Writing on LinkedIn, McCulloch, who launched Hospitality Rising back in 2022 in response to the industry’s ongoing labour shortage, said that the campaign had now generated 300,000 job application starts.
The ‘Rise Fast, Work Young’ campaign specially targets younger workers and looks to raise the profile of hospitality as being a job with career potential.
It has reached more than 50% of all people in the UK under the age of 30 since launching in October 2022, with some 90,000 job opportunities having been posted to date to Hospitality Rising’s bespoke jobs board.
Confirming he would be pausing the initiative, McCulloch wrote: “Our vision is to attract the next generation of talent into hospitality by changing the deep-rooted negative perceptions of hospitality amongst UK Nationals.
“To make this change will take a five-to-10-year continuous national advertising campaign costing circa £1m+ per year to get the reach and repetitional impact needed to truly turn perceptions around.
“Unfortunately, this funding is not available at present, which has led me to the decision to pause the Hospitality Rising campaign for now. However, should the funding become available we will be ready and waiting to jump into action as the campaign and the team will be ready to go.”
Hospitality Rising is supported by more than 300 operators, and has the backing of celebrity chefs including Tom Kerridge, Angela Hartnett and Raymond Blanc.
