3 percent can enjoy. That doesn’t bring my heart joy. I want to create a place that services a wide range of people. There are sleepless nights, 24-hour work days. I’m rooted in love and passion for the game.” — Nyesha Arrington
18. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
19. “To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.” ― Douglas Adams
20. “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
21. “Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.” — Marian Wright Edelman
22. “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. If it can do both of those things at the same time, you’re hooked.” — Danny Meyer
23. “It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they’ll keep coming back.” — Dave Thomas
24. “Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier.” — Mother Teresa
25. “Be helpful – even if there’s no immediate profit in it.” — Susan Ward
The End
I hope you liked my collection of quotes for restaurants. Share them with your employees, work colleagues, and food lovers to keep them inspired.
