Sharing Is Strength, Not Surrender
Published: 10.11.2025
If we want founder led hospitality to last, we need to start helping each other do more than just survive.
There is a familiar point in every growing business, that inflection point where you are too small to hire the key people you need, but too ambitious to stay where you are.
And that point? It is showing up in more businesses than ever before.
Costs have gone up. Margins have gone down. The space between getting by and growing is tighter than ever. That means more founder led restaurants and independents are stuck in the same frustrating limbo, knowing exactly what they need to take the next step, but not having the resources to do it.
It is a pain in the ass to be in that position.
But maybe, just maybe, we do not have to go through it alone.
Some companies are brilliant at training. Others have nailed their back of house systems. Some have learned the path to B Corp certification, while others have cracked culture, recruitment, or retention. And sure, some are just holding the line and surviving through sheer determination.
But together, that is a collective knowledge bank that could change the entire landscape of hospitality if we chose to share it.
Now, I get it. Not every business has the time, space, or headcount to share. We are all fighting fires daily. But sharing does not always mean doing someone else’s work. It can be as simple as a conversation, a shared framework, or an open door policy when another operator asks how they did something.
We already do this internally. Multi site businesses share best practices all the time. They rotate staff, exchange training tools, and sometimes even share blue roll. So why not widen that circle?
What if we treated our competitors like family?
Competition is not the enemy; the wrong kind of competition is.
Healthy competition builds industries. It drives standards, sharpens skills, and fuels creativity. You see it on the floor every day, waiters picking up tricks from each other, a seasoned chef showing the new kid a better way to plate, a manager learning a smarter way to run the pass.
Founder led hospitality thrives when we act like that, when we share what we know and cheer when someone else gets it right.