Not all heroes wear capes!

Hospitality is a broad church

It stretches from three Michelin star dining rooms to fish & chip shops. From multinational coffee chains to independent businesses like Oscar's, Brown's and Dream Story here in South East London. From country pubs and cocktail bars to hotels, bakeries and restaurants…

Collectively, our sector employs more than 3.5 million people, making hospitality one of the UK's largest employers. Around one in every ten workers earns a living through hospitality. These jobs matter. We provide first jobs, flexible jobs, part-time jobs and career opportunities. We help young people enter the workforce and give many others a chance to balance work around family life, study or other commitments.

The statistics only tell part of the story though.

Hospitality is part of everyday life. It's on every high street, in every town and village.

It's where we celebrate birthdays, catch up with friends, meet colleagues, grab a coffee before work or enjoy a meal with family. Whether people realise it or not, hospitality is one of the things that helps hold communities together.

Yet for all its importance, our industry has often struggled to speak with a single voice.

Over the years I've often despaired at hospitality's inability to organise itself into a coherent movement capable of standing up to the growing challenges we face.

Perhaps that's because our sector is so diverse. On the face of it, The Ritz and the Ladywell Tavern don't appear to have much in common.

Look a little closer, though, and you'll find they share exactly the same problems.

Sit a pub landlord, a coffee shop owner and a Michelin-starred chef around the same table and before long they'll all be talking about rising food costs, increasing employment costs, business rates, energy bills and shrinking margins.

That's why Tom Kerridge's VAT's The Problem campaign feels different.

Tom is leading a campaign calling for VAT to be reduced to 10%, for the hospitality sector, bringing the UK into line with countries such as France, Italy and Spain.

After a similar campaign Ireland will reduce its hospitality VAT rate to 9% from July this year.

It's brave work. Putting your face on a campaign like this inevitably attracts criticism. It's easy to dismiss successful chefs as being disconnected from the challenges faced by small high street businesses. But Tom has a profile and has chosen to use it to shine a light on problems affecting the entire sector. His appearances on Newsnight and other shows have done more to highlight our challenges than anything we’ve seen in years.

The challenge: Most hospitality businesses are balanced on a knife edge.

The UK has lost more than 100,000 hospitality jobs in the past two years. Around 21 hospitality businesses close every week. As Tom has repeatedly pointed out, many businesses are now only one difficult quarter away from being in serious trouble.

A reduction in VAT wouldn't solve every problem overnight, but it would provide some much-needed breathing space for thousands of businesses that are important not only to the economy but also to the communities they serve.

Wilson's is one of those businesses.

The truth is that we're one of the restaurants Tom is talking about.

March, April and May have traditionally been strong months for us. This year, a combination of warm weather, rising costs and a bit of old-fashioned bad luck meant we had a difficult quarter and burned through a significant chunk of our reserves.

We now find ourselves heading into the quieter summer months in a more precarious position than we'd like.

We're working hard behind the scenes to turn things around. We still have options and some breathing space. We're not quite in crisis. But the path feels narrower than it has at any point since we opened.

We also know that we’re not alone.

Many hospitality businesses are facing the same challenges. Some are in far tougher positions than we are. Others have already had to make incredibly difficult decisions.

That's why we're supporting VAT's The Problem and encouraging people to take a look at the campaign and sign the petition if they agree with its aims. Almost a quarter of a million people already have and hopefully that number continues to grow.

Perhaps this time the diversity of our sector, which has often made collective action difficult, can become a strength.

If pubs, restaurants, cafés, hotels and everyone in between can pull in the same direction, perhaps we can create a little more breathing room for the businesses that make our towns, villages and high streets what they are.

Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear chef whites.

VAT's The Problem Petition