Acorn Awards 2024: Georgia Price, 26, training manager, Oakman Inns

Age 26

Position Training manager, Oakman Inns

Nominator Fiona Masters-Stoddart, talent and development manager, Oakman Inns

Georgia Price says she is excited by the evolution within hospitality and the opportunities it offers, and it is clear this rising star is already making the most of them.

In 2018, armed with a few years’ experience as a bartender, Price joined one of Oakman Inns’ £800,000-a-year turnover sites as assistant manager. It was a memorable start during she interviewed and onboarded 10 new staff members and increased Christmas functions by 20% from the previous year.

Some nine months later, Price was promoted to deputy general manager and then in 2020 to general manager. Aged just 21, Price took charge of one of the group’s new pubs, responsible for annual revenue of £1.4m and managing a team of 42, rising at peak times to 60.

Over two years, she grew sales by 29%, thanks to strategies such as controlling labour costs at an average of 35% and increasing spend per head by 26%. She also reduced staff turnover by 4%.

Clearly skilled at getting the best out of people, in May 2022, Price was made the business’s first training manager. She got to work, launching new mentoring programmes for chefs and managers and leading on the recruitment, onboarding, training and mentoring of 200 recruits for eight new sites.

Most notably, she has created and launched a new online learning platform that has reduced training costs by 30%, transformed employee engagement, resulted in a 7% reduction in staff turnover and reduced onboarding time to two hours from six. And her strengthening of the in-house “train the trainer” programme saw Oakman Inns scoop the Princess Royal Training award 2023 and the National Innovation in Training Awards 2023.

How do you get the best out of your team?

"I admire US restaurateur Danny Meyer and his books about leadership in hospitality have been a fundamental part of my own development. Getting to know your team and understanding their strengths and weaknesses allows you to find out what motivates them and therefore get the best out of them."