Caroline Cooper
Hospitality Business and Leadership Coach

What I can do for you

As a professional business and leadership coach, specialising in one to one coaching, mentoring and training, my key focus is in helping you, as owners of independent hotels, conference centres, and restaurants make your businesses more successful and more profitable through increasing sales, controlling costs and improving productivity, to help improve your bottom line.

I was the host of the recent series How to Give Your Hotel a Competitive Edge, and a published author of the Hotel Success Handbook, which provides practical sales and marketing tips for owners of small independent hotels, B&Bs and guest accommodation.

My next project is launching an online leadership coaching programme for hoteliers, due to start in September.

25 years experience in the hospitality industry, working in both operational and support roles, including hotels, event catering, conference centres and contract catering, means I have plenty of first had experience of the industry and have seen what works and what doesn’t.

My role as Head of Learning & Development for one of the UK’s leading catering companies, has given me extensive experience of supporting managers and staff in all aspects of running a successful hospitality business.

My role in the business is to discuss your precise objectives and help you choose the right level of support to meet these.

In addition to one to one coaching and handholding to focus on specific business challenges I run open or in house seminars, and training workshops on effective business leadership, and team development. These give you and your team the skills and confidence to run your business smoothly with less effort by capitalising on your strengths and helping to fill the gaps where you have less experience and expertise.  I also have a reputation for my contacts, so if I don’t feel that I’m not the best person to help you directly I’ll usually know someone who can!

For the past four years I have been working with a cross section of small businesses, helping them in five key areas:

• Improving business performance by focusing on business strategy, and the setting and achievement of long-term goals
• Reviewing their business model to ensure it meets the current market and is a viable proposition
• Identify actions to increase patronage and sales revenues
• Establishing systems and procedures to ensure consistency, cost control and efficiency, saving time, money and resources to have a positive impact on the bottom line
• Improving personal productivity by coaching on issues around prioritisation, personal organisation and effectiveness.

I also have extensive experience of writing and delivering training, development and leadership programs within hospitality businesses, both in-house and externally accredited programmes. So if you need some input to get your team up to speed I can both help you decide what might be the best (and most cost effective) way to approach it and advise you on how to source this if need be. My first hand knowledge of the business means any training is specific to hospitality, and I’m always able to relate to your staff and use examples they understand, enabling them to transfer their new learning to the business and getting the result you need.

During my time in the business I’ve gained experience of dealing with all aspects of training and can offer advice and support on training and staff development issues, and even what to look for in choosing a training provider to deliver your training.

My credentials

I hold a diploma in Corporate and Executive Coaching and am a certified NLP practitioner. I am a member of Tourism South East, the Institute of Hospitality (MIH), and sit on the Southeast Regional Committee of the British Hospitality Association.

Tony Robertson
Executive Chef and Craft Trainer

Tony is our associate catering expert. He has expansive experience in catering and currently works with a huge range of clients, covering private functions through to consultancy work and even supporting specialist caterers for large summer functions such as corporate hospitality at Wimbledon.
Tony has been responsible for the setting up and overseeing the smooth running of many kitchens over the years, as well as the development of thousands of recipes, product promotions and concepts. This experience gives him the skill to be able to review quickly what can be done to enable your kitchen to run more smoothly and cost effectively, and can assist you in ensuring that your menu offer is relevant to your audience, as well as reflecting current food trends.

He comments “Customers have much higher expectations these days. Over the years there’s been a real move towards lighter dishes were stronger flavours, with menus varied according to the target market. Diners definitely prefer more flavoursome food now than a few years ago. There’s a far bigger demand for fresh tasting food, enhanced with plenty of herbs spices and flavoured oils.

“My biggest tip is always to keep things simple. Source quality produce preferably local, work on just 4 to 5 movements per plate and – from a personal perspective – work in partnership with an excellent front of house manager, allowing you to focus on the food.“

Tony has worked as a craft trainer for one of the U.K.’s largest specialist caterers, training chefs, and front of house managers on menu planning, costing and general kitchen management. He has excellent ability to relate to chefs, as he fully understands their challenges. This makes him very successful in working with the kitchen brigade to implement systems and review menus to enable effective cost control whilst still delivering a first-class product.

Lucy Whittington
Marketing Expert

My business marketing management experience spans small start-ups to International Plcs, and I managed to squeeze in an MBA and get MCIM (Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing) qualified too.

But what’s taught me the most is running my own business — a Marketing Consultancy and web site design company www.inspiredbusinessmarketing.com

I’m happy to admit I’m ‘travel-mad’, and write a travel blog and manage an Australian travel accommodation web site, I also pen a business blog and am an ‘Expert’ contributor to the Marketing Donut (a small business marketing advice web site sponsored by Google and the Royal Mail).

I’ve now combined my love of travel, business and marketing to focus on helping hotel and travel business owners get great results from their marketing #www.fullybookedhotel.co.uk and am co-outhor of the Hotel Success Handbook with Caroline.

You can also find me ‘Twittering’ about my latest travel, marketing and business thoughts. twitter.com/LucyWhittington