Step Back: Supporting Hospitality SMEs in a Major City Centre
A major city Business Improvement District commissioned Step Back as part of its work to support hospitality SMEs operating within the city centre.
Hospitality represented a significant proportion of spend within the BID area and played an important role not only in the local economy, but in shaping the identity, personality and experience of the city centre itself.
The BID was already investing in hospitality through a number of sector initiatives, but wanted to explore what more could be done to support the founders behind those businesses.
One of the challenges was that traditional business training had not always resonated with this audience.
Hospitality SMEs operate in fast-moving, customer-facing environments where founders are constantly balancing people, costs, standards, customers and commercial decisions.
The issue was not a shortage of ideas or basic business knowledge.
It was that the day-to-day operation left too little distance to identify what mattered most, what needed to change and where limited time and attention should go next.
Step Back was designed to address that gap
Based on the principles and framework developed in Cassie Davison’s book, Stand Out Hospitality, the half-day session created structured time away from day-to-day operations for hospitality SME founders to step back, gain perspective and make clearer strategic decisions about what mattered next.
The intention was not to teach experienced founders how to run their businesses.
Instead, the session helped each participant:
identify one issue affecting performance or consistency
clarify one standard they wanted to hold more firmly
leave with one practical action to take forward
What founders were carrying before the session
Pre-session responses demonstrated the range of demands competing for attention.
Staffing, finance and VAT, rising costs, consistency, service improvement, growth and expansion were all occupying significant headspace.
83% said they were sometimes or often fixing or repeating the same things.
67% said they sometimes or often put off decisions because there was simply too much going on.
The picture was not one of inexperienced businesses lacking capability.
These were founders who generally understood their businesses well.
The challenge was finding enough distance from the operation to identify where their attention could make the greatest difference.
The immediate impact
The post-session evaluation showed a clear shift against the intended outcomes.
100% reported leaving with a clearer view of how their business was operating.
100% identified an issue affecting performance or consistency and a practical action to take forward over the following 30 days.
All participants also identified, either fully or partially, a standard they wanted to hold more clearly.
The session received an average value rating of 9.2/10.
Average confidence in taking the identified next step was 9.5/10.
What participants said
“It made me more focused on the single issue I’m facing.”
“It’s worth it for checking your perspective on the industry.”
“Open discussions about issues facing similar businesses.”
“Re-igniting the ‘Belonging’ part of hospitality I love and believe in.”
Identity, pride and belonging emerged particularly strongly in the feedback.
That mattered because the most valuable outcomes were not simply technical or operational.
Participants described reconnecting with what mattered about their businesses, clarifying what they wanted to protect and gaining a stronger sense of where their attention should go next.
What the intervention demonstrated
Support for experienced hospitality SMEs does not always need to mean more information, more tools or more training.
Sometimes the most valuable intervention is the opportunity to step away from immediate operational pressure, look at the business as a whole and make a small number of deliberate strategic decisions.
For the commissioning BID, Step Back provided a practical way to support hospitality SME founders with measurable immediate impact in clarity, prioritisation, standards and action.
Step Back
Step Back is a focused strategic reset for established hospitality SMEs.
Delivered over half a day and grounded in the Stand Out Hospitality framework, it helps founders step out of the operational noise, identify what matters now and decide where limited time, attention and resources should go next.
It is designed for organisations that want to provide credible, sector-specific strategic support to hospitality SMEs at points of pressure, growth, change or realignment.