Defining Culture (And Shaping It With Stories) - Veerle Donders, Zoku

Josiah A consistent theme I've picked up in my conversations here at Hospitality Daily is that driving change and delivering exceptional hospitality comes down to culture, and storytelling plays a big role in maintaining that culture. To understand this further, we're learning today from Veerle Donders, Director of Concept and Brand at Zoku. 

Veerle For me, culture, it's almost like someone's personality. If the company had a personality, that would be the culture. So I think Zoku's culture is really all about people. It means family, tribe, or clan in Japanese, the name. It kind of starts with that. And I think if we all pick people that kind of love taking care of other people, it's also that the culture kind of will reflect that automatically because people just want to take care of each other. And it really is kind of like a family.

Josiah So the culture is defined in a large part by the people that you have as well and how they behave. And I imagine the decisions they make on a day-to-day basis, right?

Veerle Yeah, absolutely.

Josiah Is there anything that comes to mind that you can share about how you maintain this culture? You talked about balancing the power dynamic a little bit and calling your team sidekicks, and it's a little bit more of a peer relationship, but is there anything else you do internally with your teams to encourage them to show up every day with the right sort of attitude?

Veerle There are so many ways of doing that. And I think what we love doing is sharing the stories. We have the luck to have these amazing people stay at Zoku and share stories that were just amazing successes. One of my favorite stories is this lady from Seattle. She was really into Asian cooking and one of the chefs really cooked amazing food for her and did some Asian cooking for her. And then at the end of her stay, one month later, she became friends with all of the sidekicks and the chefs. She had a great time. But the chefs, in particular, she loved. And I remember her coming up to the kitchen on the top floor. She had this big tray full of food, like Asian cuisine food that she made in her tiny kitchen in the loft. And she just put it down on the counter. She's like, you guys have been taking such good care of me. Let me take care of you. And that, for me, speaks to the fact that she really felt a connection with our people. And I think that inspires the people who work at Zoku to keep bringing their A-game, because sharing these stories, is very special. You don't often get that when you work at hotels. You get to very swiftly maybe make a connection with someone or have like a little one-two, but then the next day they leave again or two days later they leave again. But because we have these long-stay residents, so people that stay here for a longer time, you actually get to build relationships. And for people who like to connect with other people, are the sidekicks that we hire, that's what they thrive on. So sharing these stories is a very important part of our culture, keeping that alive.