How to survive working in hospitality in 2026 as a 52 year old.

I started working at 14. I wasn’t learning about hospitality. I was learning how to survive. Head down, graft hard, don’t ask questions. That was the deal.

The generation coming into hospitality now didn’t grow up with that deal. They think differently. And for years, that did my head in.

We begged for a week off. They want at least three.

We wanted every hour going. They cap out at 35.
We were told to do something and we did it. They want to know why.

I spent years measuring every new hire against my own standard. Some seemed to get it. Most didn’t. And the ones I thought were cut from the same cloth? The pandemic came and they just vanished. People I would have put money on walked away without so much as a backward glance.
And honestly, that was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because it forced me to stop expecting 1999 attitudes in a 2026 workforce.

The staff I have now are brilliant. They just think differently to me. Which means I have to lead differently.

They don’t respond to “because I said so.” They respond to being asked. To understanding the goal. To knowing their work actually matters.
That’s not a weakness. That’s a workforce that will run through walls for you the moment you stop fighting it and start leading it.

The industry didn’t go soft. It got honest.

The managers who accept that will build teams.

The ones who don’t will keep writing job ads.

The Fix

Most operators try to fix ten things at once.

That’s usually why nothing sticks.

The best piece of advice I ever got was simple:
Improve one thing a week. Not ten.

When you try to change everything at once, people stop tracking. They smile. They nod. Then they go straight back to doing exactly what they were doing before.

One thing. Every week.

Small enough to finish.
Clear enough to know when it’s actually done.

Some weeks it’s operational.
Some weeks it’s people.
Some weeks it’s a process that’s been annoying the whole team for months.

It doesn’t matter what it is.
It just has to be better on Friday than it was on Monday.

52 weeks. 52 improvements.

Nobody feels overwhelmed.
Nobody digs their heels in.

You improve the business.
You improve the team.

And everyone stays on board.

That’s the whole game.

The dirty little secret..

The dirty secret of hospitality retention? Most managers were never taught to manage.

They were brilliant on the floor. Fast, reliable, guests loved them. So they got promoted.

And nobody sat them down and said: your job is completely different now.

You're not serving tables anymore. You're serving the people who serve tables.

That shift is harder than it sounds. It means having the conversation you'd rather avoid on a packed Saturday when you're already hanging on by a thread. Giving actual feedback instead of nodding and moving on. Clocking when someone on your team is starting to check out before they've made the decision to leave.

Most never get there. Not because they're bad people. Because nobody showed them how.

So they manage the way they were managed. Which in hospitality, is usually some mix of pressure, assumption, and hoping it all works out.

The operators getting retention right aren't necessarily paying the most. They're just investing in their managers. Teaching them to lead people, not just run a shift.

Sort the manager. Sort the culture. The retention sorts itself.

Retention

The hospitality industry has a retention problem. Most operators are treating the symptom instead of the cause.

Higher wages help. But they're not the whole answer.

The people who stay in hospitality long-term. The ones who become your best servers, your kitchen anchors, your shift leads. They stay because they feel like they're growing. They stay because someone invested in them.

In fifteen years of hospitality operations, the single biggest driver of retention I've seen isn't pay. It's whether the person felt like their manager actually saw them.

That means:

• Feedback that's specific, not generic
• Scheduling that respects their lives
• A path forward, even a small one. More responsibility, a title, a skill
• Being told clearly what good looks like so they can actually achieve it

The labour market isn't getting easier. The operators who build cultures where people want to stay are going to have a structural advantage over the ones who keep hiring and hoping.

Retention is a leadership problem. It always has been.

What's Actually Breaking Hospitality Businesses Right Now

Canadian hospitality operators are under real pressure in 2025. Not theoretical pressure. The kind where you're watching your margins shrink while your labour costs climb, your best people walk out the door, and guests expect more than ever before.

Most operators know something is wrong. The part they get wrong is the fix.

The most common problems I see aren't complicated. But they are persistent.

Labour is the one that never goes away. Turnover, shortages, constant recruitment. You spend more time filling gaps than you do building anything. Your managers are firefighting. Your systems are whatever survived last week. And next week it starts again.

Cost pressure is real and it's everywhere. Food. Beverage. Utilities. Rent. All up. Margins down. A lot of operators are working harder than they ever have and making less. That's not a sustainable position.

Technology is supposed to help. Sometimes it does. A lot of the time, operators buy tools they don't fully understand, implement them without a plan, and end up with expensive software no one actually uses. Tech without a clear purpose is just overhead.

And guests have moved on. Great food alone doesn't cut it anymore. People want to feel something when they walk through your door. Atmosphere, connection, a reason to come back. If you're not delivering that, you're easy to replace.

Here's the thing though. The operators who crack it aren't doing anything magical. They step back. They look honestly at how their business actually runs, not how they think it runs. And they rebuild from there. Better systems. Clearer leadership. A guest experience that has some intention behind it.

There's no off-the-shelf answer to any of this. I've been in this industry long enough to know that.

What I do at CSE Beard Consultancy is sit alongside operators and work through it properly. The financials. The floor-level reality. The people stuff. The strategy. All of it, together, because they're not separate problems.

If your business feels like it's stuck in a cycle you can't get out of, that's usually a sign the approach needs to change, not just the effort.

We're ready when you are.