This week I sat down with the brilliant Ella de Beer co-founder of Electric Mayonnaise and one of those hospitality people whose career reminds you just how brilliantly unpredictable this industry can be.From waitressing at 14 in South Africa (while telling everyone she was 16… obviously), to opening restaurants, running pubs, building multi-site businesses, leading people functions at brands like Ottolenghi & MJMK and now helping shape the next generation of hospitality leaders, Ella’s story is packed with graft, cur...
This week I sat down with the brilliant Ella de Beer co-founder of Electric Mayonnaise and one of those hospitality people whose career reminds you just how brilliantly unpredictable this industry can be.
From waitressing at 14 in South Africa (while telling everyone she was 16… obviously), to opening restaurants, running pubs, building multi-site businesses, leading people functions at brands like Ottolenghi & MJMK and now helping shape the next generation of hospitality leaders, Ella’s story is packed with graft, curiosity, and a healthy dose of “why not give that a go?”
Along the way there are some absolute hospitality gems… including the moment she handed Leonardo DiCaprio chicken on a stick, worked 3am Soho finishes fuelled by “Chinese tea” and helped open a 300 cover restaurant just as the financial crash hit. Ideal timing.
But underneath the brilliant stories is something deeper, a conversation about the power of hospitality as a career, the importance of learning by doing, and why developing people might just be the most important job our industry has.
In this episode, Ella and I get into…
• Starting in hospitality at 14 and discovering confidence through people
• Moving from South Africa to the Netherlands (and learning Dutch while running a restaurant)
• The chaos, glamour and 600-cover Saturdays of Soho hospitality in the early 2000s
• Why big volume restaurants teach you lessons you never forget
• The moment a 300-seat opening met the global financial crash
• What London operators learn the hard way when they buy countryside pubs
• Building "Sourced Market" at St Pancras and what happens when 1,500 small suppliers meet train station footfall
• Moving from operations into people leadership, and why ops experience changes everything
• The unique magic (and slightly chaotic brilliance) of working at Ottolenghi
• Why hospitality might be the best industry in the world for social mobility
• How Electric Mayonnaise is rethinking hospitality education through apprenticeships
• And why learning in hospitality should always be practical, human, and immediately useful
Some cracking quote-ables from Ella
“Hospitality is where I found my confidence”
“You could stand behind the till at St Pancras for eight hours and never stop serving”
“Hospitality has to be taught by people who’ve actually done it”
“We’re just teaching the way we all learned, by doing the job”
“Our responsibility is to show young people this industry can be a real career”
Why this episode is worth your ears
If you’ve ever started in hospitality with no real plan… and somehow found yourself building a career along the way, this episode will feel very familiar.
Ella’s story is a brilliant reminder that hospitality isn’t just about service or restaurants.
It’s about confidence, opportunity, learning on the job, and giving people a chance to grow into something bigger than they thought possible.
And if that doesn’t make you proud to be in hospitality…
You might be in the wrong trade
Show Partners
A big shout out to the first of today’s show partner, RotaCloud, the people management platform for shift-based teams.
RotaCloud lets managers create and share rotas, record attendance, and manage annual leave in minutes — all from a single, web-based app.
It makes work simple for your team, too, allowing them to check their rotas, request holiday, and even pick up extra shifts straight from their phones.
Try RotaCloud’s time-saving tools today by heading to https://rotacloud.com/phil
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