Social media was once a game-changer for hospitality businesses, but today it’s noisy, crowded, and exhausting. Chasing likes, shares, and followers has replaced real connection with customers. Algorithms decide who sees your posts, while businesses compete against global brands and endless content. The solution? Go back to basics. Focus on your purpose, serve your community, and deliver exceptional experiences worth talking about. Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool—when customers feel valued and cared for, they’ll spread the word. Stop chasing trends and start building a purpose-driven business that people love, remember, and choose every time.
Hospitality Business Made Easy
Most of us started in this industry young, learning from the ground up. The formula for success used to be simple: deliver five-star service, train your staff, and stay one step ahead of the competition. But today, the industry is tougher than ever—rising costs, shrinking markets, and increasing competition are relentless.
What if there was an easier way? By ignoring your competition, rediscovering your purpose, and aligning everything—your team, customers, and operations—to serve that purpose, you can simplify your business, build a high-performing team, and attract loyal customers who market your business for you.
Join us for the Hospitality Made Easy Masterclass, where we’ll help you reconnect with your purpose and unlock the next breakthrough for your business. This proven approach will transform how you work, freeing you from overwhelm and reigniting your passion for hospitality.
Purpose makes hospitality easy. Hospitality Made Easy Masterclass.
Hospitality is more than just an industry; it’s where many of us first learned to thrive. It’s a place where every role matters, from entry-level to leadership, and where teamwork is key to delivering exceptional customer experiences. For young people, it’s often the first taste of belonging—a family that values effort and care. It teaches responsibility, discipline, and the joy of serving others. Hospitality gives us purpose: knowing a simple act, like a smile or kind word, can transform someone’s day. Yes, it’s challenging, but for those who love it, the rewards—connection, growth, and purpose—make it all worthwhile.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit the pub industry with unprecedented force, turning once-thriving community hubs into shuttered spaces and leaving publicans scrambling to survive. The sudden closures left many with significant overheads, from rent to perishable stock, and limited cash reserves. Even as pubs reopened, they faced a different world, contending with limited capacities, health restrictions, and shifting customer habits.
The impact didn’t end with lockdowns. The energy crisis sent bills skyrocketing, while inflation made everyday operations increasingly expensive. Combined with severe staff shortages, the challenges for pubs remain steep. Yet, the industry has shown resilience, pivoting to new services and strengthening ties with their communities. Pubs now stand at a crucial juncture, needing continued support from patrons, government aid, and industry collaboration to fully recover. Their survival underscores a legacy of resilience, community, and tradition that remains integral to British culture.
As a small business owner in the hospitality industry for over 25 years, there's one thing that still makes my blood boil—the assumption that small businesses need the expertise of big corporate CEOs to succeed. While larger companies have their strengths, small business owners are constantly innovating, learning on the job, and building deep customer relationships. We don’t have vast resources or teams of specialists, but we do have creativity, resilience, and a sense of purpose that drives us forward. Small business entrepreneurs are scrappy because we have to be, finding solutions with limited resources and pushing boundaries through experimentation. It’s time to recognize that the real innovation and exciting talent in the hospitality industry often come from these small operators, not the corporate boardroom. At Kith & Kin, we celebrate this scrappiness and provide a space where hospitality professionals can come together, share ideas, and support each other.
The pub has an essential place in our society and my true obsession is to create those spaces that work well to deliver a seamless opportunity for people to be themselves and part of a community.
In my 20+ years setting up owning and operating my award-winning venues (and spending countless hours in other people’s venues) this is what I have learnt…
One of the biggest mistakes I see hospitality businesses making is being too concerned about everyone liking them.
The thing is if we design businesses for everyone to like then we need to constantly compromise and if we do that then what would be left to love about our businesses?
The problem that hospitality business owners have is that they fell in love with this industry because they wanted to make other people happy, they wanted to create a place where other people come to relax to feel safe, to have a good time and to create memories.
So a bad review is devastating, the idea that someone was disappointed or unhappy was not what any of us got up in the morning for.
In “The paradox of Choice” Barry Schwartz argues that whilst choice represents freedom and autonomy and is essential to human wellbeing (we all love to believe that having a choice is essential to us) having too much creates huge anxiety to our customers.
What Schwartz is suggesting is that to feel happy we as humans measure our success against the outcome of our goals therefore every decision we make is measured against the actual outcome compared to the perception of the possible other outcomes…the grass is always greener.
So, when we make choices we worry that it is the ‘wrong’ one and that our choice was a mistake, happiness was with the ‘right’ choice.
Now for big decisions, we can see that this a valuable process but, when we do it for seemingly small decisions, then we are placing ourselves into a nearly impossible situation.
If you are a hospitality business that does not change you are a hospitality business that does not exist anymore.
The hospitality businesses that enjoy success know this.
They know that the world in which we operate is always changing.
The greatest challenge we have as operators is that we need to plan for the long term in a world with markets that change in the short term.
Hospitality businesses need to be constantly innovating and changing.
I remember being taught this and then repeating it to my staff on staff training days but what does it mean?
Well, I guess the point being made is that it doesn’t matter how hard you think you are trying or if you think you did a good job what actually matters is how the customer perceives your effort.
Whilst that sounds harsh and in ‘normal’ life we are led to believe it is your effort that counts, in hospitality or perhaps any customer interaction that is not the case.
When using this as part of my training I would be pointing out to our staff that it is not enough to say that the customer is wrong and that you did do something well.
Customer care is different to customer service.
Even before Covid the legal requirement for an operator was immense.
Our licenses require us by law to be responsible for the behavior of everyone on our premises at all times if we are on site or not.
But Covid and the Government response has thrown up a whole new set of legal responsibilities overnight which change sometimes daily.
With the implementation of new rules, sometimes with no notice, there is no time for the local enforcement authorities to even decide their local interpretation.
So whilst operators are trying their best to interpret the dribbles of information that they receive and the different interpretations from different bodies from Central Government, to Local Government to our varied trade bodies the enforcement authorities are doing the same thing and coming up with different ideas.
The mess that is ensuing is the operator, whilst working exceptionally hard to keep everyone safe (and incidentally trying to save their business and communities in all this) being called up for breaches of the ‘rules’ whilst neighbouring operators ‘get away’ with other seemingly more significant breaches.
I feel too grown up to say it but ‘it is just not fair’
Since March 2020 and the beginning of lockdown it has been impossible to plan beyond the next week and even then, many of us have been thwarted again and again with our plans.
This is a difficult enough business, planning for the long term in an environment that changes over the short term, but Covid and the response to it means that planning our businesses has been done over weeks and days rather than months or years.
But perhaps there is a little bit of hope on the horizon.
Yet again we expect bad news for the hospitality & events industry in the announcement today.
Hospitality venues are still going to need to remain closed for the foreseeable future.
Of course there is a future for the industry.
But this is no consolation to those individuals in the industry who just will not have enough time and money to hold on.
I do weep for them.
They opened their venues to make people feel better, to create something special in their communities. It is not a stretch to claim that what operators were trying to do is to help make the world a better place. Hospitality venues really are that important. Humans are sociable animals we survive and thrive because of our connections to each other.
Those who put themselves out there and open their doors to invite you in are special and these people will be missed.
Since prehistory, we have marked the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere supposedly a symbol of the rebirth of the sun but perhaps even then, like now, it was for some less about the reason for the festival and more about the outcome.
Humans have forever needed festivals and rituals all of our societies and cultures around the world are constructed around them. They create important moments for people to come together and to bond, to form new relationships, and to share in joy.
A theme that keeps coming up in the conversations with my colleagues in the hospitality industry is the concern that after Covid we are going to see a dramatic skills shortage.
We have been lucky in the UK with our governments approach to furloughing staff, not all countries have taken this approach but it means that for many operators they have been able to hold on to their skilled and experienced employees.
But after the end of the first lockdown there were more than a few venues who realised that their staff had taken the time during ‘furlough’ to reimagine their lives and had decided to change careers or take on other jobs.
Customer care is critical in hospitality.
Customers are pivotal to your business. I know that is pointing out the obvious but how much do we consider that fully? The customers pay you money and that money you use to pay the bills and then yourself they provide your income.
Ok great – relationship understood all done!
Well, we all know that there is more to it than that…
I am tried, tired of hearing the same old rubbish being spouted by those who say that what their role is to coach, mentor and support existing or emerging businesses.
Why do they always play with the same old tropes?
For instance why, when you have a new business idea do you need to seek a problem to fix and then make your solution ‘scalable’ why can it not just be enough to have found a solution to a problem?
With pubs and restaurants preparing to reopen on 2nd December it looks like this time they will not be having the support that was seen over the summer with EOHO.
But was that scheme as successful as it first appeared?
Of course everyone loves a bargain and the prospect of a cheap meal out sounds like of course it would be a good reason to venture to your local but I am sceptical because I think there was a lot more going on this summer.
The other day I heard a suggestion of an initiative to support post-Covid recovery was to ask ‘Big Business’ to mentor ‘Small Business’.
To give the benefit of the doubt, perhaps I misheard or misunderstood because if that really was a suggestion to how to get the economy back on it’s feet then to say it is naive and offensive would be an understatement.
The suggestion assumes:
1. That all ‘small businesses’ really have the ambition to be ‘big businesses’ and
2. that what is holding them back is that they just don’t know business as well as big business.
Well, let me tell you why that is a naive assumption made by someone who doesn’t understand small business and in particular hospitality businesses…
Treatment for my broken ankle didn’t involve crutches or plaster
Modern science and ideas are always ‘evolving’ and changing.
I am still marveling at how wrong I was.
And what has this got to do with pubs, bars, and restaurants you ask?
Obviously technology and how it can be used has changed but I think more interestingly, our understanding of each other and human behavior has changed.
Moreover, culturally our customers have changed and are continuing to do so.
Things change, people change, cultures change and so ‘that’s the way we have always done it’ should also change.
Moving with the times and watching how the world around you changes can be a bit scary but it can also be exciting to see how we ‘evolve’ and get better all the time.
We have just got to remember that this applies to our businesses also.
For owner-operators of pubs, bars & restaurants, it is not a typical working environment. There is a never-ending to-do list and all the people you could ask for support from are ‘competition’
But wouldn’t it be nice to just give yourself a little bit of time to sit down, grab a coffee and chat to other owner-operators from across the UK who share your frustrations.
In a relaxed, informal Zoom meeting you could gain inspiration, share ideas, and collaborate - all for FREE
Operators need to build great resilience to it and perhaps develop a strategy for dealing with negative feedback.
Nearly all my clients ask the same thing. It is a panicky heart-breaking moment; how do you respond?
Well, first you need to understand what your response is trying to achieve?
It is instinct to want to make sure that someone else sees and understands your point of view.
Getting strangers to know you, like you, and trust you is the number one purpose of social media promotion and activity - here is a great opportunity for you.
You can’t please everyone and if you try you will end up pleasing no one.
