That’s the essence of Unreasonable Hospitality, a concept that resonated so deeply that I immediately picked up the book by Will Guidara. What I found wasn’t just a roadmap for the restaurant world—it was a blueprint for how we could rethink energy efficiency, flexible load management, and electrification programs.
I’ll be honest: I wasn’t born with a silver spoon. I was the kind of kid that grew up reading stacks of books to earn free personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut through the Book It! program, and I paid my way through college with three jobs and a smorgasbord of scholarships. Oddly, it wasn’t my waitressing job that taught me the power of hospitality…let’s just say that performance was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Instead, it was my time as a whitewater raft guide on the mighty Ottawa River that really taught me the power of hospitality—the kind that goes beyond service and makes someone feel genuinely cared for.
Take my mom, for example. She’s a retired widow living in the frigid Adirondacks—low income, no ductwork, and entirely reliant on a wood stove and electric baseboard heaters for heat. She’s the perfect candidate for a low-income home energy program—cold climate heat pumps were made for people like her. But her experience navigating the programs offered by her statewide program? Frustrating, confusing, and ultimately unsuccessful. And this is from someone with a daughter who designs energy programs for a living.
That disconnect is our opportunity. We can build programs that don’t just meet technical specs but feel good to participate in.
It starts with empathy. Not the buzzword kind, but the real, roll-up-your-sleeves, “let’s walk in their shoes” kind.
When redesigning customer journeys, we start with personas. Real people with real lives. People like my mom, who don’t own a computer, can’t haul an appliance home 18 miles in a snowstorm, and live in a community with one electrician who has no idea how to install a heat pump. We ask: How can we make the process easier, friendlier, and yes—more colorful?
Some ideas we’ve embraced include:
We’re also applying this lens to hiring. By making job postings clearer, the application process smoother, and support systems stronger, we’ve doubled field staff hiring in some markets. That’s unreasonable hospitality in action.
It’s easy to focus on compliance checkboxes, savings targets, and rollout timelines. Those things matter. But what if we also focused on how we make people feel? What if we brought the same level of care to our programs as a top-tier restaurant brings to a birthday dinner?
Let’s add more color to our programs.
Let’s create experiences so positive, people don’t just participate—they tell their neighbors, refer their friends, and come back for more.
Let’s be a little unreasonable—even if it’s different, even if it’s hard.
If you attended our Summit Down South, you got to experience some Unreasonable Hospitality firsthand. I hope that experience tangibly demonstrated the power of this concept. If you weren’t there, we’d love to show you what we mean. Let’s talk about how Franklin Energy can help you deliver exceptional, human-centered programs that serve customers better—and drive real results in energy efficiency, flexible load management, and electrification programs.
Contact us to get started.