9 Rules for Doing Lunch Right

illustration by Jonathan Carlson

I am a busy man. I’m a full-time lawyer and part-time entrepreneur, which means my days are rarely long enough to get everything that needs doing done. During the week many dinners, some breakfasts, and just about every lunch is devoted more to dealmaking than dining. It’s enough to make me long for the days of a simple sandwich and the day’s newspaper.

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of business lunches: a Business Lunch proper and a Working Lunch. (There are three types, if you include the Made It Lunch, which is generally characterized by smiling bonhomie and shared self-congratulations about how well you’re both doing, centering around big deals done, second or third homes bought, or recent leaps in one’s stock price. The Made It Lunch needs no further explanation.)

The Working Lunch is no fun for anyone. Ten or 12 suits sit in a stuffy conference room at a table strewn with contracts and memos and addenda. The food is an afterthought, as the tray of wilting club sandwiches, bowls of flavorless fruit, and the pyramid of chocolate brownies and assorted cookies linger on an out-of-the-way credenza. The lunch itself remains untouched as someone—often me—drones on and on about some technical issue involving EBITDA. Finally, when stomachs rumble louder than the speakerphone, someone—again, it’s often me—makes the executive decision to “break and grab a plate,” whereupon all interested parties forego the sandwiches and fruit altogether and double up on the brownies. No, the Working Lunch is no way to work. Or do lunch.

A Business Lunch, on the other hand, can be a fully expensed, vastly productive, delicious repast, assuming you know what you’re doing. The goal is to be successful enough at Business Lunches so that the incidence of Working Lunches in your life is significantly reduced (or eliminated!). I’m here to help.

Here now are the nine rules of the Business Lunch. Heed them, or you’ll be leaving crumbs on conference room tables Monday through Friday.

Rule No. 1:
Respect the power dynamic.
Of course, to respect it, you must define it. After all, the purpose of a Business Lunch is to conduct some kind of business. Strike a deal. Land a client. Etc. So ask yourself this: Are you the customer or the vendor? Are you the client or the lawyer/accountant/ investment banker? Starkly put, do you represent the company from whom some business or deal is sought or are you the supplicant? I thought so. The success of the Business Lunch depends on you. Incline accordingly.

Rule No. 2:
Pick the right restaurant.
There are good restaurants and bad restaurants. But for our purposes here, there are right restaurants and wrong restaurants. As a good rule of thumb, never pick a place that requires you to carry a tray. Or where your server wears a hat. Regardless of the eminently sensible and clearly justifiable value of the all-you-can-eat executive buffet at The Lodge or The Men’s Club, don’t go. Seriously, don’t.

Also, the restaurant should be proportionate to the magnitude of the business to be discussed. Whereas Chili’s or Snuffers is never appropriate (unless you’re interviewing a new yard man or car mechanic), the Mansion can be too over-the-top. The dollar figure for the deal being discussed should correspond to the dollar figures on the menu. [See chart below.]

One’s country club is always suitable, provided that it doesn’t require too far of a drive for one’s business companion. No one downtown wants to head all the way out to Stonebriar for a Cobb salad. Another good rule of thumb: Travel time for your lunch party shouldn’t last longer than the lunch itself.

Other good choices are Al Biernat’s, Bice, Capital Grille, and Palomino. Seventeen Seventeen at the Dallas Museum of Art is surprisingly good and serious, and you’ll frequently see powerful and influential people dining there. But for those outside of walking distance, Seventeen Seventeen fails the valet test. A successful businessman wants to get out of his car with the engine idling. He’s in a suit. He’s used to having people doing things for him. He’s not about to be seen hoofing it from the far end of a parking lot in his Brioni.

Rule No. 3:
The right restaurant isn’t enough.
You must be sitting at the right table. I had lunch the other day with a business prospect at Parigi to discuss selling his company. I’d had my secretary call ahead and reserve Table 21 for us. I arrived five minutes early (Rule No. 3.5: Always be early; you don’t want to start things off fumbling for excuses for why you’re late), and the hostess led me to my table. Before I had a chance to glance at the menu, I spied my companion sitting forlornly at what looked to be no larger than a waiter’s tray shoved against the wall near the bathroom. The hostess rescued him from the restaurant’s hinterlands and ushered him into the glow of the power table I had reserved. His mood—and my future prospects—brightened considerably.

Lesson? Do not schedule a Business Lunch with an executive with whom you would like to conclude a serious piece of business and then have him or her frog-marched through the restaurant by the hostess in plain view of all the other powerhitters sawing away at their porterhouses, only to have him or her ignominiously dumped at the equivalent of a waiter’s tray shoved up against the wall next to the bathroom. You are guaranteed to depart your lunch not with the successful deal you sought but instead with your companion’s icy glare seared into your retinas, which you will be reminded of each time you try to read your diminishing bank statement through thickening cataract scar tissue.

Every restaurant worth hosting a Business Lunch at has its power tables. Know them and call ahead to reserve them. For instance,  at Al Biernat’s, they are tables 23, 28, and 34.

Rule No. 4:
No drinking at lunch.
The iconic “three-martini lunch” belongs to that utopian time before the SEC was created. As much as you might look longingly at the next table over where some guy in a turtleneck and blazer with fashionably aggressive shoes is enjoying a nice cabernet or (be still my heart!) a bourbon on the rocks, you must never, ever, order a drink at a Business Lunch. Even if your lunch companion orders one. You’ll lose your edge. Your companion will judge you. You’ll come across as insufficiently Serious.

No, save the drinks for the 19th hole at the country club after a round of golf. Or the Business After-Work drink. Or the After-Work-at-Home-Before-Dinner-While-You-Huddle-in-the-Den-Away-From-the-Wife-and-Kids-for-a-Quiet-Half-Hour-Please! drink. Or at the office after your Business Lunch.

Rule No. 6:
Watch your manners.
It’s lunch, not a vivisection. Don’t make a mess. And think ahead: Don’t order any item that requires you to pick up your food with your hands, causing you to constantly wipe your greasy mitts on your napkin until it resembles a butcher’s apron. Do not wrestle with a lobster. Do not pinwheel spaghetti at the tip of your fork, spraying yourself and your business companion with marinara sauce. The menu is full of civilized items that can be safely moved from plate to mouth with a knife and fork.

Rule No. 7:
Converse.
Discourse is often the toughest course. Small talk is difficult, but small talk you must make. Don’t dive straight into the business at hand, else your companion think you tricked him into a Working Lunch. Avoid religion and politics. They are conversational minefields that cannot be safely traversed. Giuliani, Romney, McCain? Clinton, Obama, Edwards? Why risk it? Global warming? Iraq? Come on! And it goes without saying, but don’t make sotto voce appreciative comments about the comeliness of the hostess, no matter how warranted.

Sports in general is a safe, reliable option. Your golf game is germane, too, provided you don’t stand up to give your audience a detailed pantomime of your backswing. Talk about your family. Talk about recent or impending vacations. Talk about movies you’ve seen (excluding any that are overtly political or religious, or are rated NC-17). Then talk business, but…

Rule No. 8:
Don’t force the business talk.
Ideally, you would never talk business at a Business Lunch. Instead, you would establish such a deep and resonant rapport with your lunch companion that whatever business prompted your lunch in the first place would be transcendentally communicated and instinctively understood. A powerful financial bond would follow you all the days of your life. And you would be having three martinis at this lunch.

In the real world, of course, you must talk business. As the waiter is clearing your entrée, your conversation should naturally turn from your Little League stats to the business at hand. Coffee is convivial, and the mood should have worked itself into something expansive and cooperative. It’s gauche to talk price, of course, but there is no shame in touting your strengths and business acumen. Let him or her know what you bring to the table. Bottom line. At the end of the day. Make it a win-win.

Rule No. 9:
Always pick up the tab.
Don’t let the little black folio just sit there like a dirty sock. But at the same time, don’t make a pretense of going for your wallet hoping that you will be shooed off at the last minute. Quietly and confidently reach for the bill, scan it for any glaring inaccuracies (no need to study the document like a forensic accountant), and slip in your credit card. Continue chatting along amiably as if you’ve done nothing more than whisk lint off your lapel. It slightly shifts the balance of power in your direction. It bathes you in goodwill. And it avoids any awkwardness over the fact that you had the filet and your business companion had a salad.

If a proper Business Lunch sounds like work, that’s because it is. But take heart: Business Lunches become more natural the more of them you have. Your success rate increases over time. Soon enough, you’ll be able to kiss Working Lunches goodbye and be well on your way to more Made It Lunches than your accountant will know what to do with.