Atul Gawande is one of my favorite New Yorker authors. Here he looks at Cheesecake Factory and wonders what medicine can learn from them.

Speaking to a cheesecake factory general manager whose mom just came out of intensive care:

"I asked him what he would do if he were the manager of a neurology unit or a cardiology clinic. “I don’t know anything about medicine,” he said. But when I pressed he thought for a moment, and said, “This is pretty obvious. I’m sure you already do it. But I’d study what the best people are doing, figure out how to standardize it, and then bring it to everyone to execute.”

This is not at all the normal way of doing things in medicine. (“You’re scaring me,” he said, when I told him.)"

What can we learn from both?

I love the concept of the Cheesecake menu -- so many options!

I've also heard that Cheesecake Factory removes the least popular 10% every quarter to try new things.