Grateful for Hospitality

Episode summary Selling barbecue in California is, in Sean Walchef's words, an oxymoron. So is building a media empire on top of a struggling restaurant. He's done both. In this episode, the Cali BBQ owner and Cali BBQ Media founder takes us back to 2008 - the year he opened in the "dodgy part" of San Diego and couldn't pay his vendors, his team or himself. The lesson that saved the business? No o...

Tom Harrison spent nearly three years in fintech before opening Ace Pizza in Victoria Park - one of London's hottest new pizzerias - with his partner Rachel. He joins Mason to unpack what changes when you finally own the place. How he filters the avalanche of hospitality tech pitches, why his staff get 45-hour contracts as policy, and how a 72-hour fermented dough became the pillar everything else...

Episode Summary Paulo de Tarso opens the Grateful podcast with the clearest working definition of hospitality you'll hear all year. Service is the mechanics of getting a plate from the kitchen to the guest. Hospitality is how that guest feels walking out of the door. One is a process. The other is a memory. Paulo traces his unlikely 35-year arc from a Brooklyn coffee shop and a dishwashing job in...

Episode Summary In this debut episode, Mason welcomes Steve from TipHaus to explore the nuts and bolts of modern hospitality - specifically how technology, tipping culture, and genuine human connection intersect. Steve brings a transatlantic perspective, having gone from investment banking and venture capital to building an eight-location restaurant chain, selling it, serving as president of Ethan...

Some bonus clips from our first episode with Stephen Hooper Jr, co-CEO of TipHaus, where we talked about tipping and hospitality on both sides of the pond.

Podcast launches on the 26th March 2026, here's a little sneak peak from the start of episode one.