Hospitality Recruitment Through an Operator’s Lens
Taste Hospitality is a specialist hospitality recruitment business built by an operator, not a career recruiter.
Founded by someone who has spent over two decades running pubs, restaurants, and premium dining rooms across the UK and Australia, the business was created to bring operational judgement back into hospitality hiring.
We’ve led teams, carried accountability for performance, and operated in environments where standards matter and pressure is constant. That lived experience shapes how we assess people, advise clients, and make recruitment decisions.
OPERATIONAL CONTEXT
Running a venue exposes realities that CVs never show.
You learn quickly that titles don’t guarantee leadership, experience doesn’t always translate to judgement, and confidence in an interview doesn’t predict how someone behaves when service turns and standards are tested.
Having operated venues ourselves, we understand how leadership actually shows up day to day:
how decisions are made under pressure
how standards are upheld when it’s difficult
and how trust is earned or lost inside a team
That perspective shapes how we assess people.
WHY JUDGEMENT MATTERS IN HOSPITALITY HIRING
Hospitality is a people business, but it’s also a pressure business.
Margins are tight. Expectations are high. Teams feel leadership decisions immediately. A single poor hire in a senior role can destabilise culture, performance, and retention long before it shows in numbers.
Taste Hospitality was built on the belief that recruitment decisions should be informed by operational judgement, not just recruitment process.
Our role is not to sell candidates.
It’s to make considered calls about who will actually perform in real environments.
Because our background is operational, not transactional, we approach recruitment from a different starting point.
We look past presentation and into behaviour.
We pay close attention to decision-making patterns.
And we consider how someone will function inside an existing team, not just whether they’ve done a similar role before.
This perspective doesn’t replace process.
It gives the process weight.
A DIFFERENT STARTING POINT
We’re here to help you find your next right hire
Our Values
Your team is more than a schedule.
We recruit people who raise standards, support those around them, and contribute positively to the culture you’re building. Skills matter, but behaviour, attitude, and leadership presence determine long-term success..People over Placements
Fit over fill
A quick fix might cover a shift. The right hire shapes the whole team.
We focus on alignment between leadership style, expectations, capability, and environment. That alignment drives performance, stability, and retention — not rushing to fill a gap.Culture over Commissions
We take a long-term view.
When the right person joins a venue, teams settle, standards lift, and guests feel the difference. That outcome matters more than short-term wins.The Operator’s Edge
We’re not career recruiters.
We’ve run services, carried rosters, led teams through busy nights, and made decisions when standards and pressure collide.That experience shapes how we recruit:Experience — years running pubs, restaurants, and premium venues gives us operational judgement, not theory.Insight — we recognise the behaviours and leadership styles that strengthen teams and hold up when it matters most.Care — every referral reflects on your venue and on us. We only put forward people we’re confident will add long-term value.
With an operator’s eye, we recruit like every hire influences the whole venue — because it does