The Art of Hospitality: PEOPLE - 9 October, The Queen Hotel, Chester

I’m buzzing to bring The Art of Hospitality back to The Queen Hotel, Chester on Thursday 9th October.

We’ve just come off a whirlwind summer, my first book Bee Our Guest was launched, the airports over the UK have been heaving, and the racecourse reported its busiest season since COVID. Momentum is real. The industry’s alive. And that’s exactly why this edition is laser-focused on the one thing that makes or breaks all of us: people.

Doors open 9:30am. Get in, grab a coffee, and talk to others who are invested in how our industry is doing and what changes can be made!

We have lots of exhibitor tables with the likes of Chance Cider, Lumberjaxe, Foxxy Foods and many more. Always a good way to network and meet new brands.

I’ll kick us off at 10:00am. Independent hospitality is at its best when role fit, training, and accountability line up. When they don’t, standards slip, teams burn out, and guests feel it. I’ll set the tone for the day and the standard for what we’re here to do: share what works and bin what doesn’t.

At 10:30am, Ashley Boroda takes the stage with “Right People, Right Place, at the Right Time, Making Hospitality Seamless.” Ashley’s brilliant at translating people’s communication styles into practical staffing decisions. If you’ve ever looked at a shift and thought, “Good person, wrong station,” this will give you the frameworks to fix it, hiring, onboarding, briefing, rota design, even how to run pre-service so you’re not firefighting by 6:45pm. You’ll leave with tools you can use the very next day.

11:00am is our sourcing reality check. Angela Highton (Edible Info) hosts “Know Your Plate: Local, Honest, Informed” with Ellis Barrie (celebrity chef), Hugo Bourne (Bourne’s Cheshire Cheese), and Mike Ford (Pen-Y-Lan Pork). This isn’t a romantic monologue about provenance; it’s the truth about making local supply work when covers spike or the weather nukes a harvest. We’ll dig into Food to Fork, menu language that builds trust without wrecking GP, how to brief teams so they can speak confidently to guests, and where transparency helps versus where it drifts into greenwash. Ellis brings the chef’s lens, Hugo and Mike bring the delivery reality and you’ll walk out with a plan that holds up on a busy Friday.

At 12:00pm, Dave Skeels (Energised Earth) leads “Not Your Job? It Should Be. Embrace It.” This session is about cutting the energy waste that silently drains profit. Dave will show where it hides, HVAC battling itself, set-points left wrong, lights and equipment chewing power all day, kitchens idling when they don’t need to. He’ll walk through quick wins you can roll out in 30 days, from setting baselines and fixing schedules to simple timers and maintenance tweaks. The goal: walk away with a checklist that lowers your next bill and keeps it down.

12:30pm is lunch, good food, better conversations. This is where partnerships start.

At 1:30pm, we shift to growth you can measure. Jojo Smith (Creativ SAS) hosts “People Influencing People” with Josh Edwards (@JoshEatsLots) and Emma Riley (Emily’s Restaurant), together they have over 561k likes on TikTok. This is influence that fills seats, not just feeds the algorithm. We’ll cover what to post, what to pay for, what to comp, what to track, and when to say no. Josh and Emma will show how content turns into bookings you can actually see on the books.

We close the main sessions at 2:30pm with The Lumberjaxe Story, Jaydon & Brendon (as seen on Dragon’s Den ’24). The real arc: the TV bump, the grind after the cameras, retail realities, community as a sales engine, and how to scale without losing your soul. If you’ve got a concept growing, or one you want to grow, this is the blueprint and success story you need to hear.

By 2:55pm we’ll wrap with concrete takeaways and you’re out for 3:00pm. You’ll leave with role-fit tools for hiring and rotas, sourcing and menu language that builds guest trust without hammering margin, energy checks that save money this quarter, a creator playbook to increase bookings, and a case study that shows the graft as well as the wins.

Tickets are free thanks to our headline supporters The Edible Group International and Energised Earth, plus our wider partners who back real industry learning.

Get your tickets here - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thehospitalityheroltd/1709737

If you’re serious about your teams, your standards, and your bottom line, grab your ticket and be in the room. I’m genuinely excited about this one, the speakers are strong, the conversations will be honest, and you’ll walk out with actions for Monday.

See you at The Queens

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