PR in Hospitality – why is it still a young man’s game?

I made a decision to not “do” International Women’s Day this year. It was starting to feel a bit odd posting a picture of myself saying to followers “just reminding you that 50% of us are women here at the Swine.” Because of course if you are following us you probably know that. I thought about posting some content surrounding the female led businesses that I use for both The Swine and my in personal life but I don’t think I’m blowing my own trumpet to say I’m a champion of these women and their businesses every day. Not just one day a year when its good for content. So I decided to leave it and have the day off. Let the online mags do their #IWD26 posts. And thats where I was on Sunday morning.

And then that evening …. Death Row Diners.

For those of you who don’t know Death Row Diners is a social media account where Chefs or Owners of hospitality businesses name their “Death Row Dishes” chosen from the menus of restaurants in the city they are from. Kind of TopJaw without the cheeky chappie. The first reel from Leeds dropped on Sunday evening. For full transparency (thats the term we all like to use isn’t it?) I was contacted first in January and asked if I wanted to film in February. I’d had a quick scan at the account and thought “Yeah, looks okay.” Maybe a little lacking in diversity but there’s a reasonable amount of women on there. Not as fun as TopJaw, but we are after all chefs and not TikTok stars! Anyway there was Mary-Ellen McTague, probably closet to my age as most were pretty young, so it must be all right. I do actually think that one of the reasons I’m not generally featured on these lists is quite often more to do with my age than it is my gender. But that’s a whole other post!

So the reel – It started with Tom Stafford. Of course it did. Tom has three well known brands. All incredibly well thought out concepts helped along by the fact he’s such a personable bloke on camera and if I was filing Indies in Leeds, Tom is where I would start. We move on to Kitch from Friends of Ham, Mayur from Bundo and Sam from the Highland Laddie. Sam is currently smashing it out of the park at the moment so it’s not a proper list if you haven’t got Empire or The Laddie on it. So far its a who’s who of the Leeds Indie Big Boys. Then Rab from Hern. Really pleased at this because Rab, and his restaurant Hern, just doesn’t get the recognition they deserve. Another inclusion that made me happy was Sean Hood. I’ve known Sean for a long time and it’s good to see him getting noticed.

Then a few more men. No women. The end.

Welcome to Leeds. 

Hmmmmm

The first time this particular account has come to Leeds, and there’s no women on their first ever list. Of course I was aware there was probably going to be another list, but I had had such a brief interaction with the DRD guy that I wasn’t completely sure what the deal was. After His first DM in January I hadn’t even had an acknowledgement of my reply until after he’d completed his first round of filming. I’d thought that a little disrespectful but I’m a woman in hospitality – I’ve come across disrespectful men before. But looking back maybe this was a warning of things to come.  Communication didn’t seem to be his strong point. 

I don’t really think there’s an excuse for not having any women on your first reel of operators in Leeds. It’s 2026. We’re none of us hiding. He later gave his reasons in a 15 page (!!!) post. It amounts to “there’s not enough of you and you all cancelled on me anyway” But I can assure you, I was there. Waiting. Despite the later protestation that he thought his track record would mean we’d overlook such a glaring omission, this was a new city with a new audience and – representation matters for everyone.

With a cooler head though I can actually forgive not realising it was IWD when he posted. It’s not like its comes up on your Apple Calendar like Mothers Day or your Dad’s birthday. The day he chose was unfortunate. But judging by his later post, I don’t think he realises why. To many of us it felt like a slap in the face. It was a “you are not who the people really want to see, we’ll do you later”

Still, even this could have been rectified with a simple “Sorry”. No buts. No long winded explanation telling us why it wasn’t his fault. No bloody whining. We don’t care mate. We’ve heard it all before.

So I cant decide if what he did next is genius or stupid. He attempted to silence the voices of women. I started to get notifications that I’d been tagged into some replies to him, but when I went looking the comments weren’t there. That was because he started on his campaign of delete and block. He deleted women’s comments as they pointed out his lack of female representation of our city. He blocked women as they suggested other chefs and operators to film. And then he blocked and deleted comments from the men who stood up for for those women. He says it was a “dog pile” but we took screenshots and we DM’d each other. He wasn’t  abused. He found out people, a lot of people, disagreed with him, and then on a platform that encourages engagement they told him so.

It might be genius though because all the rage focussed on this one post. And then he deleted it. It’s straight from the Jason Atherton School of Crisis Management. So 24 fours hours later its all gone. Like it never happened.

Except women talk. They screenshot and message. They get angrier. They meet up and the first thing they say is “did you see it???”

And that’s why I’m writing this blog. Because It hasn’t gone away. We’re still talking about it. And we will all remember. Turning off comments doesn’t stop the discussion. 

So I know there’s more of these reels to come out and that’s fine. Ultimately the men and women who appear are promoting their businesses and more power to them. This is a difficult time to be running any business and we will all take any opportunity we can to push ourselves in to view. I just felt that after voicing my own rage on Sunday evening that it would have been hypocritical to have gone ahead. I explained why with no apologies and got a very similar reply as to the one he’s posted on his account. It’s not his fault, it’s mine for not understanding. 

I’ll probably get blocked. That’s fine. It’s all just PR. And there will be another Top Jaw along soon.