Nick Gillett: The big boozy, British brain drain

By Harpers Editorial

Published: 19 December, 2022

I think almost all of us in the industry widely accept it, now. We’re suffering from a brain drain – a shrinking pool of talent across both hospitality and spirits. As someone who understands the importance of recruiting the right people, I say it’s now a real problem.

At Mangrove, our recruitment priorities are less traditional than that of our counterparts. We don’t focus on CVs as long as your arm, impressive psychometric test results, or big company experience. For us, it’s all about individual qualities that fit with our business and the way we do things. Do you care about products? Are you curious and bold? Great. It’s about quality over quantity here at #teampurple and for us, that’s been a successful strategy so far.

That said, it’s now becoming evident that both the pandemic and the acute labour shortage nationwide, is affecting hospitality disproportionately. Given that the spirits sector has always recruited from ‘the other side of the bar’, particularly for sales and ambassadorial roles – this is worrying. It’s been a perfect storm, right? After venues closed during Covid, the creative and customer-focused heroes of hospitality were snapped up by other industries and, given that there’s a good chance they’ll get better pay rates elsewhere, why would they come back to an industry with a dicey future?

There are also other contributing factors to the brain drain. With hospitality still trying to ‘make do’ on lower numbers, recruitment can be sparse. These reduced figures are also driving a deskilling and downsizing of teams, as companies look to get more ‘bang for buck’ from the workforce. Which in turn is not always conducive to employee wellbeing.

Turning to the off-trade, we know that successful sales and procurement professionals who learn their trade in beer, wines, and spirits, can end up moving to larger categories when successful and they’ll often never return to the industry.

The effects of all the above are more problematic than just a lack of bodies behind bars and desks. The hiatus in hospitality had a knock-on effect and senior roles across spirits were not only made redundant, but a large number of people in senior buying and sales roles left to go elsewhere or set up their own consultancies. As these key individuals left, inter-business relationships broke down and, in my opinion, it really has fractured the industry. Yes, there’s a trickle of new talent coming in, but those relationships and networks can take years to build back up.

Allow me to focus on the role of a buyer here. It’s a great example of a position that has suffered because of the brain drain, and we’re now seeing less experienced professionals (no offence intended) snapping up these roles, particularly in the on-trade. What I quite often see are overstressed, time-poor buyers who don’t have the capacity or energy to explore the sector, instead falling back on what’s easy – which is usually the first big guy through the door.

Or, if it’s not time and energy that’s the issue, they’re motivated by numbers instead of product, always chasing that elusive bottom line, or instructed to by the powers at be. I’m sorry. If price is your sole consideration, you’re never going to have a diverse and vibrant range that customers explore time and time again. On the production side, you have makers and creators that pour heart and soul into living and breathing products. We need to make sure that every decision-maker in the industry is of the same mindset – and doesn’t have their brain buried in a spreadsheet.

This downward spiral into price obsession has all sorts of repercussions across the industry and whilst I know that money’s tight, the end result is going to be reduced consumer choice. Why’s this problematic? Because consumers are headed in the opposite direction. We’ve never had more discerning, engaged consumers. Customers have never been so interested, so willing to experiment with and discover new drinks. If our job as an industry is to satisfy consumer desire, we’re certainly not going to do it with shelves full of the same old brand names.

Now, on to the positive part. There are businesses large and small who are doing great things with their recruitment and their buying. Visit Waitrose or M&S and you’ll find a terrific range of beers, wines and spirits. I know first-hand that this is due to knowledgeable buyers who invest the time into researching, tasting, and visiting distilleries – it’s all effort driven. When it comes to the on trade, similarly great things are happening in some chains. The likes of Incipio Group and the Gordon Ramsay Group are diversifying their ranges, continually exploring, and taking a culinary angle when forming their offerings.

As with all things, I’m aware that this too shall pass. The brain drain won’t last forever. But I think there is one big thing we can all do to minimise the damage – and that’s educate.

The new demographic of professionals entering the industry are more motivated, more curious, and dare I say it, bolder than their older counterparts. If we can share our experience (and now I’m speaking as a man of a certain age), that, combined with this hunger and curiosity, will create an exceptional future workforce.

The success stories I mentioned above all have education in common – their staff are knowledgeable, the companies themselves run ongoing training programmes, and above all else, everyone involved is really interested at a product level – they’re interested in booze! Similarly, the masterclasses we run here at Mangrove are more popular than ever, with swathes of on-trade teams in attendance. It shows there’s an appetite to learn.

The more we educate, the more our new teams of professionals will understand the creative and explorative nature of spirits. And if we can bolster that appreciation and nurture the reason to care about individual products – the talent pool will continue to feed the industry’s success, no matter how small it gets.

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