[ Above: Giovanna at The Landmark Hotel. She loves this hotel for many reasons. Giovanna went there for Champagne on her first date with husband-to-be Mario and they stayed there together on their last trip to London before he passed away 20 years later. She has also worked closely with the hotel for many years and feels it’s come on such a journey. Beautiful hotel and amazing team.]

Giovanna’s father came over from Italy in 1962 for six months to learn English and work in hotels, but he met her mother, who was from Cheshire, and didn’t go back. When she was about six, a couple who her dad had once worked for and who owned a restaurant in Southport, were selling their business, and offered her parents first refusal. The young Giovanna absolutely fell in love with the whole environment and would find any excuse to be in the restaurant doing one form of little job or another, so much so that her dad could see her enjoyment and during the summer holidays he would take her every week to the wholesale market in Liverpool at 4am and in the old school way, he would personally choose all his fish, fruit and veg – being a part of that was a real adventure for a young girl.

[Above: Giovanna with her dad. She’s a real family person and family mean the world to her. Giovanna’s father has been the biggest inspiration on her career and he is her absolute rock. She chose this picture because it was taken in the garden of her late grandparents home in Italy where her Dad grew up and where she spent summers as a teenager]

One day a new property came on the market and her father was able to realise his ambition of being the proprietor of his dream Italian restaurant.  From around 1978 the new restaurant became a prime venue, for acts and customers of Southport Theatre but also the Liverpool FC players of the day, there was a real buzz about the place.  Meantime Giovanna passed her 11 Plus and the exam and interview for Merchant Taylor’s School in Crosby. However, she was unhappy and failed to settle but was fortunate to be able to transfer to the grammar school, when someone moved from the area and liberated a place.  The school was within walking distance from home, situated between Royal Birkdale and Hillside Golf Clubs and a scene of far happier times.  Taking a year out before going to Manchester University, where she studied accountancy, led to Giovanna spending a year working in the business and it was during this time that she realized that her career future post-university, would be in hospitality.

In 1993, Giovanna had some challenges with a London based supplier and a manager travelled up to Southport from London to resolve the problems.  This man turned out to be the love of her life, Mario, and they clicked from day one.  Over the following years he spent his weekends working in the restaurant so they could spend time together to the point where he became fully integrated into the business and customers really loved him, too. 

[Above: Giovanna loves this particular picture of her and Mario because they were both really happy and it was taken during a wine trip to Sardinia. Mario spent his life working with wine and food importation/sales and it’s how they met, so it seems quite a poignant photo.]

Giovanna had always wanted to be a journalist when she was younger and as she loved the restaurant trade, writing for the Good Food Guide had always been a dream.  As it happened, in early 1999, she saw an advert in Caterer for an AA Hotel and Restaurant Inspector.  With numerous applicants for only three positions, Giovanna didn’t anticipate success.  She had two interviews and for the second borrowed a laptop to type a presentation.  Sitting behind her to be interviewed directly after her, was someone who would become a dear friend, Paul Hackett, who is still at the AA today.  Despite some anxiety throughout the application process, they both found themselves employed on the AA Hotel and Restaurant inspection team.

From 1999 to 2003 Giovanna effectively worked seven days a week as she split her time between fulfilling her hours and responsibilities at the AA, while also covering the important shifts at her parents’ restaurant.  This proved exceptionally hard work but gave Giovanna the best of both worlds.  Giovanna was fortunate to cover a number of different patches in her first few years, the North West, the Lake District (during the challenging foot and mouth crisis), Central & East England, and then ultimately Giovanna found herself responsible for central London, which brought with it the biggest section of the AA Restaurant Guide to manage.  This enabled the building of a network of chefs, restaurateurs and hoteliers in the capital but the schedule and workload were quite punishing, travelling from her home in Manchester every week. 

[Above: Jason Atherton, Clare Smyth, Marcus and Jane Wareing. Giovanna loves this picture for a number of reasons. It’s some of the old Ramsay guard that are now all super successful in their own right and have produced their own protégés. It was September 2016 and her last AA Awards working full time for the business. It was a very emotional evening for Giovanna as the AA arranged a surprise presentation for her and she had to make an unprepared speech in front of 1000 industry friends and peers.]

Around January 2006, Giovanna was promoted to a role of Key Account Executive and was responsible for liaising with approximately fifteen major Hotel Groups and whilst this more corporate role took her out of her comfort zone, she had the opportunity to forge some great relationships with some major figures of the hospitality industry.  The London and South East Area Manager role became available some 9 months later, and her experience of London and desire to manage a team again, led her to apply for the position. She loved the role and strived hard to support and develop her team. Towards the end of 2007, the opportunity arose to apply for the position of Group Area Manager, a revised version of the old Chief Hotel & Restaurant Inspector role – it involved overseeing the inspection team and also brought responsibilities for sitting on awards panels, including a panel with the national tourist boards with responsibility to update shared quality standards for hotel and B&B inspections.  Giovanna was successful in her candidacy and over the next nine years was to make the role her own.

[Above: Everyone knows Giovanna and family are huge LFC fans. She was fortunate enough to meet Steven on a number of occasions during his career at Liverpool, as he lived in Southport and then Formby and was also a partner in a restaurant business with a very old friend of hers. This picture was taken at an AA Awards that Steven kindly attended, when he was captain for both club and country.]

Giovanna was responsible for ensuring that all restaurants nominated for three, four and five Rosettes and hotels nominated for AA Red Stars, had the relevant confirmation inspections and that the nominations for all the AA Hotel, Restaurant and B&B Awards were written up for the AA Hospitality Panel to discuss at their meetings twice a year. Giovanna soon found herself sitting on a number of judging and awards panels on top of managing four regional managers and helping build training and the early consulting programmes that The AA were developing.  

[Above: Adam Reid, Mark Birchall, Niall Keating. AA Awards 2017. Three chefs whose careers Giovanna has watched go from strength to strength]

In Spring 2012, Giovanna broke her leg and had to take an enforced absence from work. This coincided with a dramatic decline in her partner, Mario’s, health.  He had crippling arthritis sadly followed by a nasty accident in early 2013. Giovanna found strength from within she didn’t realise she had, looking after Mario while juggling battles with hospitals, work schedules, care schedules.  Sadly, the love of her life passed away on 3^rd August 2013.

For the next few years Giovanna threw herself into her work, partly as a coping mechanism, feeling the emotional strain, she had moved out of the apartment they had shared for sixteen years and had relocated down south, while also fighting an unwanted, long, hard legal battle over the estate.  In January 2016 her long-time manager Simon Numphud left the business for pastures new. After settling the legal battle finally in February that year, Giovanna felt it was the right time to take some time for herself and to spend more time with family and friends, do some travelling and pursue her passion for training and mentoring hotel and restaurant teams; she made the tough decision in May 2016 to move on from The AA. 

[Above: Clare Smyth and Claude Bosi; both achieved 5 AA Rosettes at The AA Awards 2018. Two restaurants Giovanna absolutely loves and two chefs she’s very fond of and who are at the top of their game]

After handing in her notice, there was an attempt to make her reconsider and finally a half-way house in the form of a part time Special Projects and Ambassadorial role was agreed.  The objective was to champion The AA, based around a working arrangement of four to five days a month.  This proved a happy relationship for the next two years and covered the void until Simon Numphud returned to the business in a new permanent role and Giovanna’s own training business Giovanna Grossi Hospitality was by then taking off and was taking up more of her time.

Giovanna happily agreed to retain a voluntary role on the AA Hospitality Awards Panel and indeed her reach in the industry was reflected in the number of bodies, panels and committees she has contributed to and indeed continues to support.  These include The Golden Keys Concierge, The Cateys judging panels including Menu of the Year and Chef of the Year panel, The Hotel Catey Spa Professional panel as well as Hotelier of the Year, sitting on the Hospitality Action fund raising and marketing committee and judging Boutique Hotelier Awards.

[Above: Liam and Ellis Barrie. Giovanna has been a judge on the Acorn Awards for a number of years now. It’s one of the most rewarding competitions she judges. It highlights future talent in the industry. Both Ellis and Liam are Acorn Award winners and what a talent they are and what great success they’re achieving. Giovanna is super proud of them.]

Back in September 2012, Maureen Mills had invited Giovanna out to lunch with Amanda Afiya of The Caterer at The Corinthia, and whilst they knew each other, and their paths had crossed a number of times, it was to be her and Amanda’s first outing together and the rest is history…  Their friendship blossomed over the following years and so when Amanda was approached by Jo Barnes and Nicky Hancock of Sauce Communications to potentially launch a Mystery Guest business, it seemed a natural next step to involve Giovanna to take the idea further.

[Above: Giovanna and Amanda Afiya are very much a team. Giovanna says Amanda’s kind, funny, intelligent and beautiful inside and out; She can’t imagine her life without Amanda in it. She loves that neither takes themselves too seriously and that now people tend to invite them as a pair to things.]

Giovanna brought to the table extensive experience and knowledge of hotel and restaurant inspecting from a professional guide perspective, as well as a proven developer and provider of training and consulting programmes to the hospitality industry.  She could not only play a significant role in aiding the development of a state-of-the-art technology platform for the bespoke report writing by mystery inspectors but also contribute to the solutions provided thereafter.  This remains an early but exciting entrepreneurial adventure and one that suits Giovanna well.  After a career of consistent success and achievement, Giovanna has established herself as a much loved, admired and respected industry figure – the coming together of Jo, Nicky, Amanda and Giovanna is surely one to watch and an opportunity certain to deliver success to their clients while continuing to garner a high profile in the industry.  Best of luck to her and long may the future be bright…

[Above: Amanda with chef John Campbell at the Foodservice Cateys]

Amanda grew up in Surrey, attending the prestigious City of London Freemen’s School in Ashtead.  Having achieved seven O’Level (GCE) passes, Amanda was encouraged by her parents to enrol at Pitman’s Secretarial College in Wimbledon.  While it was an intensive course, with up to three hours shorthand every day, plus two hours at night, Amanda enjoyed the process and passed with flying colours.  Ironically, parallel to the secretarial course was one in journalism, which Amanda possibly would not have met the qualification bar for entry.  In March 1986, when close to graduation, Amanda applied for a secretarial role to the front of house manager (advertised in the Evening Standard) at the THF Heritage Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge (now the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park).  The upside of the job was that it felt like being behind the scenes of a stage production, a role that certainly whetted the appetite for the industry. 

After a year, Amanda moved to make her first appearance at The Caterer, which was in a secretarial capacity on the advertising side, then after another year and followed by a stint of traveling, she returned to Reed Business Information (RBI) publications with ‘Restaurateur’ and ‘Pub Caterer’ again as a PA to the Advertising Director. In 1990, Amanda started at The Caterer as secretary to the first female editor in their then 112 year history (founded 1878), years later Amanda was to become only the second female editor of the magazine. With her high standard of shorthand, Amanda was able to support certain members of the 25-strong editorial team by calling people on their behalf, asking agreed questions and making notes.  Amanda would write these up verbatim from which the journalist could more simply write copy and hit a deadline.  This proved a skill that would stand her in good stead later as a researcher. 

The recession at the turn of the ‘90s meant RBI put the brakes on graduate recruitment but they still had a first-class graduate training programme.  As a result, they decided to open up this training to those in-house and over the next few years Amanda found herself effectively PTC trained having attended courses in news reporting, sub-editing, feature writing, as well as legal courses.  In June 1993, a sub-editing role on the production desk became available and through a tough learning curve she became very quick at passing through corrections to proofs from the section heads.  There were four sub editors and two designers, however through a variety of circumstances (such as maternity or sickness), the business was unable to provide cover, and, as a result, Amanda and the production editor found themselves working 7.30am to 9.30pm every working day. 

Having slowly earned her stripes on the production desk, Amanda was able to take her first proper writing and reporting role on the chef desk and remembers a calming drink prior to interviewing Gary Rhodes as she thought every chef would reduce a journalist to tears, but gratefully learned that there was a more gentle variety.  Over the following years, Amanda covered virtually every editorial team role. 

[Amanda with Mark Sargeant, the year he cooked for the Cateys, 2015]

In 2002, Amanda’s work came to national attention when Simon Wright, then editor of the AA Restaurant Guide, confided in her regarding what was to become “The Petrus Scandal”. Marcus Wareing’s Petrus, co-owned with Gordon Ramsay, was in St James’ Street at the time that the AA Restaurant Guide were promoting the restaurant to five rosettes.  Prior to the official announcement, Roger Wood, MD of The AA, had booked a table for six at short notice, but when personally checking the arrangements immediately prior to the visit, was dis-satisfied. Mr Wood subsequently went back to The AA and personally intervened in the awarding of the promotion.  Simon Wright stood by the ethical decisions made by his professional inspectors and resigned.  After significant media pressure, The AA reversed their decision and awarded the five rosettes.  The Caterer broke the story, backed by a significant paper trail of memos and emails that had been provided by the resigning editor to Amanda, in what was to be the hospitality trade story of the decade.

During her early days, some time in 1994, Amanda had interviewed Gordon Ramsay and being of similar age they got on well, regularly speaking, with Gordon offering occasional tip offs of stories. She developed a similar relationship with Jason Atherton when he had worked for Stephen Terry in Frith Street.  It was like they all grew up together during those early times.  So when later working on The Petrus story (for three months) she had agreed with Simon Wright that as soon as he told Gordon Ramsay about the situation, he would effectively lose control of the story, meaning that it would break via The Evening Standard and then onto the nationals.  So with mutual trust, Caterer only went to press with Simon Wright’s blessing, which was on a Tuesday, appearing on newsstands on the Thursday and was the only publication to be able to source verbatim internal discussions that backed the story.

Previously, in 1994, Amanda had met chief inspector David Young of The AA at an inspectors’ conference and subsequently went on an inspection visit with him to the River Café.  David had been at the AA for 18 years when he left in 2002 and so having known both him and Simon Wright, Amanda was naturally a little wary of where she stood with the guide after their departure.  The emerging triumvirate of Gordon Cartwright, Simon Numphud and Giovanna Grossi, who were taking the AA forward, may have offered a different relationship.

[Above: Amanda with the late, great Andrew Fairlie, who she knew and relied upon for advice for much of her career – pictured with former Caterer colleagues Kerstin Kuhn (left) and Katherine Alano (right) and chef Matt Gillan (far left), who is currently opening his solo venture Heritage in Slaugham, West Sussex]

By 2003, Amanda had already been with the Caterer for thirteen years when the position of managing editor became available.  She and Mark Lewis both went for the role and Mark was to take the position for the next 11 years.  Amanda’s feeling was to be indispensible to Mark.  She and Mark had complementary skills – she had come through the magazine and had a detailed hands-on view of editing, whereas, in his new role, Mark could afford to be more strategic.  Amanda became editor in 2014 when Mark became publisher.  At this time, she was also looking after the Cateys, the Hotel Cateys and Foodservice Cateys, Hotelier of the Year, the Acorn Awards, various forums and conferences so it was a big responsibility – Writing speeches and making public addresses became, to begin with, a forced fit but necessarily on-going part of the role.

[Above: Amanda, third left, on a trip to Noma (February 2017, just before it closed to relocate) with several members of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts including Phil Howard, Brian Turner, Martyn Nail from Claridge’s and John Williams of the Ritz]

When Amanda left Caterer in October 2017, the first person to offer her work was Michelin two-starred chef Sat Bains, who suggested that she could do his restaurant PR.  While she had known Sat since 1999 and it was true she had a number of media contacts, those contacts were in a completely different context to moving forward a client’s PR strategy.  Having always lacked a degree of self-confidence with a healthy in-built fear of failure, Amanda felt it made more sense for an established PR to be behind Sat Bains.  She had known that Jo Barnes and Nicky Hancock of Sauce Communications were long-time admirers of Sat and would be both delighted and capable of managing his account.  So, with Amanda fronting a pitch, the relationship with Sat was established. 

At the same time, Amanda had taken a non-exec directorship on the board of hospitality recruitment specialists Cartwheel, as well as a six month contract in an ambassadorial and writing role at The Caterer. She continues to write for The Caterer today. Testament to the high regard Amanda is held within the hospitality industry, she continued to represent bodies which she is proud to give back her time to support.  These included chairing the fundraising and marketing committee for Hospitality Action, sitting on the fundraising committee for Adopt a School (for which she is also a trustee), a judge for the Cateys and The Acorns (previous chef winners of the 30 under 30 Acorn Award have included Marco Pierre White, John Burton Race, Jason Atherton and Gary Rhodes).  So despite having moved with her family to Tavistock, she would continue to be doing an amount of travelling up to London as well as throughout the UK.  As Jo and Nicky were delighted to have Sat Bains as a client, they suggested that Amanda might write inspection reports on their clients’ properties, which could coincide with her visits to London. A win-win and so began the arrangement that brought in the co-founding expertise of Giovanna Grossi, from which Sauce Intelligence was born.

Fast forward to the present and Sauce Intelligence has a full-function, custom-built, state-of-the-art technology platform to facilitate client engagements, the development of which was funded by Sauce Communications.  A client project is a four-step process, first the consultation to fully understand the client, their goals, brand standards and objectives.  Second is an audit to assess all areas of the guest experience.  Third is comprehensive reporting from multiple and on going mystery guests visits, against a bespoke reporting structure with tailored performance analytics to understand how the business is meeting its own objectives.  A significant part of that is gathering emotional intelligence ‘how did particular elements of the stay at the property make you feel’ and this can be a key differentiator for operators.  Finally, solutions that may range from a raft of training options to refocus the staff on meeting brand objectives and cultural values through to recruitment, media and PR – a one-stop-shop solution offering to the hotel and restaurant industry.

This is something that is very exciting to Amanda and she is thrilled to be a key part of it going forward.  Amanda has clearly broken boundaries in her career and set and passed standards that are to be admired.  No doubt the current venture will be approached with the same vigour, passion and enthusiasm that has characterised Amanda throughout her career.  Best of luck and wishing her well into the future…

Mark Lewis is the current CEO of the charity Hospitality Action.  Mark’s family home was in Maidenhead, situated close to Boulter’s Lock by the river Thames.  So it was a trip down memory lane for Mark to be at Roux at Skindles, next to Maidenhead bridge on the opposite bank of the river, in the redeveloped grand old hotel building of one time fame, fortune and mixed repute, less than half a mile from his childhood home. 

On this particular evening, Michel Roux Snr and Brian Turner were ‘in conversation’ over food, wine and Jazz, in the beautiful, contemporary bar found upstairs at the new eaterie.  These two legends of the industry were working with Mark to host a charity dinner.

At the turn of the 1990s, Mark’s career begun as a travel writer, including responsibility for the Rough Guides to Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.  Having decided to settle down in the UK, Mark started a long association with Reed Publishing, initially working at Computer Weekly before making the 2004 move across to Caterer Magazine.  Mark started at Caterer as deputy editor before rising within a couple of years to editor and then from 2012 onto the role of publisher. 

Overall, Mark has invested fifteen plus years in working closely with the hospitality industry, developing a strong industry understanding combined with a broad network that has naturally provided the perfect platform for his current role with Hospitality Action.  Indeed for the last decade of his time at The Caterer, Mark was also on the board of trustees of Hospitality Action.  So in 2017, when Mark’s predecessor Penny Moore decided to retire, the role of CEO of Hospitality Action was one that Mark could naturally add significant value to, as Mark suggests, “along with the industry knowledge and network, I am writer by trade and telling compelling stories of peoples experiences is a key part of communicating the message of the charity.”

The beginnings of Hospitality Action are to be found in 1837 via the coffee shop owners of the day.  This was a time predating modern restaurants and these owners were not focused on the business of charity but looking at pulling together a communal pension pot.  As the age of Victorian Britain progressed and the notion of philanthropy spread, so the pension pot became more charitable in the recognition of a duty of care to employees.  Over time hotels, restaurants, bars, pubs and food service have all fallen under the umbrella of hospitality and so relevant to the charity.

Initially the charity owned a portfolio of properties up and down the land to help house those industry workers who were perhaps retired or who could not afford accommodation any other way.  A further example of a former Hospitality Action property was the PM Club in London’s Earl’s Court, which was designed to provide young chefs aged 16-24 years with somewhere to stay in return for a token rent.  In their early days, after arriving in the capital in search of work, Jason Atherton (above) and Stephen Terry were both residents at the PM Club.  Now the principle Patron, Jason Atherton has become proactive in his advocacy of the Charity, as an example starting what has become the popular Hospitality Action event called ‘Social Sunday’ (So named after his international Social Company).

In recent decades the charity has now moved away from a portfolio of property and into providing a raft of products from an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) through to the delivery of grants to help people.  The Hospitality EAP is an outsourced full service offering with significant adopters like Whitbread and Costa among 250 business clients large and small.  The cost is £5 per person per year to the company, who absorb the cost centrally as part of the welfare benefits to staff.  Historically, Hospitality Action support has been reactive to those that had existing acute challenges.  Poverty, physical and mental health issues are the most common challenges. The Hospitality EAP is designed to offer help to prevent the problems becoming acute, so to both assist the welfare of staff and help the employer maintain a happy, healthy and productive workforce.  

At the other end of the spectrum the charity offers a contact scheme aimed primarily at the retired called Golden Friends, providing events like group afternoon tea gatherings, lunch trips through to contact via newsletters, birthday and Christmas cards. All of which helps keep loneliness at bay later in life.

Family Days Out is an event programme where the charity recognises the knock on impact to the family unit of hard times affecting the hospitality worker.  So, to support the family unit to have days out together, events like family theatre or cinema trips with some pocket money are granted to provide much welcomed support.

The general awareness in the industry of the existence, work and projects of Hospitality Action may be ready to take the next step, today these are fairly well understood in the more senior echelons of the industry.  The success of events such as Back to the Floor (See pic Top), Social Sunday and In Conversation with Michel Roux Snr are testament to the wonderful support from that peer group.  However, were you to ask those that actually work the kitchen or floor of hotels and restaurants up and down the country “Tell me about Hospitality Action,” perhaps a number may not have even heard of the charity. 

To go some way to remedy, there are bodies that represent the industry such as UKHospitality (including BHA – British Hospitality Association) and The Institute of Hospitality, through to the more bespoke bodies representing branches of work such as Housekeeping or Concierges. Mark feels the distribution of these bodies offer vital lines of communication as part of a strategy to spread the force for good message. Sally Beck’s quote (General Manager Lancaster Hotel, below), “When people know about Hospitality Action they fall in love with it!” resonates with Mark as applying in a very relevant way to three distinct categories of people: those in the industry who are giving, those in the industry who qualify to receive and beyond to a wider potential fund raising audience outside of the hospitality industry going forward.

There are natural movements in the world that are helping as the lines continue to blur between the hospitality industry and the wider public. What does this mean? Consider for instance, thirty years ago when waiters were at arms length and a chef never appeared out of the kitchen. In contrast recent years have witnessed the rapid growth in the awareness and accessibility of personalities in the industry.  The role of television and modern social media has been extraordinary in changing the dynamic of the public to industry relationship. Naturally those key personalities have an opportunity to use their enhanced voice to support causes such as Hospitality Action: From top end chefs like Jason Atherton, Tom Kerridge, Heston Blumenthal, Michel Roux Snr and Brian Turner who are all strong charity Patrons and advocates.

Beyond this, the UK have seen a cultural change epitomised by the general trend away from formality to a more relaxed, informal and inclusive hospitality experience, which engages the general public more effectively with the industry and creates that desired natural empathy with industry charities like Hospitality Action.  “An example is tonight where the guests have been delighted to hear from industry legends and great Patrons like Michel Roux Snr and Brian Turner but moreover, from the feedback I’ve heard, those guests have a much more natural understanding and empathy for the charity they are supporting,” reflects Mark.

Looking ahead, a partial brand refresh is afoot that is to involve, as Mark puts it, “surrounding the industry by being visible where those most in need can find us” such as delivering the hospitality equivalent of the Samaritans poster at the end of Clapham Junction station, “which may be from arranging with suppliers to have The Hospitality Action details printed on the blue paper towelling used to wipe down surfaces in kitchens up and down the country.  That would be our equivalent of that poster,” considers Mark.

There are around 3.2 million people in the hospitality industry in this country and the charity raises approximately £2m per annum.  The scope for greater involvement and touch is a clear objective and with the passion, knowledge and skill set of Mark Lewis leading Hospitality Action forward it will only go from strength to strength through his tenure, making a positive mark on a 182 year old charity before passing the baton to the next custodian of the good works of such a worthy charity.