Meet a member: Josh Craddock MIH

Josh Craddock MIH, the F&B sales and marketing manager at the Bloomsbury Hotel, London, and a recent Acorn Winner, gives tips on marketing, networking and what’s on at the Bloomsbury this summer

What attracted you to hospitality?

I was lucky to travel when I was younger. My dad was a hotelier and my mum was a luxury travel agent so it is almost in the blood! I’ve always loved it; food, drinks, visiting hotels and discovering new hot spots. When travelling, the great thing is you always have a common ground with other hoteliers. The industry is super-friendly.

I grew up in Berkshire and I always had the determination to get out, travel and see the world. In my gap year I got a work visa and spent time in Australia and Canada; I also had a J1 visa for Chicago where I worked as a bellman in a downtown hotel. Then after university I went to Maui, Hawaii, and worked at the poolside of a five star hotel for five months, which was a lot of fun!

I’d recommend anyone to pursue similar invaluable experiences. Whether it’s working in your local restaurant or bar over the summer holidays, or in Hawaii; it’s up to you! Be adventurous.

You studied marketing management at Oxford Brookes University. What did you take away?

I came away with a pretty decent network. Brookes is renowned for its Hospitality School and I did several modules with the lecturers there. I also worked at Malmaison Oxford whilst at university; I used to work in the bars and restaurants at the hotel which developed my knowledge of drinks, which evolved into a passion. Once I realised I could combine food, drinks and marketing into a career – hey-presto! I’ve since remained close to the Uni and become a Baccus Mentor for their final-year hospitality students – guiding them on their first steps into whichever part of the industry we identify is right for them. One is now on the Soho House graduate programme and another on the Baxter Story graduate programme.

How did you come to work at The Bloomsbury?

I met The Bloomsbury’s hotel manager Daniel Healey MIH, a super-bright very dynamic chap. At the time I came for an interview, the hotel felt like coming into a typical 3 or 4 star business hotel, but the plan was to re-position it as a luxury boutique venue and you had to use your imagination to see what the plans were. The parent brand – The Doyle Collection – have a fantastic design vision for their venues, amazingly beautiful, but it is up to the teams here to make sure the brand is protected. I then was introduced to the General Manager and seasoned hotelier, Michael Neve, who is great to work for, incredibly experienced and well respected – our different approaches really complement one-another.

You put a pop-up barbershop in one of your bars at The Bloomsbury. Why?

We did that over St Patrick’s Day in The Bloomsbury Club Bar with Irish gin brand, Dingle Distillery, and one of the oldest barbers in town, Truefitt & Hill, based in Mayfair. It was £20 for a shave and you’d get a Dingle gin and tonic. However, if you came with your Irish passport, you’d get a shave and G&T for free. We like to have a little bit of fun every now and again with the Irish heritage of the Doyle Collection. Last year we even had river dancers in the bar! It was a privilege working with the oldest barbershop in town and the imagery we got for it was awesome (I snuck into a few photos). Essentially, it enabled us to cross-pollinate our three audiences for the PR/marketing piece, and direct everyone to our venue; a nice awareness builder.

You have said that marketing is about calculated risk. How do you calculate the risk?

Some activities you do will be more of a PR story and others will make money. At the end of the day if it’s good PR and it’s getting good coverage, and other areas of the marketing are in-line, there’s no reason why you can’t get the right people to come to the outlet. But, if you do a pop-up barber shop expecting to generate huge amounts of revenue, you’ve got the wrong perception of building the brand. So with that one, I think we generated according to Street & Co PR who represented Dingle and agreed to lead the PR for this – the total audience reached by coverage achieved was approximately 66,086,171.

What are your thoughts on networking?

Networking is key; if you don’t put yourself about then it’s a hard for interesting and dynamic partnerships to arise. I talk to anyone and everyone, sometimes you meet people in circumstances which aren’t business related but following up and reaching out is really important.

My network spans across social media too where I have established a following on Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin – combined over 10k individuals mainly for B2B purposes. I keep Facebook for connecting with friends and family. I also like meeting everyone for a coffee or breakfast – I often get ridiculed for having so many breakfast meetings!

In London a lot of the bartenders and chefs know each other; there are various industry groups for The Golden Keys, Front Office Association, Institute of Hospitality – everyone’s connected and it’s really easy to get involved in some way or other. Separately, there’s CODE Hospitality which is great for meeting people at their drinks events and using the CODEApp around town on quieter nights.

What are your signature drinks at the new Coral Room at The Bloomsbury?

We’ve got 29 types of English sparkling wine – six by the glass. We get to go to a lot of vineyards and work with the small producers closely, and encourage the use of our venue for exclusive launches and previews. The Terroir is similar to the Champagne region and now there are a couple of big hitters taking an interest in English wine. Tattinger recently purchased a number of hectares in Hampshire, which shows that there is quality in the soil and that is where they think the future is.

We are working with an Elderflower liqueur company, owned by Bacardi, for our summer installation at Dalloway Terrace for the next couple of months. We’ll integrate the floral decoration with the food and the drinks, giving it a playful French identity we’ve nicknamed Madame Dalloway.

Other plans this summer?

Downstairs outside we’re doing a takeover with the rum brand Diplomático, to transform our Bloomsbury Club Bar into a luscious palm tree oasis. We’ll have DJ brunch sessions on weekends to attract people down for rum cocktails during the day, served with Venezuelan bites and Latin beats.

We invite bartenders from across the world to take over the Bloomsbury Club Bar for residencies; so far we’ve hosted bartenders from Greece, New York and even Sydney. A lot them are through personal contact. We call this our Club Residencies Project and we’re currently looking to organise our seventh collaboration. It’s really fun, a great PR story where the team learns a lot, benchmarks their standards and we have a great time entertaining our guests in a fun new environment!