Humans of Hospitality
139 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsHumans of Hospitality is a weekly podcast, showcasing stories and insights from the world of hospitality – the human beings rather than the big brands behind our food and drink. You’ll hear from the producers of ingredients and the people who combine those ingredients to bring you new dishes and drinks… and the owners of the bars, cafés and restaurants who create memorable settings, so you recall your mouth-watering meals years later. They are the people who bring vibrancy to their corner of hospitality and, who, as a group, make all our lives richer and more interesting.
Each week brings a new inspiring story. We are exploring hospitality in its broadest sense. Farming, politics, culture, cooking, nutrition, welfare, family, business, love and more. Wether you’re a famous figure or total unknown, if you love hospitality and have something important to say, chances are we’ll end up having a conversation. We want to explore the fair production of food, protecting the planet and humanity, whilst tasting awesome. It’s going to be quite the adventurous conversation.
If you want a world of formulaic and dull corporate sameness this is not the podcast for you. If you’d like to learn about amazing human beings who dedicate their lives to making the world of food, drink and hospitality more diverse for our daily enjoyment, please listen.
In showcasing these stories, founder and presenter Mark Cribb, wants to tip the balance back in favour of independent businesses: “Where we spend our money genuinely makes a difference to the kind of world we live in. So let’s at least make our world interesting.”
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Episodes
#038 Miranda Martin - Independent Hotel Show
October 09, 2019 08:11 - 43 minutes - 40.7 MBMIDWEEK BONUS EPISODE - Although this podcast is aimed at anyone who loves food and drink it has a natural slant towards people who work in or around hospitality. And If you listen to these conversations regularly, you’ll have noticed that certain issues keep cropping up. So as well as chatting about these issues, and trying to get people to think about them when choosing where to spend there money, it’s pretty awesome to also be able to give some advice as to how as an industry we wor...
#037 Mitch Tonks - Award winning chef, author & TV
October 06, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBThis week you meet a champion of the sea and of preparing seafood simply and sustainably. Whether you’ve got one of his cookery books, visited his award-winning Seahorse and Rockfish restaurants or watched him on TV with world class rugby player Matt Dawson, you’ll know that Mitch Tonks is one of the country’s most fervent ambassadors for fish You’ll hear just how fervent, when he talks about the planetary benefits of freezing fish; whether prawns should be on or off the menu and what h...
#036 Jane and Dave Endean: Mum and Dad’s Kitchen
October 02, 2019 16:00 - 31 minutes - 29.3 MBA cheeky little mid week bonus episode this week from the lovely Jane and Dave who left the NHS and the MET Police to show hospitality makes a great choice of career change... So, have you heard the one about the nurse, the police officer and the award-winning pies? You’re about to. Dave and Jane’s journey to what they now call ‘Pie Land’ was not conventional. It began when they bought a convenience store in Worcester, thinking it would be a nice retirement project after busy careers in...
#035 Andrew Stephen - CEO Sustainable Restaurant Association
September 29, 2019 20:43 - 1 hour - 65.9 MBI think it’s fair to say that over the last decade, we’re all trying to do our bit to help the planet. Whether it’s getting rid of single-use plastic or recycling, we know what we should be doing. But actually, there’s one area of our lives that trumps all that effort: what we eat. As you’ll hear in this week’s conversation with Andrew Stephen, the CEO of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, the power of your appetite is phenomenal. As an individual, what you choose to eat, and where a...
#034 Dhara Thompson - Sail Boat Project
September 22, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 62.5 MBThis week we’re learning about how to move food around planet earth via just the power of the wind. Awesome produce, better for the environment, direct from the producer to the consumer, delivered by the wind. I'm going to take you back in time, when beautiful tall ships criss-crossed the sea to deliver foods we couldn't grow ourselves. You might think I'm describing the 18th or 19th century. Actually, I'm only turning the clock back by a few months, when a former herring logger called T...
#033 Michael Bremner - BBC Great British menu winner
September 15, 2019 18:00 - 1 hour - 88.3 MBGetting to chat to Michael was awesome, like meeting my brother from another mother. But he has a way cooler accent! I share Michael's views on a great deal of issues around hospitality...not least his thoughts around reviews, tripadvisor and the like. This really was an utterly delightful conversation. You may already know Michael from the BBC's Great British Menu programme. In 2016 he did pretty well, getting to the finals. A year later, he went one better, winning the entire competi...
#032 Tom Foot - Co Founder of the Open Air Dairy
September 08, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBIn this episode we're going to learn alot about dairy farming, milk and happy cows. Grab a notebook, there is a lot to learn! Tom Foot and Neil Grigg are too humble to say this, but in building up their Open Air Dairy, they've become true pioneers in their industry. What they do is awesome. Cows that live 13 years instead of 3 in intensive farming, less antibiotics, happier cows, happier humans, happier fields, awesome milk and cheese...what they've achieved is exciting for the future of...
#031 Kirsty Loveday - Love Drinks - incredible spirit stories
September 01, 2019 19:35 - 56 minutes - 52.5 MBLove Drinks, has two clear strands to it: first, to share the amazing stories behind the spirits portfolio Kirsty has built up since 2007. Whether it’s an organic cachaca or a cold-brew coffee cut with wheat vodka, all the independent brands distributed by Love Drinks are created with dedication and craftsmanship – and they all feed into Kirsty’s philosophy of drinking less and better. The second – Love Well - goes back to when Kirsty was in her early 20s. The late nights and long hours t...
#030 Hugo Hardman and Arthur Voelcker - Chalkstream
August 25, 2019 16:00 - 50 minutes - 46.8 MBIn this episode we're going to learn about farmed fish. When Hugo Hardman and Arthur Voelcker launched ChalkStream® in 2015, people tended to dismiss farmed trout as small, bony and muddy; salmon's much poorer cousin. That's why, in the early days, they had to get right in front of chefs, and show them what farmed trout could really become - if it was grown in fast-flowing clear waters that mimic the conditions of the fish's natural habitat: the Test and Itchen chalk stream rivers in Ha...
#029 James Golding - The Pig restaurants with rooms
August 18, 2019 19:42 - 1 hour - 67.9 MBJames Golding’s impressive chef career has come full circle. Yes, he’s worked with some very big names in London and New York. He learned his craft under Anton Edelmann at The Savoy and then moved to Le Caprice, working for Mark Hix. And as Head Chef at Soho House in New York, his team cooked for A list actors, music stars and royalty. But he began his culinary journey in and around the New Forest, foraging for mushrooms with his dad, and getting ‘bored out of his mind’ at Mr Bartlett’s,...
#028 Simon Tolson - Rumsey Holiday Homes
August 11, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 61.4 MBSimon Tolson has had his fair share of highs and lows to get to where he is now in hospitality. An early high point was his first paid day as a fisherman. Since the age of 3 he’d wanted to fish and he felt like an astronaut when he stepped onto the deck…. But several years later, now married and with a mortgage, he had to switch careers. He left the sea for a surprisingly different job - selling printers and photocopiers for Pitney Bowes. That led to a new high, because the sales ski...
#027 Mark Hix - Hix Restaurants
August 04, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 60.8 MBIf you decided to open a restaurant that focussed on oysters and meat- on-the bone, you probably wouldn’t have done it in 2008. First there was the financial crisis and credit crunch. Then there was a lingering memory of the meat-on-the-bone ban, triggered by BSE several decades before. Mark Hix’s decision was perhaps all the more surprising because the job he was leaving – Executive Head Chef of Le Caprice restaurant group, which included famous venues like The Ivy and J Sheekey – was ...
#026 Pete Joy - Bakehouse 24
July 28, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 61.2 MBFor someone who had no business plan, but thought he’d be alright because there was a Waitrose round the corner, Pete Joy, at Bakehouse 24 is doing pretty well. Pete’s love of mixing and kneading emerged out of the blue, one night, when his housemates were at band practice. Having the place to himself, he decided not to do a normal thing like ordering Chinese, but to make a cake instead. This wasn’t a one-off: Pete soon developed a serious baking habit, which led to a 3am-to-midday job at ...
#025 Jason Barber - Black Cow Vodka
July 21, 2019 20:16 - 48 minutes - 44.6 MBMy guest this week, Jason Barber, puts it like this: if you’ve been sitting behind a cow for 15 to 20 years, your mind has time to wonder about the best way to use the milk you’re producing. The Barbers are the world’s oldest surviving family of cheddar makers. They’ve been making cheese and producing milk for over 200 years – and up until recently, conventional dairy products had done them proud. But then, in 2012, Jason launched something very different: the world’s first and only vod...
#024 Gareth Banner - The Ned Managing Director - Soho house / Sydell group
July 14, 2019 21:25 - 1 hour - 81.4 MBThere has never, ever, been anything quite like The Ned in the UK before. Created from the former headquarters of the Midland Bank, in the heart of the City Of London, the Grade I listed building is now home to 10 restaurants, 250 bedrooms, 6 private event spaces, a spa, a gym and a club with over 3000 members… In any given week, 30,000 meals are served on the ground floor alone. As its managing director, Gareth Banner, says modestly, ‘for a single address there are a lot of moving par...
#023 Emily Davis - Blue Vinny Cheese
July 07, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 58.3 MB‘Unique’ is often misused as a word, but this week you’ll hear about a delicious food product that really is one of a kind. In the early 1980s, dairy farmer Michael Davies resurrected a 300 year-old recipe for Dorset Blue Vinny – a subtly veined cheese which is much more delicate than Stilton, its nearest relative. Nowadays, Michael’s daughter Emily is in charge of production – overseeing the only farm in the world that has the legal right to produce this type of blue cheese. Today ...
#022 Jonathan Downey - Street Feast
June 30, 2019 19:18 - 1 hour - 82.2 MBThe world’s disused car parks, markets and office blocks need Jonathan Downey. In Street Feast he’s taken the idea of street food to a whole new level. At night, what were neglected sites come alive with tantalising smells of pizza, steamed buns, tacos and chicken wings ...along with the buzz of conversation and glowing light boxes of all shapes and sizes. JD's hospitality journey over 20 YEARS is exceptional. Match Bar, Sosho, Milk and Honey, Street Feasts, 2 million visitors a year, Dine...
#021 Alex Aitken - The Jetty & self taught Michelin star chef
June 23, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 77.1 MBImagine. You’re about to open your first restaurant to the public. Your wife, who’s front of house, is 8 ½ months pregnant. You’re the chef –and you’ve never cooked professionally before. But you buy a couple of recipe books and some chef whites, and off you go. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Yet this is what Alex Aitken did in 1983. It was the start of a Michelin-starred career which has evolved in incredible ways and is still going strong. Today, Alex is spreading his love of locally sourced ...
#020 Joy Michaud - Sea Spring Seeds
June 16, 2019 20:37 - 51 minutes - 47.9 MBMichael and Joy Michaud at Sea Spring Seeds are chilli growing experts who took the world by surprise one April 1st, when they revealed they’d developed the world’s hottest chilli plant, the Dorset Naga. It wasn’t an April fool, even though it seemed absurd that this world record-breaking chilli had been reared in a lush, damp corner of Dorset, far removed from its original Bangladeshi home. The patience and dedication it takes to develop a unique and world first type of chilli was a real ...
#019 William Curley - Searcys, Harrods, Claridges +
June 09, 2019 18:46 - 1 hour - 67.1 MBWhen it comes to chocolatier-patissiers, William Curley is a world-class player. He’s one of only 7 chefs in the UK to have achieved ‘Master of Culinary Arts’. The chance to earn this accolade – which is the culinary equivalent of a Nobel Prize – only comes round every 4 years…and it took William three attempts. Gruelling, as you’ll hear… Perhaps it’s not surprising that William has done so brilliantly. As well as having natural talent, he’s fostered that talent by working with the best,...
#018 Simon Robinson - Hattingley Sparkling & Wines GB Chairman
June 02, 2019 19:44 - 1 hour - 65.8 MBBritish wine use to have a reputation, but not one we wanted. Now it's taking on the French at their own game with some of the best sparkling in the world. As chair of Wine GB Simon is the perfect guest to chat to to find out why and how. If you’d said to Simon Robinson in 2008 that his Hattingley Valley vineyards would have the capacity – in a really good year – to produce 580,000 bottles of wine…or that his sparkling rose would be crowned a world champion, he would have said you were cra...
#017 Michael Stoates - Stoate & Sons traditional miller
May 26, 2019 15:56 - 53 minutes - 49.7 MBMichael Stoate is a fifth generation miller in Dorset, whose family have been producing stoneground flour since 1832. That means he knows a lot about flour. It was the era when sailing ketches would carry the flour across the Severn to Swansea and return with coal for the mills. As a teenager he thought he’d be an engineer but he had so much fun getting his hands dirty in the holidays he couldn’t help but join the family business. In this conversation you’ll learn about the wonder o...
#016 Karen Richards - Capreolus Charcuterie
May 19, 2019 20:30 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBWhen David Richards was made redundant from his sales director role, finding a new one at 50 was very hard. Luckily, he had always loved cooking and smoking cuts of meat in the garden, so when his wife Karen suggested that there might be a business in curing, they gave it a shot. 10 years later their company, Capreolus, has won countless awards for its ever-increasing range of mouth-watering charcuterie and smoked foods, from pancetta and air-dried pork loin to the magnificently named Ramp...
#015 Nick Leach - Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality
May 12, 2019 17:45 - 1 hour - 69.2 MBIn terms of career variety, I doubt if many can match Nick Leach’s 4 decades in hospitality. One of his first jobs was working as the King of Saudi Arabia’s personal chef on a £9 million motor yacht. After that he found himself ‘catering to excess’, for merchant bankers in London, where £25,000 a week was set aside for caviar alone – served in huge swan ice carvings. This was in stark contrast to his next role as General Manager at Kings College Hospital, where his daily budget per patien...
#014 Ceri Cryer - Brinkworth Dairy
May 05, 2019 17:57 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBIn 1910 Ceri Cryer’s great-grandfather established the country’s first ever pedigree Friesian herd of cows, in a beautiful corner of Wiltshire. A hundred years later, Ceri is doing her family’s farming history proud: the Friesian descendants produce the milk which Ceri turns into award-winning cheeses – from the traditional Wiltshire Loaf to newcomers, such as the oozilyunctiuous Royal Bassett Blue. In this conversation we discover where Wiltshire cheeses feature in Jane Austin’s novels...
#013 Nick and Tom - Barefaced Brewing
April 28, 2019 20:18 - 1 hour - 57.2 MBTravel is what makes Barefaced Brewing tick: Nick Horne and Tom Cooper have been friends since they were 3. But in their 20s they were working in bars and breweries at opposite sides of the world – Tom in Edinburgh, Nick in Sydney. When Tom sent a Facebook message saying he was really keen to set up an indie brewery, Nick flew across the globe a few days later, rocked up in the bar where Tom was working and said, ‘Let’s do it’. And they have. They choose their hops not only for their dis...
#012 James Whetlor - Cabrito Goats
April 22, 2019 00:00 - 1 hour - 74.8 MBCabrito’s mission is to put all billy goats born in to the dairy industry into the meat industry. Ex-chef James Whetlor knew he could something about the plight of the male billy goats, who are historically euthanised at birth in the dairy industry. James realised that goat meat had potential when his roast goat leg with lentils, salsa verde and chive flowers flew off the menu at the River Cottage Canteen around 8 years ago. Soon after, James sold his first kids to one of the Great British...
#011 Emma Goss-Custard - Honeybuns
April 14, 2019 19:29 - 1 hour - 64 MBFor Emma Goss-Custard, baking without flour came naturally to her as a student in the 90s. She much preferred the luxurious texture and taste of cakes made from ground almonds and polenta. And she kept going – even when well-meaning friends said her approach of replacing wheat with premium ingredients would never work. People wanted cheap cakes with a long shelf-life, didn’t they? Luckily, her friends were wrong. In this conversation you’ll hear how Emma managed to win over customers ...
#010 Oli Perron - Lunch'd
April 07, 2019 19:11 - 1 hour - 68 MBOli Perron, founder of Lunch’d, which delivers beautifully put-together salads, stroganoffs, stir-fries and more to your office…. Zingy, punchy flavours packed into a handy box. Hear how the early days were, in his words, ‘a bit of a car crash’, preparing 65 lunches in the kitchen which he shared with his long-suffering flatmate, Tom… AND he was having problems paying the rent. Find out how he survived that car crash: he’s now successfully delivered 24,000 lunches. He is confident that peo...
#009 Claire Burnet - Chococo
March 31, 2019 18:37 - 1 hour - 74.6 MBTeenage memories of choosing individual mouth-watering chocolates in Belgium, France and Holland are behind Claire Burnet’s jokey suggestion that she and her husband Andy leave their London jobs and make chocolates in Dorset instead. Soon after, they’d converted a small hairdressing salon in Swanage into a chocolate kitchen, complete with viewing window… and a tiny shop upstairs. Yes, that’s right: upstairs! It was 2002, and Chococo found itself in the vanguard of pioneering chocolate m...
#008 Giles Henschel - Olives Et Al
March 24, 2019 19:28 - 1 hour - 73.6 MBWhen Giles and his wife Annie took a late gap year and went on a 38,000 mile motorbike trip round the Mediterranean basin, they had no idea it would be the start of a successful business. 26 years later, Olives Et Al has created 400 products and they still use recipes given to them by the families they met on that original trip: generations of history that span 6000 years, harvesting olives from trees that are two and a half thousand years old. As we chat you’ll discover why it’s a good ...
#007 Jimmy Cregan - Jimmy's Iced Coffee
March 17, 2019 19:42 - 1 hour - 57.4 MBFind out why looking at a builder’s backside was the catalyst that led to Jimmy's version of iced coffee, now stocked in pretty much every UK supermarket… and with its sights set much further afield, including Ireland, Sweden and Dubai. Hear the crazy things Jimmy does to spread the word about his drink, including talking to audiences of 300, dressed as a carton… and orchestrating what’s known as a ‘massive activation’ at a mainline railway station. (Sounds like a security alert, but actual...
#006 Helen Browning - Soil Association
March 09, 2019 11:50 - 1 hour - 65.3 MBThis week I talk to Helen Browning, OBE: Chief Executive of the Soil Association, visionary organic farmer and, with her partner Tim, owner of The Royal Oak and Chop House. An uplifting, thought-provoking conversation exploring Helen’s journey. As you’ll learn, being ahead of the curve is not always an easy place to be. We also try to put the world to rights, so we can solve the problem of feeding 10 billion humans and keeping the planet intact. I LOVED this conversation. Enjoy x
#005 Andy Lennox - Zim Braai
February 28, 2019 22:21 - 1 hour - 63.6 MBAndy Lennox started his career as a ‘KP’, a kitchen porter, peeling potatoes. When he was 21, he teamed up with two friends to create Koh Thai, a restaurant in Dorset, offering authentic Thai cooking with a South of France style of service. As Andy put it, they ‘knew nothing and learned on the trot’ – only realising 6 months in that they needed tills, rather than paper to relay orders to the kitchen and the bar. Soon the pace picked up to a gallop, as the Koh Thai concept took off and...
#004 Rupert Holloway - Conker Gin
February 24, 2019 20:16 - 1 hour - 62.2 MBRupert Holloway, founder of Conker Gin was a successful (and miserable) chartered surveyor who wanted to change direction, dramatically. Luckily he had Emily, his understanding girlfriend, now wife. Find out how a series of weird texts helped to create an enticing brand for their gin, which is now served at Marco Pierre White’s establishments, among many other places!
#003 Joe Lovett - Bad Hand Coffee
February 12, 2019 22:22 - 1 hour - 68.3 MBIn this episode we chat to Joe Lovett from Bad Hand coffee roasters in Bournemouth, Dorset. The conversation is very much in two halves, initially regaling Joe's journey and story and how an abandoned stable, brothel and crack den became his perfect home. We touch on plant powered diets, low commitment dining and confusing roasts with Sunday lunch! The 2nd half is more industry specific as Joe nails the reason for this podcasts existence and emphasises the financial challenges of hospital...
#000 Humans of Hospitality Trailer
February 04, 2019 16:38 - 6 minutes - 6.36 MBIn this trailer Mark Cribb, your host, introduces the concept of Humans of Hospitality, why he's set it up, a few sample clips from guests, what he's hoping to achieve from these conversations and even why a pineapple is in the logo. It's a great place to start before diving into an episode.
#002 David Sax - Maison Sax
February 02, 2019 14:36 - 1 hour - 70 MBDavid Sax left his safe career in finance to invest in his first venture, The Cow. It was an overnight success, later winning the highest pub accolade (think Oscar/Olympic Gold Medal rolled into one), National Pub of the Year. Then he had the likes of Guy Ritchie, Madonna and Jeremy Clarkson as his customers, when he took over another amazing pub, The Museum Inn. Eventually David had to sell both, because up-to-18-hour days were taking their toll on his bank balance and his family. So wh...
#001 Steve Farrell - Eight Arch Brewery
January 13, 2019 19:46 - 53 minutes - 48.8 MBIn this episode we chat to Steve Farrell from Eight arch brewery in Wimborne, Dorset. We talk a little about the beer making process but more about about big brands, small brands and how Steve went from terrible home-brew all the way to his award winning beers available across the County and Country. Enjoy the conversation.