mum meets: greg früchtenicht, chief operating officer for saira hospitality.
mum is involved and invested in our industry. In this series, we hear from the people behind our charity and not-for-profit partners, who share our mission to make hospitality and recruitment better places to be.
Next, we talk to Greg Früchtenicht, Chief Operating Officer for Saira Hospitality – a non-profit transforming the way hotels connect with local communities through education. Read on to find out what made him want to work for Saira Hospitality and what he thinks are the greatest opportunities and challenges for our industry…
why does saira hospitality exist?
We exist to bridge a gap between local communities and local hospitality operators. We build this bridge via pop-up hospitality schools that focus on training essential life skills that our learners typically haven't had access to – skills like leadership, emotional intelligence and communication, which we believe are the conduit to both self-development for our students and unforgettable hospitality experiences for guests.
what made you want to work for saira hospitality?
The short answer: the opportunity to uplift lives whilst supporting a struggling industry.
The long answer: during the pandemic I co-founded a hospitality-focused non-profit called Nights On Us – our aim was to celebrate the tireless efforts of NHS workers up and down the country by offering them complimentary hotel stays across the UK. We managed to secure over 7,000 complimentary nights from leading brands such as The Hoxton, Grantley Hall, and many more.
Working on this initiative and seeing the incredible generosity of the hospitality industry somewhat cemented my ambition for the future: to pull on this thread and focus all of my efforts on the connection between hospitality and philanthropy.
Serendipitously, I then came across Saira Hospitality thanks to a dear friend, Katie Sharples, who introduced me to Saira’s founder and CEO, Harsha L’Acqua. Harsha and I hit it off and found a deep and authentic values-match between both ourselves and our philosophies about business. I would have been crazy not to join Harsha on this journey.
what does your role involve and how did you get where you are today?
As a very small non-profit, my role essentially involves a bit of everything, which is what I love about it. I work across everything from global expansion to partner development, high-level strategy and brand. I started with Saira in September 2021 with the task of bringing our work to London for the first time. Previously, we had mostly worked on pop-up schools in rural locations around the world – in countries including Mexico, the British Virgin Islands and Namibia.
I came on board at a time when COVID and Brexit had decimated the industry, and the brief was to create a semi-permanent solution to this hiring crisis. In order to do this, I had to develop a new model that allowed us to partner with multiple properties at once, rather than partnering with just one newly opening hotel per school, which had been the model when I joined.
In June 2022 we opened our first school in Hackney, which was a complete whirlwind and incredible experience for us all. We learned a lot and this helped us shape our curriculum and processes into what they are today. Since then, we’ve launched schools in Mayfair, Chelsea, and back in Hackney, staying true to our original pop-up nature. Now, 18 months from our first school, we’re gearing up to launch four programmes in 2024, so we’re hoping our ambitions of being a semi-permanent solution will become a reality this year… Watch this space!
what are saira hospitality’s proudest achievements?
Thankfully, we have so many reasons to be proud that it’s almost impossible to pick. This weekend we had a text from a Saira graduate telling us that she had won the “Shining Star Award” at one of our original partner hotels during that first programme in Hackney. Moments like that make us all incredibly proud, of course; but, truthfully, just seeing the personal development of our students and graduates is what really strikes a chord. The camaraderie and sense of teamwork that forms between students during their four weeks inside the school honestly inspires me every day – the commitment and resilience of our students has a truly lasting impact on our team.
what is saira hospitality’s vision for the future?
The big, blue-sky picture would be that every newly opening hotel around the world would incorporate some kind of community training programme into their pre-opening strategy (whether managed by Saira or not). We’ll keep you posted on that vision.
But, in the near term, Saira’s vision for London is to consistently run four programmes per year, working with existing operators and new openings alike. From there, we have ambitions to take this semi-permanent model further into Europe and beyond, whilst still developing co-branded pop-ups around the world for some of the most-loved hospitality brands in the game.
how can our community support saira hospitality?
We’re always looking to partner with hospitality businesses – non-profit and beyond – who want to support our work and, more importantly, our students. A few means of helping are…
If you’re a hospitality business:
Sponsor a cohort of students through our next school
Offer your internal spaces for our four weeks of training
Provide unforgettable hospitality experiences for our students, such as a dining experience, immersive workshop, or work-experience placements
If you’re a non-profit/charity:
Refer your customers, clients, or community to our schools for hospitality-focused upskilling
Provide us with potential training space for our quarterly programmes
Provide possible ancillary benefits to our students, such as coaching, counselling, and beyond
what does hospitality mean to you?
In a word? Caring.
And not just caring for our guests, but also for our teams, our suppliers, and everyone involved in the industry.
Authentic hospitality isn’t possible without caring.
what do you think are the greatest opportunities and challenges for our industry?
I think our biggest challenge and opportunity are one and the same, and can be summed up in one word: leadership. If we get this right as an industry, I think we’ll be in a much better position when it comes to the turnover of talent. We need to invest more in our existing teams and ensure that internal promotions are being aligned with the correct training; without a strong focus on that area of learning and development, I think we’ll continue to struggle under the weight of our industry’s heavy turnover figures.
what motivational message would you like to share with fellow hospitalitarians?
Never let discouragement stop you from committing to something you’re passionate about.
Find out more about Saira Hospitality, donate to help keep their invaluable work going, or get in touch to learn more about ways you can support their mission.
You can also read about other ways we give back at mum.