A month or so ago I wrote an Open Letter to our leader, Sir Keir Starmer, on LinkedIn. I asked for a favour. That favour was for him and his cabinet to ‘be better’. I explained that I am a businesswoman who has run and sold many successful hospitality businesses. That I try to be the change I want to see in the world, I’ll cycle 400 km across Taiwan for charity, not because I am good at cycling, I’m blooming terrible at it, but it helps others, so I put them first.
I described how if I was not meeting expectations in areas of my life, despite my best efforts, I knew I needed to ‘be better’. I highlighted that to ‘be better’ looks very different, depending on the situation, but the point still remains, that despite giving my all, I need to develop, learn and listen to others and evolve.
I must be very clear, I am certainly no expert in politics, but I explained to Sir Keir that I do have an abundance of common sense and that common sense tells me that if the country is telling you it’s broken, if people far more intelligent than me are telling you it’s broken, it’s probably broken and it’s the Government’s job to fix it. I also realise, looking at the wider picture, that there are many things our Government needs to ‘fix’ (we know they inherited an endless list), so there has to be a balance of where focus, funds and resources go.
An example, I am not sure if you saw it, but the multibillion Universal UK Resort planned for Bedfordshire, spanning over 700 acres and set to create thousands of jobs and a predicted 50-billion-pound benefit to our economy, is at risk, because of insufficient infrastructure, particularly relating to traffic, local roads and housing. It is 2025, yet our fundamental foundations are either insufficient or not fit for purpose. These are not small problems, I know, and there is no magic wand to fix them.
I also know that a pint of beer is taxed at 54.2p vs 4.6p in Italy, and when the same comparative council tax is £2,000 in the UK vs £200 in Spain, it’s hard to be so understanding.
As UK Hospitality’s brilliant #taxedout campaign highlights, by the end of this year we would have lost over 100,000 jobs in hospitality since the last budget. This will account for over 50% of total job losses in the UK — OVER 50% OF TOTAL LOSSES. This blows my mind, and these stats do not capture the loss of hours. For every job lost, I guarantee someone still employed has had hours cut, as hospitality leaders desperately try to keep their team employed and make their businesses viable.
Hospitality is not the only industry in pain, but I do feel we are being unjustly targeted. I fear there’s a view in Government that the leaders and founders are drinking Champagne for breakfast and dining on baby dolphins for supper, but it’s not true.
Most landlords will be earning less than minimum wage; while many founders take a wage less than the team that work for them. I could write pages with stats and facts to highlight everything I think is wrong. In fact, I had planned to do that here, but as I looked at my note pad drowning with data to ‘prove’ I am right, I paused for a moment to reflect on being ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
Data can be used to paint powerful pictures, but there’s always other data to counteract your argument.
Let’s get one thing straight, life isn’t fair. And if you are waiting for ‘fair’ you are going to waste a lot of emotion, time and energy. I am not saying we don’t stand up for what we believe is ‘right’, but if we look inwards and focus on what we can do, rather than what everyone else can do, you start to positively impact the change you want to see.
As a child, if I was upset because I’d had a disagreement with someone, the first thing my Nana would ask me, as I cried and screamed (normally very dramatically), was ‘what did you do’? She refused to entertain any other line of conversation until I had explained the role I had played, no matter where the fault lied. Only once I had looked inwards would she then listen to what others had done.
At the time I thought this ridiculous and frustrating, but actually, it was a gift. The ability, no matter what, to reflect on how you can own responsibility for your part is a crucial life skill.
We live in a time where we are in the top percentile of evolution, where life has never been objectively better, but subjectively worse. We get used to how great life is, we have an abundance of luck and things we take for granted –modern medicine, clean water, calories beyond belief….
I heard from a fellow industry CEO, while on an industry tour of some amazing thriving restaurants in Manchester a few weeks back, of how in 1983 he had to hand back the keys to the first flat he owned, as the interest rates went up to 14%. It made me think about how everything is relative to a point in time.
I will advocate for what action we need, but looking inwards, I think that maybe if we stopped selling minimum wage jobs and sold apprenticeships to the ‘best jobs in the world’, highlighting the incredible careers and opportunities that span across our sector, we could turn our frustration into a new narrative. And if we celebrated the new investment coming into the industry as much as we highlighted the money that is ‘leaving’, we change our narrative.
I was a kid from the wrong side of town, who grew up with my mum in the care system due to a violent biological father. I had no education or opportunity, but I had a job cleaning tables in TGI Fridays two nights a week with a manager who believed in me. Here I stand today Group CEO, an investor, board advisor and co-founder. Proof that we can take a pebble and make it a pearl; we can do extraordinary things — never forget that.
The bottom line is, the Government isn’t coming to save us. We save us.
With the next budget coming up, we need to manage our own expectations. I doubt very much anything from the last budget is changed or removed (I hope I am wrong). I also hope that we get some wins with business rates and VAT. I hope I am right in my thinking that the National Living Wage will be going up by about 4-5% and not 10-11%, but hope is not a strategy.
We work in the best industry in the world, and we are like water, we will always find a way. It doesn’t mean we are immune to drowning but it does mean our ability to pivot and be nimble is our superpower.
There will always be a human need for hospitality, it is wired into our biological DNA. We can’t stop the evolution of hospitality, but we can shape it — so let’s look inwards and shape something spectacular.
