#136 Thomas Gent - Gentle Farming
Humans of Hospitality
Thomas is a 4th generational farmer in Cambridgeshire.
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#135 Adam Phelps - Cellar Society
Humans of Hospitality
Adam has been working at the top end of prestigious events for 22 years. Chatting through some of the choreography and planning required to deliver for clients who expect perfection, and are happy to pay for it was inspiring. 100 meals delivered to the table in perfect synchronisation by 50 model looking FOH members, immaculately presented is just one that creates a vivid picture in my mind.
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#134 Nathan Outlaw - Chef
Humans of Hospitality
Many of your will know today’s guest Nathan Outlaw from his various TV appearances, Michelin stars, all round love of hospitality and the author of 5 well regarded books. Chatting to Nathan you can see why he’s such a popular hospitality human. Relaxed, positive, knowledgeable, with no pretentiousness and happy to chat about the challenges, lows and highs of his hospitality adventure.
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#133 Stefan Leser - CEO Langham Hotels & Resorts
Humans of Hospitality
I spoke to Stefan to get an insight and understand how different markets across the globe are performing and wether that performance is in part due to governments taking a different approach on how to manage Covid. We recorded this show a few weeks ago, but at the time Stefan’s hotels across China, Australia and New Zealand were trading pretty well, whilst London obviously was closed. Where his hotels were doing ok, they were aimed at the domestic market only.
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#132 Dan Austin - MD Lake District Farmers
Humans of Hospitality
A tale of perseverance, of business acumen, of learning and making things up as you go, of responding to business catastrophe and adapting fast to keep the business running. Dan and his team's perseverance and commitment comes across in so many of the stories he tells. Wether that’s being found half clothed having slept in the delivery van before meeting an important potential customer, or relocating the entire business over a weekend following a fire.
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#131 Victoria Searl - DataHawks
Humans of Hospitality
I’m fairly techie and I’ve found it frustrating over the years seeing the potential of data in the hospitality sector. Cleary unlike for example selling double glazing, we operate in a social space where people often want to hear from us. Where guests are happy to take photos and share them to social media, where they are happy to check in and arrange to meet friends. And whereby perhaps sharing data on birthdays, or dietary preferences or working patterns are all things the customer is happy to s
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#130 Phil Haughton - Better Food Stores & Cafes
Humans of Hospitality
Phil Haughton has had a great food adventure over many decades. He has just written a book ‘Food for Thought’ that brings together this journey, combined with recipes and producers he’s met along the way. Phil’s current business is the Better Food stores and cafes dotted around Bristol. That combination of combining the hospitality of a cafe drawing people into the building and then hopefully inspiring them to leave with some exceptionally ethical and delicious food and drink.
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#129 Hamish Martin - The Secret Garden - Edinburgh
Humans of Hospitality
Hamish is a brave soul who at the age of 41, with his own business and a career working around the wine and whisky trade decided that his number one love in the world was plants. Not only was he brave enough to sell the business, he was crazy enough to have no idea where his next adventure would take him. He pretty much let the plants decide.
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#128 Darren Venables - Estate Manager - Chewton Glen
Humans of Hospitality
Darren has been working at the Chewton Glen for over 30 years so really has seen a huge amount of change, and as far as the grounds are concerned has curated much of that himself. Developing an orchard of 250 of the rarest trees in the country perhaps, breeding your own Queen bees, or surveying wildlife on an annual basis, or attracting a wider species of birds into a habit for the first time in decades, to growing food for a cookery school, to planting xmas trees and so so much more.
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#127 Sarah Heward - Real Food Cafe - Scotland
Humans of Hospitality
Sarah has been pretty vocal throughout the pandemic in representing the Scottish Hospitality Sector. We chat about being the MD of a decent sized company in the city of London, to buying an ex Little Chef by the side of an obscure road in rural Scotland. Along the way driving revenue to over £1.7 million per year from a pretty small footprint. Sarah has embraced technology to revolutionise how this road side cafe operates. Motivated by the pandemic, but along the way learning some really interesting thi
info_outlineZoe is from the 'ecological land cooperative' (ELC) - a 'Not For Profit' trying to solve some of the problems of excessively large farms, often mono-culture dominated and using too many chemicals, having a very detrimental impact on the land and ecosystem.
I speak to many people being inspired to enter the world of hospitality, not only to sell better quality more ethical food to the consumer, but also interested in how to grow this food and actually produce it in the first place. If you're interested in how to have a positive impact on the food you buy, or how it is grown, you will enjoy this weeks conversation.
The ELC want to see a living, working countryside where land is valued as a way to enhance the good of community, countryside and the natural world. Revitalising rural economies.
They want to see low-impact, land-based livelihoods flourish. The stewardship of land to create healthful, wholesome and ecologically sound food and land-based products that benefit people and the biosphere.
And they do this in a number of ways, that starts with buying land and finding stewards who want to set up their own business. They help spread the cost of this land over a number of years and help the new stewards with planning to actually be allowed to live on the land whilst they regenerate and farm it.
I think ELC is great NFP. Not only does it have great aspirations, but it already has a number of successful farms up and running and actually making a difference. But it is early days and so much more can be done. I hope some of you listening to this conversation will be inspired to want to set up your own small scale business on a piece of land. But many of you will want to support the incredible work this charity does. And even more of you will think about where you are buying your food and where you can support a local veg box scheme.
For further inspiration check out the movie 'the biggest little farm' or 'kiss the ground'.
Read more about the ELC on the web. And here are a couple of other great sources of info that crops up in our chat: