Hospitality Is an Incredibly Skilled Career Choice

It takes massive time and effort to excel in this underestimated industry

Welcome to The Sauce, deep travels through food and drink culture written by me, Charlie Brown, founder and former owner of what was once named Britain’s best independent wine store.

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“A monkey could do this job.” Photo by John Fornander on Unsplash

Just because someone went to college doesn’t mean they know how to open a bottle of wine.

Just because someone’s IQ is above average doesn’t mean being a chef is below them.

Just because someone can do math doesn’t mean they can make a decent cocktail.

Yet this is still what many people think. That hospitality is an unskilled, stop-gap job. That it’s not for you because you’d be wasting your intelligence.

I know first-hand how hard it is to make it in hospitality. How incredibly knowledgeable, intelligent and quick-witted you have to be to be considered great.

Make no mistake. Hospitality is a skilled, difficult-to-master career. You can see that by how few good hospo workers there are out there.

I mean, when was the last time you encountered genuinely great service?

I’m here to call BS on the whole “hospitality is unskilled” schtick. Because the sooner the world accepts that good hospitality is a true art form, the sooner we can start treating it as the legitimate, amazing career path it is.

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It’s 8pm and my wine bar is hopping

There are 20 people in our small space and it’s just me and my manager running the show, from plating cheese boards to pouring glasses.

Table one is out of water. On my way to top it up, I’m stopped by table four who ask me for another couple of glasses of wine. Returning from the water top-up, I quietly drop a couple of menus on table three because I noticed they had finished their bottle.

The 8.15 pm booking has just turned up. My manager runs out of the kitchen where he’s on food plating duty to welcome them, seat them and explain our concept. We do a quick shuffle pass-by on the floor as he tells me they’re celebrating a birthday. I mentally note to pour them a glass of fizz, on us.

But not before I’ve gone back to table three for their order. And sent a cheese board to table one. And checked on the new table because I noticed they were looking a little confused at the menu.

Don’t forget the fizz. Don’t forget the cheese board. Don’t forget to place every order on the system.

Don’t forget to breathe.

This was my life for years and it wasn’t easy to learn. It took me a long time to become good at service.

In fact, I never stopped learning. You can’t.

I was incredibly proud of my capabilities and experience, yet most weeks I would still receive flippant comments about how hospitality is such an easy job.

When I retire, I’d love a little job like yours.

So I presume you didn’t go to college if you’re working here?

Or in the words of my manager at my first waitressing gig back when I was 16:

A monkey could do this job.

The idea that anyone can do this job is the reason why so many of your service experiences suck.

It’s why the best joints will put their staff through their paces.

That episode in The Bear when Richie spends a whole week polishing forks isn’t far off reality. When a restaurant or bar cares enough to put you through proper training, it’s rigorous, exhausting and makes you want to cry every single day.

It’s hard work and many people quit. They might convince themselves they left because the work is beneath them but more often than not it’s because the reality of the job is so much harder than their expectation.

I saw it over and over again in my wine bar. Every time I hired someone who turned out like this, they made me cry in frustration.

Because I know something they don’t. I know if you put your all into hospitality — if you see it as a career not a stop-gap — then you can become incredibly skilled at something truly amazing.

My party trick is that I can identify wine blind.

If you give me a glass without telling me what it is, I’ve got a good shot at identifying the grape variety, country and region in which it was grown, and sometimes even the vintage and producer.

I once identified a wine down to the region of origin and grape variety just by looking at it.

Granted I don’t get it right every time, that’s impossible. But I’m not bad.

I don’t say this to brag, I say this to point out that I have a skill. One I gained through years of working in hospitality. Through tasting thousands of wines. Through dedicating both my spare and professional hours to fermented grape juice.

The same goes for my chef friends who spend all their time learning about food. It goes for my bartender friends who dedicate hours to discovering and creating new drinks.

It even goes for the most misunderstood of hospitality workers — baristas.

The best baristas live coffee. It’s not just about knowing how to serve a good flat white or V60 (a skill in itself), it’s about learning about coffee at the deepest, geekiest level. It’s about dedicating your life to the coffee bean.

Without hospitality staff at this level, you get crappy coffee. You get bad food. You get uninteresting wine. You get terrible service.

You get places that don’t give a f**k about you, the produce they’re selling or about the experience they give you.

Lord knows we don’t need any more places like these.

Conversely, when you come across good hospitality staff, you get an experience worth your hard-earned time and money.

For more of these to exist, you need workers who not only take pride in their work but who believe their job is worth so much more than society tells them it is.

Because society thinks it’s a terrible career.

Studies show that only only 10% see it as a well-respected career choice.

When I opened my wine store and bar, it upset some of my family members. They thought I could do more with my degree, even though pursuing a traditional office career for nearly a decade had landed me nowhere.

They were wrong. And it didn’t take them long to change their mind once my wine store and bar became successful.

There was nothing unskilled about my career — or any hospo job. To assume there is is, frankly, offensive.

Ask any chef, barista, or bartender worth their salt and they’ll tell you the same. They worked hard to get where they are. They studied. They learned on the job.

And they can do things most people can’t.

Now that’s skill.

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If my future kid told me they were entering hospitality, I would be delighted because I know what that means for them.

It means learning mad skills. It means never being out of work because quality hospo staff are hard to find.

Unfortunately, it also means being underestimated. It means justifying your career over and over. It means people making assumptions about your intelligence.

These people are wrong.

Those who believe it’s a stop-gap job are wrong. Those who believe it’s unskilled are wrong.

Hospitality isn’t what most people think it is and this is a hill I am prepared to die on because I know different.

Hospitality changed my life. It gave me skills few people possess.

Who knows. If you give it a chance, perhaps it could change your life too.

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