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The World Cup is here, and honestly, hospitality could not have asked for it at a better time. After years of rising costs, staffing pressures, business-rate increases, higher wages, energy bills and customers becoming more careful about how they spend their money, our industry finally has something enormous to get excited about. And when I say enormous, I mean nearly £900 million enormous. Football fans across the UK are forecast to spend around £898 million in hospitality v

I always say hospitality is a team sport, but this weekend reminded me that small business is basically an extreme sport involving customer service, van hire, stock runs, and someone’s mum bringing emergency bacon. On Saturday, my son and our Head Chef Dilwyn from The Chester Townhouse took their food truck to Chester Regatta. For context, the two of them run a food truck business together, doing festivals, events and weddings. This weekend they weren’t just one of the food v

We’ve just invested in CHANCE Clean Cider, and if I’m honest, this didn’t come from a strategy meeting or a plan to go looking for a drinks brand… it just kind of happened naturally. I’ve known John Logue for a few years now. He’s always been around what we’re doing, backing events, supporting awards, getting involved where he can. One of those people you see consistently showing up, which in this industry actually means a lot. At the same time, I’ve always been a cider drink

A group of Liverpool & Wrexham business leaders, trade networks and the public sector have spent this last week showcasing Liverpool and Wrexham to their counterparts from Malta – more than sightseeing, it was more about “what can we actually do together? Can we help one another?” And how do we align similar cities/regions with hurdles of 21st Century Funding and bigger fish to fry mindsets. And honestly, it’s truly the kind of thing we need more of. Because on the surface, M

Since taking on Hotel Wrexham, I’ve naturally found myself spending a lot more time in Wrexham that ever before and the more time I have spent there, the more I have seen the potential of this city. There is a real energy around the place. You can feel that things are moving. It feels like a city on the up, with more attention, more confidence and more opportunity than ever before. Wrexham is climbing, and for me, that made getting involved in another project here a complete

People talk about family businesses like they’re a thing of the past, but they still make up over 90% of private businesses in the UK. And last weekend was a bit of a reminder of that. We headed to the North West Family Business Awards, not really knowing what to expect if I’m honest. I had never heard of said awards before and my daughter was the one that put us up said awards without telling anyone. And long behind we got accepted for 5 awards! Top tip for people applying f