This episode explores what actually makes apprenticeships successful in hospitality — and why commitment from employers matters more than funding or frameworks.

Timothy R Andrews and Joe McDonnell are joined by Neil Gander and Lucy Grant-Evans from Electric Mayonnaise, who share their experience of delivering apprenticeships as part of a wider learning and development approach.

The conversation looks at why apprenticeships fail when they’re treated as a tick-box exercise, how over-promotion creates leadership gaps, and why many managers are expected to lead teams without ever being taught how. Neil and Lucy explain why taking training into the business, using project-based learning, and genuinely supporting learners leads to better outcomes for both people and organisations.

This is a practical episode for hospitality employers who want apprenticeships to improve retention, build stronger leaders, and protect their employer brand.

In this episode, we discuss:

1. What makes apprenticeships succeed in hospitality
2. Why employer commitment is the deciding factor
3. Apprenticeships as part of a wider L&D strategy
4. Over-promotion and leadership without training
5. Supporting learners beyond “free training”
6. Project-based learning that adds real business value
7. Apprenticeships for managers, not just new starters
8. Reducing stigma around the word “apprenticeship”

Takeaways

1. Apprenticeships succeed when employers stay involved
2. Learners need support, not just enrolment.
3. Funding doesn’t replace leadership
4. Even fully funded programmes fail without day-to-day encouragement.
5. Many hospitality managers are promoted without training
6. Apprenticeships help close critical leadership gaps.
7. Learning works best inside the business
8. On-site workshops and real projects drive better results.
9. A failed apprenticeship damages employer brand
10. Broken promises lead to disengagement and turnover.
11. Reframing apprenticeships removes resistance
12. Positioning them as development programmes increases buy-in.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. electricmayonnaise.co.uk

Welcome to another edition of Talking Hospitality. Today we will continue our conversation about apprenticeships. Timothy R Andrews and Joe McDonnell are joined by Lucy Grant-Evans and Neil Gander from Electric Mayonnaise.

We welcome Neil and Lucy to the show from Electric Mayonnaise. Welcome, everybody.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi.

Thank you for seeing us such a wee early hours of the morn.

Not at all happy.

You're welcome.

That sounded very convincing. So before we go into. There is my. Here. Electric Mayonnaise. That's a very intriguing name. What's the meaning behind it?

I'll leave that one for you, Neil.

It is the question we always get asked. There's a number of different answers, from the ridiculous and sublime to the conceptual. But I'll start with the easy one.

I just like Mayonnaise, really. I started a company, I like Mayonnaise and basically everything that's electric is better. Like Eel, Guitar Avenue, light bulb.

They're all better than the other, than the rest and the normal. That's, in short, that's your. Your answer.

I could wax lyrical and say, well, you know, it's about something that shouldn't exist but does, and it's an emulsification of ideas and concepts that potentially should have no place but do. And it's quite creative. It's just not just like mayonnaise. Who doesn't like mayonnaise?

Yeah. Luckily we all do.

Yeah. I'm now thinking plate of chips, bit of mayo. I've become a mayo person very recently.

Have you?

I think it's an age thing.

Yeah.

Just started within about last six months. I'm like, oh, plate of chips and mayo. And it's not what even. It's just 10 o' clock in the morning now. And I'm thinking the chips of mayo.

Guess what my lunch will be.

Can you take.

Right. Burger.

Like, you see, it's like you've gone in reverse.

Yeah. So you should move to Belgium.

We digress, as usual. And we haven't eaten.

What?

We've spoken. One minute.

Okay. There's your answer.

One of the coolest companies means, I think I've had the privilege to work with Electric Mayonnaise. Well, as we were talking earlier today, we're talking about apprenticeships.

Apprenticeships is sort of a buzzword at the moment, but there seems to be a lot of lip service being paid to it. And also apprenticeships have a bit of bad reputation from previous years. However, there seem to be a lot of people try.

Well, a number of people trying to make changes to the reputation, friendships and treating it seriously. And looking after the people within it. And electric maintenance is one of those.

So.

So, Neil or Lucy, tell me, why are you different to some of the other providers out.

We didn't set out to be an apprenticeship company, an apprenticeship provider as what we did and still are first and foremost a hospitality learning and development partner. That's what we are and that's to the core. And so essentially that apprenticeships are a natural progression of that.

They're a natural part of that ecosystem, but they're not right for everybody. And there are lots of apprenticeships out there.

So from our point of view, it's another tool, another arrow in our quiver of L and D activations we can work with, with businesses where it's the right fit. So I think that's the main thing is we never set out to just do apprenticeships and that's what we were going to do.

And we get this funding every month for free and then we take the path of least resistance. We make our lives more difficult.

I think one of the things that we, we tend to stick to and we, we hold true to is that we started out to be a conduit between education and hospitality. Education sometimes doesn't fit hospitality and sometimes hospitality isn't great at education.

So we set out to be, I guess what makes us, us, us, I'd say, is like, we're hospitality people. Like hospitality people. People through and through to the core. And not just, oh, you know, I'm. I worked in a bar while I was at uni.

I have a hospitality background. Like we really did, you know, the trenches, the battlefield, the whole shebang for years and years, right the way through, all over the place.

I'm really keen that we prize good outcome over a complex process.

Sometimes people just overthink things and come down to like filling in forms and running themselves ragged, just trying to tick boxes, but actually not getting. So the process is first outcome is first process is supplementary. I think the other thing that are very keen that we do is that we.

Where something doesn't exist, we'll go and create it and where it doesn't work, we'll try and fix it as opposed to just maintaining the status quo. I won't say a disruptor is a word that's often used way too frequently and we're not that. But what we do is we try and cut our own furrow.

We take the path of most resistance because that's the one where the good outcomes come from. And I guess the Other thing is it's all about opening doors for people making hospitality careers more awesome than they already are.

And that's kind of our mantra and we try and stick to it and we try and live by that. And I think that's. That doesn't make us unique, but it makes us who we are.

I mean, there's lots of people who also, you know, have great vision and great values in the sector. We're just trying to be us and try to be a better version of how apprenticeships could be.

Yeah, I think for me, the reason that it was really appealing to work with Neil and electric mayonnaise on apprenticeships is I've spent the last kind of 12 years working in house, in hospitality, in people departments where I led them.

And I think being on the receiving end of apprenticeship providers traditionally is really hard in hospitality because they're quite corporate, a lot of the offerings and they're also, they're not hospitality people.

So that's the big draw for me to work on this project and to have a positive effect on the learners that are taking part in apprenticeships and also improve the amount of people that complete them and see them all the way through. Because as you know, they're quite long, some of them.

So I think to be able to do that and actually have a positive impact on people that work in hospitality and are passionate about it and just support them more.

Because as we also know, people, especially in the last kind of five years, get over promoted based on their skill set in their current role and not the role they're going into.

And so the leaders that we get, the managers that we get on our program, a lot of them have never actually had any form of training or development on leadership. So they're put in a position where they have to manage people and they don't necessarily know how to.

I think that's the gap that we are helping to fill as well.

It's a really common mistake, isn't it? The bartender, who's a really good bartender. Head bartender. Yeah, that's good.

You want that because you want him to be like the captain, like leading the charge and being the best bartender. And then naturally when the bar manager position comes up.

Great.

Well, it has to be them.

Wrong.

It's a completely different skill set and actually it might work against you to have that person because not only are they not trained up, you're going to create like a skills deficit in the team that needs their leader who's now too busy to, you know, to be the leader on Shift, it's tricky in it.

And then senior leaders will then notice that skill gap and they'll go, oh, okay, we need to do some management training. Right, brilliant. Let's send them off to do an apprenticeship and then they have to go to college, so they're out of the business even more.

And I guess that's our other gap that we fill as well, is that we take the training to the business. So we don't expect them to go to college. We deliver workshops for them in their businesses. Yeah.

It just makes it easier for them to succeed, basically. I think, I hope, and I think.

It'S really good because they get work, work experience, they're already doing the job. But it's formalizing some of that skill set as well, but also seeing what they're missing out on. Because you think about, I think, for.

Example, I ran a train, the trainer workshop, two weeks ago. I think it was for a client. We went around the room.

There was eight of them, the room, and they were all in management positions and they've all trained people before. And then I said to them, has anyone ever had any formal training on how to train people? And none of them had, out of all eight of them.

And that is so common. And that's kind of one of the more basic skills of being a leader. Right. But important. But I think, yeah, filling that gap for people is key.

Yeah.

We had. I had a chat with one of my chefs recently and their resistance to being on apprenticeship was, well, I'm already doing the job.

And my point was, yeah, but you've been promoted and you might be leading and they are an actual leader, but you've had no formal qualification. You don't know actually how effective your leadership is.

There was a sort of a light bulb moment gone off in their head where they were like, oh, oh, yeah, I thought that. And also because they're going to have a very good career ahead of themselves. Right. There's going to be resistance later on.

And I think the apprenticeship will give that. It gives them new confidence because you, you might have learned your life skills.

When you've got that, they've got something like a qualification underlying that. You kind of got a certificate to prove you know what you're talking about. I think that's really, really crucial, actually.

While I'm note this is to Neil or Lucy, employers sometimes in theory, I mean, sure, you probably find this in theory. Everybody goes, yeah, apprenticeships, it's a good idea. We want to empower people D We want to make sure that they're improving.

And then when you start speaking to them, there's resistance.

Yeah, let's start speaking. Can you tell me maybe the participant, the apprentice or the, the employer that. Where. Where's that?

I'm talking about employers because I'd like to know for our listeners, what are maybe a couple of the key objections that employers give when they are actually, you know, presented with let's make this happen and how you get around that and what your responses are to those.

I think this is a question probably both Lucy and I can answer, and probably from different perspectives. I'm thinking of.

There's no getting around the fact that if you're going to run an apprentice program, a successful apprenticeship program as an employer, you've got to put some skin in the game. There's no way around that. And it's great to say, you know, you can take your employees and we can train them, we can do.

We can develop them and we can assess and we can qualify them. Yes, we can. But actually, at the same time, it is a partnership.

So what it isn't is you can't just, you were not just able to like, send your people to a couple of courses and then you've Training done, you know, box tick. We've done that. You have to put some skin in the game. And essentially it's no different than I spent a lot of my career as a chef. You have to.

And I see and I know chefs now who I've worked with and invested time in the past, and they become protege. Sounds really a bit high fluid, not proteges.

I mentored them and I brought them along and they became part of our little crew of people that I've worked with and have gone on to do well for themselves. But that didn't happen by accident. I had to pay attention to what they were doing on a daily basis.

I had to coach them, we had to have coaching sessions, we had to have difficult conversations. They had to be inspired, we had to be invested in them, not in a financial sense, but in a personal sense.

And I had to be generous with my, my time and my energy, my care for their development. I think going into it as an employer, going, well, you know what? This is a silver bullet. It ticks all the boxes, right, we're done.

It's like anything. It's only good as what you. You only get out what you put in. You don't have to do all the heavy lifting. We do that. We do all of the heavy lifting.

We do all the form filling. I mean, this is Government funded. So we.

Let's not get away from the fact that if the government's going to give you a load of money, then you're going to have to fill in a form or two for it. That's just the nature of the Department for Education.

However we do all that heavy lifting, all employers really need to do is just lean into it and embrace it and be part of that learner's journey with them, that participants journey with them and celebrate it with them and their development and their growth within your business. Because that's really what it's all about.

Like you said Tim, at the beginning, an employer goes, oh, brilliant, you know, we've been paying into the levy, we may as well use it is. And that's the kind of really common phrase that we hear.

And this isn't being disrespectful to anybody, but because I understand that within a big hospitality business or a small one, you're juggling, you're spinning so many plates, right? So drawing down that money from the levy and using it for an apprenticeship program seems like a good win for a business.

But like Neil said, the most successful partnerships that we have are when there's somebody and it can just be one person in the business that's really driving it. And like Neil said, that's not form filling and tick box exercise or anything like that.

It is genuinely supporting the people that are on the program.

And when, if that falls away or if it's not there from the start, that's when you'll get more people not completing the program or dropping out halfway through or something like that. Because they, they're committing to developing themselves by joining an apprenticeship program.

So the business needs to commit to them, to support them through it as well. I think.

I think maybe it's worth clarifying. So we talked about like skin in the game from an employer's point of view.

So if it is government funded and we're not sort of any more committed to this employee than we would be if they were just an employee without an apprenticeship. What is that? What would you describe that skin in the game as?

Is it just an attitude and a mentality and filling out a couple of forms or like, is it more involved than that?

Both, I guess, yeah. So the support element's huge.

But basically the way our program works is they come on workshops and then they have to do project based work as a follow up from the workshop. So that project based work dependent on their line manager and the department that they work in is slightly different for Everyone.

So obviously, like Neil said, we can be there and we can support them in how they complete that work and we assess it and we coach them and we mentor them. But actually they need someone as well that can show them business specific stuff. Because what we don't want is like a traditional apprenticeship.

It was very generic and actually what we're trying, trying to do for them is make it very relative to their job.

I think there's a really good couple of points raised here. One is absolutely the employer needs to recognize their role in, in taking on an apprenticeship for one reason. Remain one ring only.

If you're going to do it from a selfish kind of point of view or a business point of view, if you are standing up and saying, I'm going to invest in that person and then you don't. The only person apart from the apprentice who you're going to lose because you're showing lack of care, you've just damaged your brand.

That person will always associate that failed apprenticeship with you.

Yeah, it's almost or not almost. It's worse to do that than not do anything at all. So the employee would probably remain for longer in the business, I think.

But if, yeah, if you promise something can, don't deliver it, then they'll definitely leave. And like you say, your employer brand is, is damaged, you get a significant.

Reduction in turnover with apprenticeships. It's something like, you know, 40% pass. That's 40%. There's a number of people today that add onto your other, you know, numbers.

So I think people need to realize that if you're committing to them, they are also committing to you as employees.

And, and it's been quite a good tester for us because people that we've wanted to put on apprenticeships where they might have gone, we suddenly realized there's some other underlying stuff that hasn't been addressed. Because why aren't they committing?

Yeah, so it's a good marker as well because then you go into it a bit further, you can investigate and see if there's other plugs that might need filling before you put somebody on apprenticeship. So it's a total good exercise to do anyway. But you do have commitment. For sure.

For sure.

And I think, I think the second.

I was going to say, whilst the program's running, that commitment manifests in quite easy ways. It's essentially making sure you give the participants the opportunity to practice the skills they're learning.

So if they are learning about wages, payroll, rota costings and then you don't let them do the rota or costings, then actually that's detrimental. All you've got, all line managers have to do is, is share their workload.

When I was a gm, I was like quite happy if someone else wanted to do the rotor, cost it out, or to sit and look at risk assessments, or to do a food safety audit, all of those things. It's just about being open and sharing and line managers not wanting to hold onto everything, but wanting to. We call it a skillshare.

It's part of the program we call Skillshare and it's basically, it follows on from workshops and that kind of thing that we deliver, but it's about where you go into your business and you do the things you wouldn't have done before and have a go at it in a psychologically safe space to do that. So, yeah, which probably leads us at some point onto off the job hours. But I'll, I'll leave you, you're the host. Tim.

Well, the second, I mean, the second thing that I feel is important to mention is, particularly with you guys, it's about that project. That project is about enhancing your own business.

So there are things that in hospitality we just never get around to do, but they're actually quite important sometimes.

And you could put somebody on a project to handle that and deal with that and own that and improve things for people or your processes or whatever is while they're learning and you're learning from it as well.

And I think it's so important because there's this whole fear like, oh, I'm going to put apprenticeship in and apprentice in and I'm not going to see them. How am I going to row to them for. I've got 40 hour shift but I'm going to lose them for a day and it's just not the case.

It's just not the case at all.

But what you are doing is investing someone and investing your own business and your department, if you're a larger business, by putting somebody on a project to get something done which could add value.

Absolutely.

And I think with some of the standards, the standard and the wording is open enough to allow providers and employers to really tailor their programs to their Business.

You know, I was going to say vague enough, but I mean open enough to tailor their programs, their business and make it very specific while still fitting in to the, the standard, the framework.

Yeah, overall, yeah, I think as well, another misconception is kind of linked to that as well is that a lot of people just think it is kind of a chef thing in hospitality, but actually the hospitality manager level four, you can make it relevant to any department or business type in hospitality as well. So across hotels, bars, restaurants, you know, events and like I say, across all departments as well.

So imagine being able to offer that to kind of every manager in your business. It's a powerful thing that you've got at your hands, a powerful tool I guess to be able to offer that.

Tend not to use the term where very often apprentice or apprenticeship, we tend to say that it's a management development program and the people on it are participants.

I think you get quite a bit of pushback from that term apprenticeship where you think oh, it's just chefs or oh, it's just 16 year old commie chefs going to college to do an apprenticeship. And if you're a 30 year old floor manager or 35 year old AGM, you don't want to be an apprenticeship.

But what's great is the apprenticeship standard and the way that it's put together and the way that it's assessed is really, really is really great. It's really what we need if it's applied and then when it's applied in the right way it's, it's. Yeah, it's really good.

Tend to avoid from a branding point of view, talking about apprenticeships, which is a shame really, but it is what.

It is, I guess, I guess part of the challenge is trying to foster that mindset shift from seeing, I mean for an employee standard of a staff as a labor cost rather than an investment on a representation of your business.

And I think from the employee point of view, looking at the apprenticeship as not as a prerequisite, not as something that you must do or something that is going to. Yeah. Shows the gaps in your knowledge but actually it's, it's also an investment for you.

Right.

It's like see this as an opportunity to learn because hospitality is not standardized. Right. It's not medicine where everyone goes through the same training and then you start to specialize.

Like people find themselves in roles for, for any number of reasons and they're not necessarily comes back to the bartender, bar manager thing. There might well be gaps in their knowledge and this is like it's an antidote to that, isn't it?

Because you've saying, look, we've got all your bases covered here. If you know it, you know it, fly through it. But this is an opportunity to look behind the curtain.

Sometimes people just don't know what they don't know. I mean, essentially what works very well with the apprenticeship framework is that it gives people, it gives learners, participants, a.

A set of guardrails and a set of handrails to objectively measure their skills against a standard. And it's done empirically and it's done objectively by a third party. It's not, well, why aren't I being promoted to sous chef?

Because I've done the rotor and I've done the ordering last week and, you know, I ran the pass a couple of times last month. Why aren't you making me sous che leaving?

And essentially, it's, you can really give people a good measurement of the bits that they need, the skills gaps that they need to develop and where they are already, you know, really good at what they're doing. So it's.

Yeah, it helps people see their role in a much wider, deeper context of what it is that they're, you know, the next level up within their career, what that role looks like and what that role really involves, to be excellent at it, even if they're already doing that job to a. You know, just because you're doing, you're called a sous chef. You could be doing 20% of being a sous chef and 80 of being a senior CDP.

But as you bed into that role, it's a sliding thing. It's not one day as a cdp, you know this, the next day as a sous chef, you know that it's a very much a grayscale between the two.

Essentially, the program is quite long. You know, it goes on, it's 18 months.

And that sounds like such a long time, but I think it takes that long for people to adopt new ways of working, gain new knowledge and experience and, and develop over time. It doesn't happen overnight. No development happens overnight. It's not a quick fix.

So if an employer has been listening to this and got gone, oh, okay, I'm convinced, this has convinced me to look at my apprenticeship. What steps would they need in order to start the process?

Contact electric mayonnaise, check your levy payments and your pot, as they call it. And then the next step is finding a provider. So there's obviously many out there.

And for most providers, they, like Neil said, like, we do that, we would do the heavy lifting.

So basically, you nominate your provider and then we, you know, the provider will then take it from there and kind of onboard participants, et cetera, which is quite a lengthy process. But as Neil said earlier, due to it being a government payment, obviously you have to jump through a few hoops.

But yeah, like I say, we, we as a provider do that for you anyway, then it's the commitment bit that we were talking about earlier is like giving your team the time to do the work properly and the support as well.

So how do people get in touch with Electric Mayonnaise?

Well, just drop us an email. Have a look at our website, www.electricmase. all one word, two ends. Remember.co.uk just drop me an email. It's neilectric mayonnaise.

We don't complicated and then we sort of take it from there.

Essentially, it's about us opening, you know, a transparent dialogue and an ongoing dialogue and conversation and us working together as a partnership to develop your apprenticeship. Because if you're a business, you're trying, as every business is unique and memorable, that's what we're going for.

They're not going for, you know, the standard being pumped out sort of verbatim every time. It's bespoke to each employer, we do it completely bespoke. So it's part of us having an open dialogue and open conversation.

Drop us an email, pick it up.

I'll email back, we'll go and have a coffee, we'll talk about L and D and wax lyrical about all these things and let's see where apprenticeships can lead your business.

But also, I guess, let's look at it as part of the bigger ecosystem of the whole L and D process within the business and, you know, let's work it so that there's the best ROI for that business. And that takes a little bit of a conversation. And I'll buy the coffee.

Thank you very much. Listen, Neil and Lucy, thank you very much for coming on and it's lovely to see you both and I look.

Forward to seeing you both sooner.

Likewise.

For more information about the Levy, please check out our previous podcast episode with Vicky Glover.