Hello and welcome to Hospitality Hub and to our inaugural blog post. I must say that it’s pretty exciting to finally be writing our first blog post in anticipation of our launch.

For our team this has been a concept we have been engineering for the past 12 months, its pretty awesome to see something that started as a small idea shared over coffee with a friend one day to being only a couple of weeks away from launching to the world.

I’d like to take this time to give some insight into WHY because I think it’s important to understand businesses (and people) why they do what they do.

I have been in Hospitality for 16 years (perhaps a little inexperienced to some I know) but I have jam packed a lot into those 16 years, running my own business for 12 of them means I’ve had to learn fast and along the way.

I got into hospitality as my Dad was a chef back in the day in London who eventually moved into airline catering and then management, only to retreat back to it when starting his own business some 14 years ago. Naturally of course I have always been involved in the kitchen as a child and it was only a normal progression to start working as a kitchen hand in a local restaurant and function centre as well as working for my Dad.

It wasn’t long until I took on my first business in partnership with Dad at the age of 17 with very little cooking experience and even less business experience, I employed a chef and worked alongside him learning how to cook steaks and make sauces (until that point I thought gravy and béchamel sauce just came from a packet!)

As business began to grow slowly, we added some extra chefs and we began to serve more and more customers every day, prep would increase as well as the demand to produce better quality meals as our clientele grew from family and friends to people we didn’t know anymore!

See the beauty about a hospitality business is that anyone can start a business right? It’s not like a lawyer where you need to go to law school or even a forklift driver who needs a license, any person who wants to open a café, restaurant or diner can practically open one with no training or experience!

See looking back that was probably part of the problem. Here I was in my early 20’s running a food establishment with some chefs and wait staff with little experience in cooking but also on how to run a business. Looking back now I had absolutely no idea on what food costings were, how to pay superannuation or what marketing even was (just to name a few)

A lot of hospitality business people start a business because it seems like an easy thing to do, but really there’s a lot more to it than just opening the doors, serving some food and counting the money at the end of the day. I’ve seen many businesses come and go that haven’t been able to survive and have lost a lot of money, sometimes it has a disastrous effect on their own personal finances and the families they are supporting.

This is really a key driver for me. I’m not going to sugar coat what’s really happening out there and I have to be honest that I have been one of those people with a couple of failed business stories but I was lucky that I was able to recover and start again, but it’s not like that for a lot of people.

You see I have spent a lot of the last 10 years learning, researching and developing a formula to the perfect business – but without success.

It hasn’t been a complete waste of time though, it’s actually the exact opposite. In my quest I have spent time studying businesses and what successful ones have done right and what the not so successful did wrong.

What it boils down to is that there are many different aspects that culminate success. The other thing I realised is that success is different for everyone. For some it might be about profits, for others it might be about creating something for their family or their community.  

What I do know is that Hospitality is a business of people. People are the one most critical part of the everyday success of the industry. If you don’t have people – staff and customers, you don’t really have a business.

The other most important factor that I realised that there wasn’t really anywhere to turn to when I was that business that needed help. Think about it for a second. If you’re a business owner in hospitality and your business isn’t going to plan who do you turn to?

Who do you ask for help?

Your accountant?

Find a business coach?

Do a college course?

You can do any of the above, but there is no silver bullet solution and sometimes not practical.  A massive part to any business owner’s success is how much do they know about what they’re doing? How much do they know about running a café or restaurant?

For me I had not much clue in those early days on any aspect of business. This seems to be the case for a lot of businesses that we connect with, they’re (usually) really good at what they do. Think about a chef who decides to leave the job he’s in cooking for his boss.

He decides to go out on his own.

Now I have no doubt “Chef” has great food, that’s why he’s going into business for himself – but how much does “Chef” really know about running a business?

Imagine if “Chef’ was able to learn how to run the business, wouldn’t his chances of success be much greater?

Well that’s where Hospitality Hub comes into it. If we can provide the fundamental training and education to be able to run a business, people like “Chef” are going to have more chance at success. And I like that.

Because think about it – if Chef’s business fails he doesn’t just lose out, the staff, the suppliers, the customers and even sometimes the landlord all miss out too. All his staff need to go and find another job and all those families of everyone involved are really affected too. So it’s important that we aim to create more successful outcomes for hospitality businesses. It’s in everyone’s best interests.

Hospitality Hub has been created to provide an open source resource for hospitality business owners, Hospitality is a universal business across every country and language with almost all of them experiencing the same problems.

The hub will provide business owners with practical and modern education, training and resources that they can use in their businesses to make them better be it for themselves, their staff and their customers.

With very little options for hospitality based business to turn to for help, guidance and support, we will work to provide a community that business owners and staff can meet, learn, share, collaborate and grow.

Collaboration is key.

Hospitality Hub has been created to;

  • Help build better businesses and better business people
  • Reduce the failure rate of hospitality businesses and start-ups
  • Inspire and empower through education, content and resources
  • Create more successful outcomes for businesses
  • Provide more accessible and practical resources that support & help business to grow and make more profit
  • Connect and collaborate with a global community, we’re stronger as one

Our education and training programs will cover the fundamentals of all hospitality business as;

  • Customer Experience
  • Marketing
  • Operations
  • Staffing management and recruitment
  • Finances
  • Sales
  • Business Strategy

Well if you have made it this far, I’d like to say thank you for getting this far.

I’m really excited to finally be able to share this with the world and be able to help businesses.

It’s going to be an exciting next few years for Hospitality Hub, we have some massive things planned and we can’t wait to connect with everyone. It’s only a few weeks away until our launch and we couldn’t be happier with the amazing support and feedback we’ve had so far.

If you’d like to connect with us, please drop us a line hello@hospitalityhub.co

We’ll see you online soon.

 

Aaron & The Hospitality Hub Team