Welcome to The Caterer's Best Places to Work in Hospitality

Identifying the Top 30 hospitality companies that lead the way in employee engagement


The Caterer's Best Places to Work in Hospitality 2025 is a celebration of employment best practice, featuring companies large and small, established and entrepreneurial, and holding them up as exemplars in employee engagement. The awards, which are now in their eleventh year, are open to pubs, restaurants, hotels, gastropubs and foodservices operators in the UK wanting to gain invaluable insight into the happiness and satisfaction of their employees through our unique employee survey.

New for 2025, we will be further recognising individual businesses with six new individual awards celebrating areas of employee satisfaction including: advocacy, purpose, happiness, equity, pride, and most-improved business.

As well as being one of the top 30 places to work in hospitality, through these new awards employers will also be able to shine a spotlight on the area in which their employees believe they surpass expectations.

The new individual awards:

Most improved: celebrating a returning entrant for the work they’ve completed over the last 12 months to develop and better their employee engagement, employee strategy and satisfaction

Equity: rewarding the operator that treats their employees fairly and offers equal opportunities for all

Pride: recognising the company whose employees are proud and happy to work there

Wellbeing: acknowledging the operators that truly care about the physical, mental, financial and social wellbeing of their employees

Purpose: honouring the organisation that clearly articulates purpose and objectives to employees, so they understand the part they play in overall company performance

Recognition: paying tribute to the company that ensures employees receive regular feedback on their work and recognises those going above and beyond

The top 30 Best Places to Work in Hospitality list is not influenced by leaders, operators or marketing. They are recommended by a business’s own employees, who take part in the employee survey and answer the ultimate five ‘killer’ questions, as well as identifying what’s important to them at work and how well their employer is delivering on that goal.

The survey outcomes will provide essential information to inform strategy in the continuing ‘war for talent’, helping you to employ and retain the people required to deliver your services and to support a positive future, and become one of the best places to work in hospitality.

You have until 5 February 2025 to enter.

Why should you enter Best Places to Work in Hospitality?

BOOST EMPLOYER BRAND

Attract, engage, and retain the best talent

UNIQUE EMPLOYEE SURVEY

Revealing hospitality industry insights and benchmarking against other entrants

UNDERSTAND YOUR PEOPLE

Identify the factors that truly motivate your people

INDUSTRY RECOGNITION

Become an employer of choice

STRATEGIC, PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS

Identify strategies to boost your people plan and deliver business results

A partnership between The Caterer and workplace culture experts Korero.

WHAT DO PAST ENTRANTS HAVE TO SAY?

We found this a really useful process last year. It was a great opportunity to engage with our colleagues and hear their views. We have incorporated their feedback into our planning for this year.

Vicky Freeman director of people and training Thomas Franks

Achieving 6th place in 2019 has been a proud moment for Aloft Liverpool and has spurred our team on to deepen our people agenda with a dynamic approach. Our management team are now at the stage where they are asking what’s next and how can we make our team become even more engaged within their roles.

Takis Melitsiotis general manager Aloft Liverpool

Winning the award cemented our belief that we were heading in the right direction. Retention and recruitment figures say so too, so we will keep doing what we’re doing.

Jo Freeman head of brand Paris House Restaurant

Seeing the difference in perception of long-term staff compared to newer staff was really interesting and opened up areas where we have subsequently communicated our culture better.

Josh Blinston Jones head of people The Palomar

We have always strived to be the best employers we can be. We entered to learn more, improve ourselves, and to attract people to our team.

Kieran Waite founder Season + Taste

I think the survey was really good, and I liked that we were reminded that we needed more responses, so communication was great!

Josh Chadwick general manager The Tawny