“We’re figuring it out as we go”

It’s not easy being a working mother, least of all in the hospitality industry. The long hours, the late nights, the shift patterns are all inimical to family life. Three restaurateurs share how they made it work.

Ask Mandy Yin what it’s like to be a parent – correction, a mother – in the hospitality industry, and she’ll tell you the plain, unvarnished truth. “I am so brutally honest because people need to know,” she insists. “I asked my close friends with children, ‘Why didn’t you tell me!’ and they’re, like, “It’s so hard to explain”. I try and give people the heads up so they can manage their expectations.”

For Yin, owner of Sambal Shiok in London and a judge on the panel of CODE Hospitality’s Women of the Year, motherhood has altered the course of her career. “I opened the restaurant in 2018 to critical acclaim and it was going really well. COVID happened, then I got married, and in early ‘21, I got pregnant. During the course of that year, I started talking to a potential new investor; we were going to open a 70-cover flagship in Soho. As a career-focused woman I was thinking forward, thinking of expansion. I said to the investor, “I’ll have four months mat leave then I’ll be back and we can open in 2022”. Of course, what happened – and no one can really prepare for you for the full impact of being a mother – was trying to promote my first cookbook, remotely run a restaurant three months post-partum, while trying to keep an actual human being alive. It nearly drove me to a breakdown. I had to pull out from talks with the investor. Thankfully he was very understanding.”

Childcare would help but it’s prohibitively expensive. “It’s just not possible to have it all unless you’re minted in the first place so you can afford the help,” insists Yin. “It’s just not possible”. How does she feel, looking back? “A tinge of sadness, disappointment, but also realisation that that’s the truth and reality of it.” Also, exciting new doors have opened. She’s working on her second cookbook; she’s a writer; a consultant; an industry spokesperson. In the future, when her son starts school, she may think about growth again. “Never say never. For the moment, it’s fine. I’m more or less making it work.”

“It’s just not possible to have it all unless you’re minted in the first place. It’s just not possible”

According to the 2025 ONS UK Labour Force Survey, women make up 54% off the workforce in hospitality, but another report, from Women in Hospitality, Travel and Leisure from 2020, suggests only 25% of those women hold senior roles. There are many reasons for this, but motherhood and the gendered division of labour don’t help. Women in hospitality often face a difficult choice: sacrifice family time for high-pressure roles or step back into more flexible but junior positions. Many shift to consulting, teaching, or catering, while others quit the industry entirely. To retain working mothers in the workforce, employers need to speak to them about what they need. “Thankfully I run my own business, I write and freelance, so I can manage my time to make it work for me. It just requires a lot of understanding and flexibility for the employers side. It takes a long time for the mother to work out where all the pieces fall in terms of childcare and what she can take on,” says Yin. “At the beginning, you have to give them more leeway and know they will come back, because if you don’t, they will never come back.”

Margot Henderson, co-owner of Rochelle Canteen, understands the challenges. She and her husband, St. John’s Fergus Henderson, have three children, now grown-up. She worked through her pregnancies and continued after they were born with the children literally strapped to her in a carrier, while Fergus started St John. “I didn’t really stop working. I would go into work [at The French House] every day. I always did occasional shifts but also always had head chefs who ran the kitchen, and I would be very annoying and run the kitchen and put my oar in.”

“Many working mothers shift to consulting, teaching, or catering, while others quite the industry entirely”

“Fergus and I didn’t sit down and say, ‘Oh, you’re going to have your career and I’m not going to have mine’. It wasn’t like that. It just sort of worked out that way. Fergus’s career took off more than mine but that’s because Fergus is absolutely brilliant, and he has a voice like no other. So we made those sorts of sacrifices, where I was more at home, and also, he was going to make more money, which is important when you have a growing family.”

While Fergus, Trevor Gulliver and Jon Spiteri set up St. John, Margot had a baby to look after so couldn’t get involved. “Sometimes I feel I missed out going forwards with them but I couldn’t be that involved because of the children. So my feeling was, ‘Well, I’ll build a bigger business and something that I can be a bigger part of all the way through’. I have a hundred regrets but, you know, life is full. You look back and think, I should’ve done this or I should’ve done that, but I’m an optimist. I’m positive and there’s still fire in the old girl yet. You’ve got to keep building things and start your own business. But I would always have my children above my career.”

Though it was tough, she feels lucky: together with her business partner Melanie Arnold, she was able to build a successful catering business, Arnold & Henderson which gave her not just flexibility but confidence. “There was a period where I stopped working and before I had opened Rochelle Canteen, I felt quite lost. I was just a mother. A friend offered me and Mel a space at Rochelle Canteen, which were able to run our catering business and daytime restaurant from and work around the kids. The amount of times I’d be speeding off to pick the kids up from school, always running a bit late.”

“You have to give them more leeway because, if you don’t, they will never come back”

Ravneet Gill, founder of Countertalk, is grappling with similar issues as she prepares to open her new restaurant Gina with her chef partner, Mattie Taiano, with whom she shares a 16-month-old. “Childcare is something we’ve had to invest in—without it, this wouldn’t be possible. It’s tough because there’s never really an ‘off’ switch; it’s either work, family, or both. Running at that pace seven days a week is exhausting; we’re figuring it out as we go.”

She now has a better understanding of the challenges parents face and hopes she can offer employees a healthier work-life balance at Gina. “I want to make sure they feel supported. That means looking at flexible working options and acknowledging that there’s more to life than work. That said, people also need to earn a living.”

“Honestly, I don’t think the UK’s work culture is set up to support parents properly. I never really thought about it before having Donnie, but now I see how broken the system is. There’s still a long way to go.”