Acorn Awards 2024: Gareth Rees, 26, food and beverage manager, the Manor House hotel

Age 26

Position Food and beverage manager, the Manor House hotel, Castle Combe, Chippenham 

Nominator Gaius Wyncoll, general manager, the Manor House hotel

Gareth Rees began to see the potential of hospitality aged 15 when he worked as a café assistant at West Beach Café in St Ives. Since then, he’s achieved a first-class honours degree in international hospitality and events management from Cardiff Metropolitan University, and in 2019 was offered the graduate manager role at the Manor House hotel.

By 2021, he’d risen to assistant guest services manager but was ambitious for more. Having studied for the Master Innholders Aspiring Leaders Diploma, Rees was offered his current position of F&B manager in March 2023.

Now responsible for all F&B at the hotel, Rees oversees a team of 30 and a turnover of over £2.5m. Over the past year, he has surpassed budgeted beverage revenue by more than £50,000. Responding to changing consumer habits, for instance, he introduced an alcohol-free bar list that has boosted non-alcoholic beverage revenue by 20% year-on-year. Rees has also led his team to ReviewPro scores of 97.6%.

Rees’s work ethic is to lead from the front. He can often be found polishing plates or running food, with no job too big or too small. It is this hands-on management that has makes his team feel valued and created a positive culture, reducing labour turnover from 28% to 14%.

One stand-out initiative is his creation of personal profiles for each team member using Insights Discovery testing. As well as understanding each other’s personality types, it helps Rees to delegate according to individual needs. This has improved satisfaction and a feeling of mutual trust across the team as evidenced by three internal F&B promotions.

Who has been your biggest champion in the industry?

"I have been incredibly lucky to work alongside several amazing hoteliers, but I would single out Andrew Berridge, now general manager at the Montagu Arms hotel. He was my operations manager while I was a graduate manager at the Manor House and he took me under his wing from day one, teaching me the values of excellent service alongside impeccable attention to detail. I now aim to emulate the way Andrew mentored me with my own mentees."

How do you get the best out of your team?

"I believe in the old cliché that happy staff make happy guests, so I do all I can to ensure that my team feel happy in their role. I aim to ensure that I lead from the front and by example, and would never expect my team to do anything that I would not do myself. Always being available to hear what they need from me to make them happy in their role has made a huge difference."

What excites you most about the future of hospitality?

"The shift towards the importance of company culture in hospitality. We must realise that if we want to be successful in this industry, our teams must be looked after. Hopefully, the days where hospitality was viewed as an industry with lots of effort and little reward are soon to be gone. Certifications such as B Corp, which we hold at the Manor House, has been massive for highlighting the importance of looking after your team."