Working within the leisure industry has been an absolute pleasure. Starting out as a part time kitchen porter at 14 around studies, I’ve had the privilege to grow up in industry that has continually provided opportunity and immense personal satisfaction.

This industry has enabled me to travel overseas, experiencing new cultures and develop my interpersonal skills. Returning home in my 20’s afforded me a placement with licensed retail on a graduate development program, Hard work and long hours were rewarded with a solid start in the industry, having experienced multisite management and a keen appreciation of the power of team engagement I developed a real passion for live food service.

I have also had the opportunity to gain immense senior management experience in the education and healthcare introducing health and wellbeing focus across patient and outpatient care. This resulted in successfully delivering the UK’s first PFI with healthcare. Subsequently, I was recognised and recruited to develop the Hospitality concession at the north east’s premier music venue. The team and I developed a conferencing and events offer which resulted in securing tenders to host both the government and opposition annual party conferences, Emirates Airlines Launch & Women’s Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.

The proudest section of my career was the formation of Red Sky Hospitality in 2012, Since then I’ve had the pleasure of working across numerous sectors, from developing food led service solutions, writing apprenticeship training programmes, improving profit opportunities designing and mobilising new builds – and everything in between.

More recently, in March 2019, I was delighted to be elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality. The institute recognises expertise of senior members of hospitality, leisure and tourism industry.

Red Sky Hospitality continues to grow and whilst celebrating our 10th year of business I’m pleased to welcome on board Richard Hunt as trading partner.

Richard Hunt – Red Sky Hospitality Partner

I started my career in licensed retail working in a traditional pub setting in 1990, and to this day thoroughly enjoyed working my way up from part-time barkeeper to senior management.

Working my way across a diverse range of businesses, I found a true and lasting passion for retail high street operations. Throughout the 90’s and early 00’s, I specialised in opening and consolidating new business in the highly competitive & congested High street sector. This built a lasting desire for delivering fantastic experiences, which is still with me to this day.

This passion led me to discover new and exciting retail concepts in United States of America, which opened my mind to new and innovative ideas, I returned and moved in multi-site leadership, firstly within Mitchells & Butlers and then through the inception of Stonegate Pub company. A very successful 9-year tenure, with sales, profit, and margin growth every year in a highly competitive, High-street market, building experience in planning and delivering events.

Through effective relationship building, I diversified into specialising with local licensing authorities, and have detailed experience with developing working relationships that satisfy local authority requirements whilst developing commercial opportunities. In addition to service & relationship recovery, this broad base spans security, risk assessments, late-night trading, and applications for new & enhanced licenses.

During my career, I attended Birmingham City University to be awarded a Postgraduate Diploma with Distinction in Multi-Unit Leadership and strategy cementing a solid reputation for developing licensed retail.

Following this great and thoroughly enjoyable period of my career, I started doing various consultancy contracts, BH Live, Birmingham Rep theatre, PRP group, focusing on maximising sales and profitable opportunities whilst managing the expectations of local authorities.

More recently I have been developing High volume, high value food let outlets.

In 2022, I was delighted to be afforded a partnership within Red Sky Hospitality where I’m kept busy with satisfying new and existing clients.