September 18th marked a significant day for the hospitality industry; the UK’s first ever National Hospitality Day!
Involving a nationwide celebration of the brilliant businesses that make up this exciting and inspiring industry, it was certainly a big date for the diary.
It was a day to say thank you. Thank you to all the hotels, restaurants, pubs, bars, foodservice outlets and suppliers for showing exceptional resilience during the pandemic. Thank you for welcoming customers back with open arms and keeping us safe, well fed and looked-after. Thank you for providing a setting for us to make those irreplaceable memories with loved ones as we unite over a delightful dinner and drinks, or a warm brew and slice of cake.
On this day, operators and suppliers were invited to provide exciting activities and events, so that customers could delight in their services and also support the industry at venues up and down the country.
Now it’s time to reflect on this momentous National Hospitality Day with a showcase of the highlights. Of course, there are far too many to mention in one go, so we have cherry picked just a few…
- Celtic Manor Resort created a bespoke cocktail with 100% of proceeds donated to National Hospitality Day charities. They also announced they will be holding a cracker-less Christmas and instead will be donating £1 for each booking to Hospitality Action.
- Wahaca donated £1 for each Margarita sold and closed restaurants early the following day, so that teams could enjoy some well-deserved time off together.
- Apprenticeship provider, HIT Training, in partnership with Hospitality Pathways, launched a series of free workshops to help close the chef skills gap. Budding young chefs had the real-life experience of working in a bustling street food kitchen, gaining a handful of transferable skills in the process, from basic knife techniques to food safety. No food went to waste on the day, with all 1,100 portions of food donated to those in need.
- Farncombe Estate donated all the money from its food and drink sales on the day.
Truly inspiring stuff! We were delighted to see such generous and meaningful events happening across the food and drink scene this National Hospitality Day.
From all of us here at BRITA Professional, thank you to every single person who works in our treasured hospitality industry.
