May 27, 2025 • 34 mins
🎧 Flex Appeal: How YoungOnes Is Flipping Hospitality Staffing
Guest: James Medd, COO, YoungOnes
Host: Chris Fletcher, Tech on Toast Podcast
Recorded at BrewDog Waterloo, this episode explores how flexible staffing is reshaping hospitality.
Chris sits down with James Medd to uncover how YoungOnes, the freelance staffing platform, is empowering operators to find vetted, on-demand talent in minutes — and giving Gen Z more control over when, where, and how they work.
In this episode:
✅ Why flexibility is the future of hospitality staffing
✅ How Gen Z and side-hustle culture are changing the game
✅ Why YoungOnes isn’t an agency — and why that matters
✅ How operators are cutting labour costs and improving service quality
✅ The tech James wishes existed…
Whether you’re scaling a team or freelancing for freedom, this one’s packed with insight.
🔗 Links
⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
02:15 – What is YoungOnes?
06:42 – Freelance lifestyle & Gen Z work culture
10:00 – How it works for operators
14:25 – Trust, ratings & smart matching
18:40 – Planning vs panic: The flexi-labour approach
23:10 – The future of staffing
28:00 – The tech James wants to see
31:00 – Where to find YoungOnes
🎙️ Subscribe for fresh conversations every week with the sharpest minds in hospitality & tech.
#HospitalityTech #FreelanceWork #StaffingSolutions #TechOnToast #YoungOnes #FlexibleStaffing
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello and welcome to the Tech and Toast Podcast.
My name is Chris Fletcher and this is season 12.
Tech and Toast Podcast is serving at fresh chats with the
sharpest minds in hostility and tech.
If you're looking to level up your up, streamline your
service, or just sprinkle a little tech magic into your
business, you've come to the right place.
And guess what? Our partners like Speed are back
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(00:26):
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(00:48):
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If you're curious about all of this, just head over to
lightspeed.co.uk/tech on Toast and book yourself a free demo.
You won't regret it. Now enough of that, ready for
the next episode? Let's go.
(01:09):
Next episode, the Tech and Toastpodcast.
And today I'm delighted to be joined by James Mad, COO, Chief
Operating Officer, Young Ones. Probably the best tech name
we've had this year, I think. How are you, mate?
Nice to meet you. Good.
Thanks mate, thanks for having me.
Welcome to Brew Dog Waterloo. Yeah, it's great, huh?
Yeah, we're shutting here and sorry mate, it's a bit miserable
of me but I've taken him to a pub and then shutting him in a
jail so. Yeah, but well, given me a glass
(01:29):
of water, yeah. Water locked in the room, no
beer, but welcome anyway. You guys are based Amsterdam,
right? Yeah.
Our headquarters is in Amsterdam.
It's where we were founded sevenyears ago, but we have an office
here in the UK at Old Street andin France, in Paris as well.
Sure. And and you're not originally
from there, though you've got I,I spotted your accent a little
(01:50):
bit as we were walking. Where you from originally?
So originally from the North East of England, so near
Middlesbrough, a small town called Saltburn.
Yeah, so are you? Are you a football fan?
I am a football fan. Middlesbrough Supply.
OK. Oh, never mind.
Did you guys miss out? Yeah, yeah, we missed out on the
playoffs. Yeah, yeah.
For non football people that last five seconds meant nothing.
But look, before we get into it,before we talk about young ones,
(02:11):
tell me a little bit about you kind of what's your background?
Have you ended up here today? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So I guess kind of professionally my first seven
years professional life was in marketing technology.
So marketing automation for frome-mail, SMS automation when the
cloud was a thing right in the selling point and then also
(02:31):
social media aggregator and automation.
Oh, I think I need to have a chat with.
You something called Hootsuite. Oh, I know.
Hootsuite yeah, we used it all through the pandemic.
I was using that. Yeah.
So I used to work for for these guys and then more recently for
the last eight years in marketplaces, SO3 sided and two
sided marketplaces across restaurant delivery, across
(02:53):
e-commerce. So vertical e-commerce in
France, specializing in DIY and home improvement and now the
last year and a bid at young ones.
So freelance marketplaces. And we've got and you've done
that really, really nicely. So tell us about young ones.
It's probably and I think you'resolving a problem.
My personal opinion that needs solving, I think before you
(03:16):
explain my understanding of the workforce is this part time,
full time. And then there's this middle
ground that no one's really, I don't know, people have labeled
it yet or not what I call flexi time, where you've got this
flexible workforce where you've got to kind of it's just perfect
for hospitality. But tell us before I ruin it for
you. Tell us about young ones.
It's good because the first timewe spoke, yeah, kind of hit the
(03:36):
nail on the head, yeah, because.Because I'm in a former operator
and I've written people bored mesaying that.
But it it's that is the huge issue in having that that middle
ground of workforce where you really need people at a certain
time on a certain day, but don'twant to commit to the financial
commitment of having someone full time.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, I know for sure. So, so overall our mission is to
make work easy and accessible toeverybody.
(03:59):
And what this really means is that we're, we're a platform, a
marketplace that connects businesses looking for job
seekers and then job seekers, freelancers who are looking to
pick up shifts on a daily basis.And for, I guess for operators,
this makes it super easy and flexible to bring in people to
(04:20):
the business. And for people looking for work,
it really just breaks down that barrier of traditional
recruitment where I'm posting myCV trying to find work.
It really just connects these two people in a much simpler
fashion. And there's a thirst strip,
right? As in obviously there is, but do
you know what I mean? But there's, there's, I think
(04:42):
the user has changed. I know the businesses have also
changed or or being impacted, but has the are you seeing that
the fact that that's driven by the need for this kind of work?
Yeah, from both sides of the marketplace, from operators.
The need for this kind of like flex layer is, is ever more
important. You know, P and LS, they're
(05:02):
being scrutinized a lot within the hospitality industry at the
moment. So this plays a huge part and
Labour's a large line on that P&L.
And then for people looking to to work within freelance, yeah,
we see, we see an uptick. The UK is seeing an increase in
the percentage of people who arelooking to to work via via a
(05:25):
freelance freelance means. And what and what are the major
appeals I suppose to if I'm a a young buck, it's a long time
ago. I'm.
Not even tell you what I'm approaching this birthday, but
anyway. But you know what, what are the
major? I think I know what they are,
but what are the major appeals to it to that end, that user and
the younger people who are usingthe platform?
Kind of, you know, be your own boss.
(05:46):
Yeah, You know, choose when you want to work, choose where you
want to work. How long for whom you know this
this work and it's not just it'snot just young ones that offers
this the the lifestyle of a freelance is I I have.
I have. Well, yeah, you'll be.
It's true, but you'll. Be able to tell us, right.
It's just the ultimate kind of. Yeah.
(06:08):
You make the choices and where and whom you want to work with
for how long. Yeah.
It's it's. And I think it makes up a lot of
in hostility. Historically, it's always been
you kind of. When I was running, especially
with Hard Rock Cafe, we used to run Play X music, you know,
musicians who were jobbing theirway through, trying to fund a
dream to be, you know, rock staror actors.
(06:28):
In fact, an actor worked me on the bar in Cardiff and he was
played Brian May and Queen. Yeah.
So he was like, you know, reallyfamous.
He's very famous now. But Lee Gilliam, Gilliam, Lee
sorry, started working for us, just doing part time stuff.
It's that ability to fund and Hostat is perfect for that,
right? Great market.
There's a huge trend within kindof Gen.
Z this like side hustle and there's a lot of people that we
(06:52):
see utilizing the platform. Yeah who are funding a passion,
actors, sports people within sports musicians.
It's it's it's all there right And who they are now yeah.
And that's one thing. And there's, I don't have the
start off the top of my head andI don't want to say anything
stupid on the podcast, but I don't have a.
(07:13):
Week. But there's a percentage of
freelancers that go on to start their own businesses.
We do a lot of freelance research afterwards and
unsurprisingly to me, a large percentage of these freelancers
are going on to start their own businesses and do do something,
do something else. And we're just a blip sometimes
(07:35):
within that within. You're part of their journey,
right? We're part of their job for
sure. So that's a, that's a really
cool, that's a really cool thingthat we're super proud of.
And if I find a place that I really love.
So let's pick Broodock since we're here.
So I'm part, I'm part time gigging here at Broodock.
But actually I end up falling inlove with working with the team
here and everyone's really nice.I kind of want to stay.
Does that happen? How does that get, can that
(07:56):
happen in the business or it canhappen, I guess it's rare
because I've guess the reason people come to you is not to do
that, right. Well.
Like on on average, I think it's, I think a freelancer via
the platform, they typically work in around 5 different
places, right. OK, so and that's on average.
Oh. What?
So they work in five different. 5-5 different roles, right?
So they're not just staying in one place.
(08:17):
That's just my single mindednessthinking.
Yeah, like again, they a lot of people are coming for skill
development as well. They're picking up new shifts.
That because their shifts are all different in different
places obviously it fits their flexible lifestyle right OK
yeah, that makes. So again, like I'm looking at my
agenda for the week. I've got a school class maybe on
(08:39):
a Monday and a Tuesday. Wednesday, I want to pick up a
couple of gigs and I have band practice on a Thursday.
Like it's really this type of really this type of scheduling
that the. Flexibility is met.
Is probably the main driver Thenwould you say of?
Flexibility, obviously. Obviously it's income
generating. Yeah, they're they're looking,
no ones doing that for free. They're looking to supplement
(08:59):
maybe a potential income off funded passion or something like
this. They're looking also for the
skill development. That's OK.
I'll get that in the edit, don'tworry.
Yeah, they're also looking for skill development.
They're looking to, to learn andto, to, to grow again, like as a
freelance, my reputation is veryimportant.
(09:22):
What I put and put in front of apotential employer in the future
is really important. So, yeah, having that skill
development and working in different places and having the
accessibility to, yeah, I guess simplify your traditional
recruitment method. Yeah, is is really appealing for
for a generation. And and on the other side of the
marketplace, you've got the guyssay BrewDog, yeah, for instance,
(09:44):
I don't know BrewDog or a customer, but and and the appeal
for them I'm guessing is not toodissimilar to the other side of
the fence, right? Yeah.
Like it's again like we talked about this as this kind of
elastic layer that you put over traditional, traditional
staffing, right. So you've got your core team and
(10:04):
they might be on full time contracts or part time contracts
or whatever and you invest in them and you train them.
And then you have this elastic layer that expands and retracts
with your with your demand righton the here, Friday, Saturday.
We need some more people. So it's much easier to be able
to have that flexible layer drive it variable than kind of
(10:28):
worrying about worrying about administration of having people.
It's because I think people, obviously we work with
scheduling tools and stuff like that, and I think that people
often look to that scenario. It's not good enough.
But actually the problem isn't in the tech.
I think the problem is in the process and the management of
the pull and push of demand. Like you just said, demand
(10:48):
planning is always, whether you work in a factory or whether you
work in hospitality is the driver of everything, right?
All of your costs get. If you can get your demand
planning perfect, that's it. Not a lot goes wrong.
Yeah. And some within the hospitality
sector, it's kind of like it's not finger in the air, but it's
a little bit kind of like we know on a Friday, Saturday, we
get busy, right. So we need more people.
And then there's some larger groups that we work with where a
(11:10):
lot of our main point of contactis within the financial
controllers who are looking veryspecifically at the margins and
they're forecasting flexible work month in advance,
delegating budgets to all of their locations to be able to
spend on a market. They will probably get like a
flexi labor budget so they. Have they have a flexi labor
budget? And this is, this is more and
(11:31):
more common now and I think willbecome more common in the future
where you know, you're really forecasting where your peaks are
going to be. And it's it's not all last
minute because we we do solve a huge last minute demand.
Yeah, which what if you had to percentage eyes, I suppose your
last minute kind of because mostpeople think the use cases are
covering the crap. Yeah.
(11:52):
Which is fine, right? Yeah, which was there for.
But I think like you said that actually in the future or now
with the extra cost that everyone's holding that actually
planning this is a lot more and I suppose it is quite planning
flexible workforce sounds, sounds like I'm yeah, you know
what I mean. What you're doing, you're you're
planning the. Budget, yeah, you're allowing
(12:14):
you're. Empowering your operators.
The word empowering. You're empowering your operators
to then spend and essentially meet the demands of the end
customer. Yeah, right.
Generate revenue for the for thebusiness.
And your question was kind of what do we see last minute
versus kind of more forecastable.
So around 30% of the gigs. So we called kind of the gig,
(12:40):
30% of the gigs posted are last minute, which means for us the
definition of that is that they were published to the platform
matched and then the start time was within a 24 hour window.
So there's, I tell the story a lot.
There's a hospitality brand thatwe work with a lot in London,
(13:01):
and a lot of their gigs are published at like 3 AM, 4:00 AM
in the morning. Who the hell is?
And you can imagine, you can imagine the operators like
taking a look at the bar at the end of the night going, we need
more people, right? Oh God, that was it.
Or. Walking into a kitchen after
service just going Oh my God there's more food on the floor
than there isn't 100. Percent.
So we see a lot of this kind of like out of hours use as well
(13:23):
where a high percentage of our gigs are published outside,
within unfavourable hours or outside of business hours.
Which says to me that actually the CFOs and these guys have to
be involved, right? Because the, the ability to go
and spend money potentially on, on labour that might not be
needed. But having that pre planned
budget, the flexi budget as you talked about, or having the,
the, the ability to say, do you know what I need to dip into my
(13:45):
bucket this month? Because we, we haven't got the,
we haven't got the people. Yeah, of course.
And that that's a fantastic way of being able to access because
at the front of all this is service, right?
If you haven't got decent service, you haven't got a
business. That's it.
And every operator we speak to, they love the platform.
Yeah, right. It's rarely an operator that
says, you know what? We don't need this.
But it's like a drug once they're running.
(14:09):
It's once they see how easy it it can be, they love the speed,
the flexibility that it can bring.
It's that site managers who loveit because I'm interested to
know because it's both. It impacts them, I suppose.
The site manners, site managers that they feel a pain and then
you're kind of like your more regional operators.
(14:29):
They're the ones that are saying, well, yeah, you can use
it because I want to solve your pain.
But it needs to meet a certain percentage of Labor cost, right?
But they need to be enabled withthis flexi budget.
So, yeah, there's a little bit of change management, which is,
which is not, yeah, like we, it's a little bit of a new
market we're creating here, right.
(14:50):
So we're doing a lot of education around this as well.
Yeah, I agree. I totally agree.
And I remember speaking to someone a while ago about this
and we were probably last year as a hotel sector and we were
talking about it saying that it's here already.
I'm going to say this word now you're going to freak out
agency. But and I'm sure he just walked
out. My throat became dry.
(15:12):
But you know, that existed, right previously and I know it's
a different an animal. And I suppose you should kind
of, we should give you the rightto kind of explain what the, I
mean, I think we have explained all the differences.
But do you get, do people reference you as that sometimes
from all the time? Yeah, because it still exists,
right? All the time, especially in the
hotel world. We correct them, right?
Like, we're definitely not an agency.
(15:33):
Because it has a taint, doesn't it too?
I think. I think it has a all the word
I'm looking for. But there's something about
agency that makes me. You said it not.
Me. But you can't say that I can't.
So, yeah, but no, like we're again, we're, we're just a
technology platform. We're, we're an enabler here.
But we speak with some of the same, same people who have
(15:55):
traditionally used agency. And again, I think one of the
one of the, I guess one of the misconceptions is that it's
either or. And that's not how I see it at
all. Like we're we're building a new
layer on top which wasn't there,which is this flexible layer.
(16:15):
And you're also accessing peoplethat previously weren't
available to these brands, right, Which I find the most
exciting part. Of it 100% right.
So you've got you've got a you've got a couple of different
channels to find talent. One is through your traditional,
traditional recruitment method, your your website guide where
you'll get X percent, then OK temp temp agency where you'll
get another percent. And then what you have is like
(16:38):
26% of people in the UK who werenot there.
Yeah. So if you're not using a tool
like this, then you're missing out on.
Talent and I think there's an age of so my boy is now 18, but
when he was just turning 17, he could not find normally give him
a chance, right, because he was fresh out of school, right, or
(16:58):
whatever. So, and I think there's a huge
part of the workforce that can'taccess jobs because through the
normal means or through LinkedInor whatever, indeed, all those
places, they're just getting lost in the noise.
It's not that. Whereas this way I can control
it, right? So I can if I don't even know.
I thought I didn't tell you about this, but.
It's noise or it's not that it'snot interested.
And you'd probably flip, you know, a manager looking will
(17:20):
probably flip past them because they don't have that experience
or whatever. But those guys are perfect for
you, like for a Saturday night, just helping clear some tables
or whatever it might be, you know?
Sure. And we, we spoke with them, we
spoke with a large this, it wasn't hospitality, it was a
large retailer. And they were opening a huge,
huge store in a, you know, famous kind of shopping.
I love the way you avoided everybrand name.
(17:42):
Successfully. And what they what they told us
is that through their their typical kind of application
management, yeah, they were getting for a job, they were
getting thousands of applications like how do you
even manage that? And they were, they were still
doing paper contracts. Yeah.
So going through 1000 CV, I'm sure they didn't go through 1000
but the first 100. Yeah, you can't help but bias
(18:05):
just kicks it. We're not even biased, but just
the lack of wilt. It's a read to do.
It's a read through and they just don't have time.
Yeah. It's not that time.
So the, the cost, the administrative burden is huge
where kind of with with a platform like like young ones,
what what we do upfront, we verify kind of right to work
identification. So we support them here just to
(18:26):
make sure that you know there's a.
Lot of you do that legwork. So because trust is the big
part, right? And that was written here.
It's not just trust, it's it's trust and reliability, right?
Because you you've got to be able to kind of people is the
ultimate part of their business and they've got to put their
faith in you, right. And within hospitalities.
And This is why agency has that taint to it because I think
(18:47):
people will imagine the black waistcoat, you know, turning up
looking disinterested, not really want to be there.
How do you avoid all that stuff because that, you know, they're
obviously walking into a brand. So let's say a pizza pilgrims,
for instance, right. Heavily branded, really kind of
culture thick LED company. How do you kind of ensure that
that person going is not going to cause drama in their
forehouse that they're there? Good luck with that one.
(19:08):
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for this.
Well, so first of all, there's something that the tech does so
kind of right to work Jack's ID.So they're legal, get the
basics. Yeah, right.
And it's like, we're not. We're not required to do this.
This is something that we want to do just, you know, to build
up that trust, you know, legitimacy.
Then also things like contracts and also payroll is taken care
(19:31):
of within within the platform. But who?
How do they pay them? How who?
How does that work out? Who gets paid?
How do people get paid? Yeah.
So, So what? So for the operator, we
basically send them a consolidated invoice on a on a
mostly on a two week basis. And then the freelancer can opt
for to wait until the the operator pays or they can also
(19:54):
cash out with one minute payments.
That's cool. So they can get they can access
earnings. So the minute they've worked.
So the minute that the hours have been approved by the by the
operator in this case, yeah, yeah.
So that's, that's pretty cool from a, from a, from a
perspective from a freelancer. So we help, we help on on that
part. And then I guess from a trust
(20:14):
element. So within the platform, there's
we have a rating system which istwo way, so a two way rating.
So the operator can rate the freelancer and the freelancer
can rate the operator in this case as well.
And then on the freelancer side,we also have much more, I guess,
detailed ratings, skill based ratings as well, because just a
(20:37):
typical 5 star. Doesn't really tell you a lot.
Doesn't tell you a lot, right? So we go much more into detail
on within hospitality. Can they carry a tray?
Can they, can they, you know, latte art, you know, all of
these types of skills and thingsthat are important within the
hospitality sector. And then we allow also the
freelancer to build up much morequalitative profile, so they can
(21:01):
add any other detail, maybe workthat's happened off the off the
platform, all of their background.
And then when, when an operator posts a gig and they get
reactions, the operator has fulltransparency of which
freelancers have reacted to thisand basically said, Hey, I want
to work, including things like motivational notes.
(21:23):
So me as a freelancer, if I loveyour brand and I chop a lot of
your brand, or if I, if I visit Boo Dog Waterloo a lot, all
right, I can put it in there. I know the bar already, and then
they can also see all of this data.
So we're compiling this data forthe operator to have full
transparency of who is showing. Data set, you're building that
(21:44):
not just for the Opera, but for you generally as a business.
Yeah, interesting. There's a lot, there's a lot
there. So, but in All in all, the
operator sees who's showing up. Yeah.
And that's a, that's a big, that's a big difference between
potential other channels and yes, traditional challenge.
You can't say also agency. But you know, knowing who's
going to turn up is super is super important for your for the
(22:06):
business. Well, yeah, and and.
They have skills. Yeah, and it's probably that
part that was always the part that people have been nervous
about in the past, right, when tech didn't exist or didn't
wasn't there to support that kind of.
And also the, the need that or the want from a worker to behave
like this, right? Agency was seen as my job before
it was seen as I worked for an agency.
I get these gigs, I go my waistcoat and I go and do 5 or 6
(22:28):
gigs every week. Whereas now it's very much like
I'm going to do 3 because that'swhat I want to do.
Because that's what I want to do.
And that's the important bit is I want to be there.
Yeah. So who?
The person that's going to come through your door?
Yeah, because they're asking wants.
To be there, yeah. So you're going to see higher
motivation. We see like higher attendance
rates. Our no show rate is minimal.
(22:49):
And do they tend to keep going back to the same brand then or
does it, does it not have a really?
Varied role like I said before, like average around 5 different
roles. So no like freelancers are
looking for for varied work. Because it happens.
Why wouldn't? That I want different skills or
I just want stuff that's around my my, my other kind of schedule
stuff. So yeah, it really does really
(23:12):
does vary I. Find it.
I just think it's, I think it's quite exciting because for so
long the recruitment market generally has been a bit not
dull, but nothing really exciting has happened in it.
If you know, there's some peopledoing some good stuff now like
you guys. And I think I've seen some of
the AI stuff creeping in at the front end where people are able
to stop the thousand CV thing orat least work through it
(23:33):
quicker. But I, I, I it's great to see
putting the power back in the job seekers hand well.
Yeah, the the power the we're putting power in on.
Yeah, both sides, yeah. Like the the job seeker,
essentially they're, they're freelance, right?
They, it's crazy. So it's their reputation, it's
where they want to work, whom they want to work for and when
(23:53):
they want to do it. And then for the operator, it's
the ultimate, ultimate kind of transparency.
And what about the cities? So are you, I mean, I'm guessing
you launch a new city when you, you know, how far and wide are
you in the UK right now? Are you just, are you just in
London or are you? No, so we're, we're, we're far
out of London. So we're all the way up to
Glasgow, Edinburgh, a lot of places in.
Middlesbrough so. We've had a good not, not, not
(24:16):
in Bora, I think. I think we've had two gigs in
Bora and I was think about you. The emojis on Slack were wild.
Where we got this one? No, but we're we're in around I
think around 15 different cities.
All right. OK.
So in the UK, OK, great. Well, the flexibility of the
marketplace as well means that we can be somewhat client LED.
(24:37):
Yeah. So we've had a lot of
opportunities. There's one large retailer now
within the UK where we're live in 30 more.
So yeah, if you bring on a big chain, I suppose that all of a
sudden that opens up all the cities, right?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
So we, we, we can, we can grow alot with brands.
One of the one of the biggest stories that we tell a lot and
one of the biggest themes we seefrom hospitality is, hey, you
(24:59):
know, we're in London. Yeah, OK.
We're pretty happy with our agency, but we're going to
Manchester, we're going to Birmingham.
Our agency is local, they can't support us.
We've. Got a security right?
Yeah. So how so who does it?
So we're able to, I guess the, the liquidity of a marketplace
from that perspective of a pool of job seekers, it's much easier
(25:22):
for, for us to acquire versus anagency because again, it's, it's
their freelance. And I think previously when I
was used to, we used to open sites all outside of London.
My old job was I think we opened60 odd outside of London.
And always the challenge was finding obviously recruit your
team, but that you need to coveryour backside, right, because
(25:43):
you only get one chance to make a good impression and just
having enough availability for that period of time when you're
growing or embedding in a city again, just this young ones just
makes complete. Sense it makes it a lot easier
because like typically what we see with hospital is that
somebody from the core team in London will they'll live in
Manchester, right? But now they do, because.
And they'll build up the, they'll build up that core team.
(26:04):
They do a lot of the recruitment.
And this is where traditional recruitment is super important
still, right? Because you need a core team,
you need to invest in that team.You want, you want to retain
that team. Like retention rates within
hospitality, again, like 4050% annually, right?
It's, it's, it's, I don't know if I've got comparisons against
other industries. And I was running at one time
for a while. So yeah, you know, you're
(26:24):
literally turning your team 1.2 * a year, Yeah.
It's crazy, not great, so not great.
So you know, you need to invest in that core team and this is
through traditional, traditionalrecruitment and traditional kind
of like employment kind of empowerment.
But then this Hyperflex layer ontop is again, within new cities
that you're going to allows you to grow very quickly without
(26:46):
having to find a new agency or go to traditional recruitment
methods outside of outside of your where your core business
is, I guess. It makes total sense and and
you're servicing my son and the Gen.
Z and what they must show you, Isuppose, or you must learn more
from that generation. Really interesting because I
(27:06):
think we're learning more and more every time we see tech
being spun up for them. I suppose that will change
eventually, but what are you learning from them or what are
they teaching you about what they want or how?
I mean, we've covered it a little bit properly, but is
there anything else we've missed?
Yeah, like, well, I, I think thefirst thing I think the first
thing to mention is that within the within the UK young ones,
despite the name, we have an average age of a freelance on
(27:30):
the platform of around I was going nine years old.
Yeah, how old, 2099? Wow, so I think that's still
pretty young, but I don't I don't know, I even I think
that's young. So so they're not they're not
young, young. We're not talking just kind of
like people graduating from uni and this type of stuff, right?
(27:52):
It's not it's not this type of this type of person.
Often they're already come with a bunch of experience, which is
great. But then when we look at kind of
like Gen. Z, like some of the things that
we spoke about like a lot is this like side hustle.
And this is really the, the biggest trend that that we're
seeing is that, you know, young ones is, is fueling a different
(28:16):
part of their either professional or personal or one
of their passions or something like this.
I spoke to a girl today who's just been made redundant from a
role or sales role in hostility.She's building her own tech
product. And she said to me, I need to
just find something to keep me, keep me ticking while I build
the product. And I was just like, yeah, there
you go. It's just a great, it's just a
great example of A use case straight away there.
(28:38):
And I think are you finding as, as, as you kind of get more well
known because were you born out of Amsterdam?
Were you born out of the UK? And not born out of Amsterdam.
So we've actually born out of a traditional recruitment business
agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Where the the 3-3 founders of that recruitment agency saw saw
(28:59):
a need. Yeah.
And they yeah, we're, we're kindof we've spun out of this
private from this recruitment agency and now we're standalone
business etcetera, etcetera, headquartered in is.
It similar in Europe then, I mean without taking too far down
the road, but is it quite similar?
Is the market similar in terms? Of pretty similar, yeah, it's
(29:20):
pretty similar again, it's, it'sthe same positioning, it's the
same use cases that we're seeingtime and time and again.
Yeah, very cool. Yeah.
It's mostly kind of you know what, you know when we, when
we're speaking with hospitality and we're seeing staff turnover,
we're seeing absenteeism, we're seeing late like late notice
sickness. You speak with any operator and
(29:42):
they're not affected by any of these then?
It's the one thing that I say that problems in hostility are
Evergreen, right? They never, I mean, people say
they go away and tech are going to solve them all.
And obviously I'm a big advocateattack, but the reality is these
problems are always going to be around because we're dealing
with humans and service and it'sjust, it's tricky.
What we can do is manage them better, which I think is what
you guys are proposing here. Disappointing, yeah.
(30:02):
Very cool and I have to have a fun question with you.
Yeah, tell me. Yeah, if you could invent well,
you've already got young ones, you can't have too much tech.
But if you can invent any piece of hostility tech to make these
lovely hostility workers lives easier, what would you do?
Yeah, well. One that so I saw.
I saw this question beforehand. No, that's why.
So I saw this question and I've been thinking about this and
(30:23):
again, like when I think about the freelancers using a platform
like young Ones, and it's the kind of diversity of skills that
they're developing. I thought I kind of like,
wouldn't it be cool if they had technology much more of being
able to kind of like draw the lines between all of these
different skills and build up this kind of like model.
(30:46):
So kind of like an AI, kind of like work coach of like, hey,
what kind of persona? What?
Type of people is that we building this.
Well, I hope so. I hope so.
Because like for me within the freelance world, because they're
working multiple different roles, because they're gaining
so many more skills, being able to see, hey, what's
(31:08):
transferable? Why do I want to be in five
years, 10 years and then being able to draw that path?
I think that's, I think that's like a really.
Cool, Yeah, it's really and actually I think there's a
there's a lot of scope around people generally in tech.
I think I was talking about scheduling.
I don't offend all the scheduling people listening, but
feels like there's a big there'sa still an opportunity to really
lead that field us that feel like it's hasn't changed loads.
(31:32):
God, they're going to kill me. Hasn't changed loads over the
years. And I think people employee
facing tech definitely need somesome love.
I think you guys are doing a great job there and it's super
interesting. We're doing a big project with a
I'm going to do what you do now with a big pub chain that I
can't talk about and hopefully you guys talking to those chap
so quite quickly. So it's really interesting.
So you're a london-based over here.
(31:53):
If someone's listening and they're thinking, God, I need
some help, which most of them are.
How do they get hold of you? Well, they can go to young ones.
Dot works, so they can find our website there or they can find
me directly on LinkedIn. Ping me we're we're around.
I didn't ask if I take on a job how quickly like so if I if I'm
do I need to contract or can I just go on today and get
(32:14):
started? How quickly can I?
So for for freelancers, they canthey can sign up pretty
immediately. They do need to verify ID, yes,
right to work, but those checks are done by kind of like our
third parties. So that's really cool.
So they can be up on the platform within minutes and then
operators as well. So ultimately we're a
self-service platform. So somebody could go to Young
(32:36):
Ones dot Works and sign up now and they could be posting a gig
in in in 10 minutes. Love that.
That's, that's, I think that's the point I was trying to make
it the immediacy. Often the problem around people
in hostility is that you need them and you can't get them.
So this this shows that there's an ability to get on there quite
quick and get going. Reaction So like the the, the, I
guess the power of the platform here is that we have over 11,000
(33:00):
freelancers in the UK that are signed up to to young ones.
So once you post a gig, you're accessing a pool of talent
pretty immediately. So reactions streaming in within
minutes. You know, as an operator, you're
looking at profiles. Yeah, within within minutes,
choosing who you need. You know, even at 3:00 AM in the
(33:22):
morning, you can do it. You're not caught.
You're not calling, you know. Rather drunk or knackered.
One of the two ways. That's why they're filling it
out. Really interesting, love.
Lovely to meet you. And I've been speaking on Slack,
which is the new way of bloody tea speaking to everyone these
days. But that's super interesting to
meet you guys and hopefully we'll see a lot more of you,
right? Yeah, yeah.
You know, we hope. We hope so.
Any plans left? Are you, are you visiting?
(33:44):
How long? Because you're in your base.
So how long are you in the UK? For the days, okay, yeah, some
some big client meetings and then fly back and of course
happy to be to be. Here as well, maybe a beer,
Maybe. And maybe you'd be here now,
yeah. All right, look, lovely to meet
you all. That was the young ones,
everybody. If you want to find them there
on the marketplace, you can alsofind James on LinkedIn.
It's James Mad and we shall see you all next week.
Thanks so much. Thanks mate, Bye, bye.
(34:05):
Bye.
Hello and welcome to the Tech and Toast Podcast.
My name is Chris Fletcher and this is season 12.
Tech and Toast Podcast is serving at fresh chats with the
sharpest minds in hostility and tech.
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service, or just sprinkle a little tech magic into your
business, you've come to the right place.
And guess what? Our partners like Speed are back
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If you're curious about all of this, just head over to
lightspeed.co.uk/tech on Toast and book yourself a free demo.
You won't regret it. Now enough of that, ready for
the next episode? Let's go.
(01:09):
Next episode, the Tech and Toastpodcast.
And today I'm delighted to be joined by James Mad, COO, Chief
Operating Officer, Young Ones. Probably the best tech name
we've had this year, I think. How are you, mate?
Nice to meet you. Good.
Thanks mate, thanks for having me.
Welcome to Brew Dog Waterloo. Yeah, it's great, huh?
Yeah, we're shutting here and sorry mate, it's a bit miserable
of me but I've taken him to a pub and then shutting him in a
jail so. Yeah, but well, given me a glass
(01:29):
of water, yeah. Water locked in the room, no
beer, but welcome anyway. You guys are based Amsterdam,
right? Yeah.
Our headquarters is in Amsterdam.
It's where we were founded sevenyears ago, but we have an office
here in the UK at Old Street andin France, in Paris as well.
Sure. And and you're not originally
from there, though you've got I,I spotted your accent a little
(01:50):
bit as we were walking. Where you from originally?
So originally from the North East of England, so near
Middlesbrough, a small town called Saltburn.
Yeah, so are you? Are you a football fan?
I am a football fan. Middlesbrough Supply.
OK. Oh, never mind.
Did you guys miss out? Yeah, yeah, we missed out on the
playoffs. Yeah, yeah.
For non football people that last five seconds meant nothing.
But look, before we get into it,before we talk about young ones,
(02:11):
tell me a little bit about you kind of what's your background?
Have you ended up here today? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So I guess kind of professionally my first seven
years professional life was in marketing technology.
So marketing automation for frome-mail, SMS automation when the
cloud was a thing right in the selling point and then also
(02:31):
social media aggregator and automation.
Oh, I think I need to have a chat with.
You something called Hootsuite. Oh, I know.
Hootsuite yeah, we used it all through the pandemic.
I was using that. Yeah.
So I used to work for for these guys and then more recently for
the last eight years in marketplaces, SO3 sided and two
sided marketplaces across restaurant delivery, across
(02:53):
e-commerce. So vertical e-commerce in
France, specializing in DIY and home improvement and now the
last year and a bid at young ones.
So freelance marketplaces. And we've got and you've done
that really, really nicely. So tell us about young ones.
It's probably and I think you'resolving a problem.
My personal opinion that needs solving, I think before you
(03:16):
explain my understanding of the workforce is this part time,
full time. And then there's this middle
ground that no one's really, I don't know, people have labeled
it yet or not what I call flexi time, where you've got this
flexible workforce where you've got to kind of it's just perfect
for hospitality. But tell us before I ruin it for
you. Tell us about young ones.
It's good because the first timewe spoke, yeah, kind of hit the
(03:36):
nail on the head, yeah, because.Because I'm in a former operator
and I've written people bored mesaying that.
But it it's that is the huge issue in having that that middle
ground of workforce where you really need people at a certain
time on a certain day, but don'twant to commit to the financial
commitment of having someone full time.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, I know for sure. So, so overall our mission is to
make work easy and accessible toeverybody.
(03:59):
And what this really means is that we're, we're a platform, a
marketplace that connects businesses looking for job
seekers and then job seekers, freelancers who are looking to
pick up shifts on a daily basis.And for, I guess for operators,
this makes it super easy and flexible to bring in people to
(04:20):
the business. And for people looking for work,
it really just breaks down that barrier of traditional
recruitment where I'm posting myCV trying to find work.
It really just connects these two people in a much simpler
fashion. And there's a thirst strip,
right? As in obviously there is, but do
you know what I mean? But there's, there's, I think
(04:42):
the user has changed. I know the businesses have also
changed or or being impacted, but has the are you seeing that
the fact that that's driven by the need for this kind of work?
Yeah, from both sides of the marketplace, from operators.
The need for this kind of like flex layer is, is ever more
important. You know, P and LS, they're
(05:02):
being scrutinized a lot within the hospitality industry at the
moment. So this plays a huge part and
Labour's a large line on that P&L.
And then for people looking to to work within freelance, yeah,
we see, we see an uptick. The UK is seeing an increase in
the percentage of people who arelooking to to work via via a
(05:25):
freelance freelance means. And what and what are the major
appeals I suppose to if I'm a a young buck, it's a long time
ago. I'm.
Not even tell you what I'm approaching this birthday, but
anyway. But you know what, what are the
major? I think I know what they are,
but what are the major appeals to it to that end, that user and
the younger people who are usingthe platform?
Kind of, you know, be your own boss.
(05:46):
Yeah, You know, choose when you want to work, choose where you
want to work. How long for whom you know this
this work and it's not just it'snot just young ones that offers
this the the lifestyle of a freelance is I I have.
I have. Well, yeah, you'll be.
It's true, but you'll. Be able to tell us, right.
It's just the ultimate kind of. Yeah.
(06:08):
You make the choices and where and whom you want to work with
for how long. Yeah.
It's it's. And I think it makes up a lot of
in hostility. Historically, it's always been
you kind of. When I was running, especially
with Hard Rock Cafe, we used to run Play X music, you know,
musicians who were jobbing theirway through, trying to fund a
dream to be, you know, rock staror actors.
(06:28):
In fact, an actor worked me on the bar in Cardiff and he was
played Brian May and Queen. Yeah.
So he was like, you know, reallyfamous.
He's very famous now. But Lee Gilliam, Gilliam, Lee
sorry, started working for us, just doing part time stuff.
It's that ability to fund and Hostat is perfect for that,
right? Great market.
There's a huge trend within kindof Gen.
Z this like side hustle and there's a lot of people that we
(06:52):
see utilizing the platform. Yeah who are funding a passion,
actors, sports people within sports musicians.
It's it's it's all there right And who they are now yeah.
And that's one thing. And there's, I don't have the
start off the top of my head andI don't want to say anything
stupid on the podcast, but I don't have a.
(07:13):
Week. But there's a percentage of
freelancers that go on to start their own businesses.
We do a lot of freelance research afterwards and
unsurprisingly to me, a large percentage of these freelancers
are going on to start their own businesses and do do something,
do something else. And we're just a blip sometimes
(07:35):
within that within. You're part of their journey,
right? We're part of their job for
sure. So that's a, that's a really
cool, that's a really cool thingthat we're super proud of.
And if I find a place that I really love.
So let's pick Broodock since we're here.
So I'm part, I'm part time gigging here at Broodock.
But actually I end up falling inlove with working with the team
here and everyone's really nice.I kind of want to stay.
Does that happen? How does that get, can that
(07:56):
happen in the business or it canhappen, I guess it's rare
because I've guess the reason people come to you is not to do
that, right. Well.
Like on on average, I think it's, I think a freelancer via
the platform, they typically work in around 5 different
places, right. OK, so and that's on average.
Oh. What?
So they work in five different. 5-5 different roles, right?
So they're not just staying in one place.
(08:17):
That's just my single mindednessthinking.
Yeah, like again, they a lot of people are coming for skill
development as well. They're picking up new shifts.
That because their shifts are all different in different
places obviously it fits their flexible lifestyle right OK
yeah, that makes. So again, like I'm looking at my
agenda for the week. I've got a school class maybe on
(08:39):
a Monday and a Tuesday. Wednesday, I want to pick up a
couple of gigs and I have band practice on a Thursday.
Like it's really this type of really this type of scheduling
that the. Flexibility is met.
Is probably the main driver Thenwould you say of?
Flexibility, obviously. Obviously it's income
generating. Yeah, they're they're looking,
no ones doing that for free. They're looking to supplement
(08:59):
maybe a potential income off funded passion or something like
this. They're looking also for the
skill development. That's OK.
I'll get that in the edit, don'tworry.
Yeah, they're also looking for skill development.
They're looking to, to learn andto, to, to grow again, like as a
freelance, my reputation is veryimportant.
(09:22):
What I put and put in front of apotential employer in the future
is really important. So, yeah, having that skill
development and working in different places and having the
accessibility to, yeah, I guess simplify your traditional
recruitment method. Yeah, is is really appealing for
for a generation. And and on the other side of the
marketplace, you've got the guyssay BrewDog, yeah, for instance,
(09:44):
I don't know BrewDog or a customer, but and and the appeal
for them I'm guessing is not toodissimilar to the other side of
the fence, right? Yeah.
Like it's again like we talked about this as this kind of
elastic layer that you put over traditional, traditional
staffing, right. So you've got your core team and
(10:04):
they might be on full time contracts or part time contracts
or whatever and you invest in them and you train them.
And then you have this elastic layer that expands and retracts
with your with your demand righton the here, Friday, Saturday.
We need some more people. So it's much easier to be able
to have that flexible layer drive it variable than kind of
(10:28):
worrying about worrying about administration of having people.
It's because I think people, obviously we work with
scheduling tools and stuff like that, and I think that people
often look to that scenario. It's not good enough.
But actually the problem isn't in the tech.
I think the problem is in the process and the management of
the pull and push of demand. Like you just said, demand
(10:48):
planning is always, whether you work in a factory or whether you
work in hospitality is the driver of everything, right?
All of your costs get. If you can get your demand
planning perfect, that's it. Not a lot goes wrong.
Yeah. And some within the hospitality
sector, it's kind of like it's not finger in the air, but it's
a little bit kind of like we know on a Friday, Saturday, we
get busy, right. So we need more people.
And then there's some larger groups that we work with where a
(11:10):
lot of our main point of contactis within the financial
controllers who are looking veryspecifically at the margins and
they're forecasting flexible work month in advance,
delegating budgets to all of their locations to be able to
spend on a market. They will probably get like a
flexi labor budget so they. Have they have a flexi labor
budget? And this is, this is more and
(11:31):
more common now and I think willbecome more common in the future
where you know, you're really forecasting where your peaks are
going to be. And it's it's not all last
minute because we we do solve a huge last minute demand.
Yeah, which what if you had to percentage eyes, I suppose your
last minute kind of because mostpeople think the use cases are
covering the crap. Yeah.
(11:52):
Which is fine, right? Yeah, which was there for.
But I think like you said that actually in the future or now
with the extra cost that everyone's holding that actually
planning this is a lot more and I suppose it is quite planning
flexible workforce sounds, sounds like I'm yeah, you know
what I mean. What you're doing, you're you're
planning the. Budget, yeah, you're allowing
(12:14):
you're. Empowering your operators.
The word empowering. You're empowering your operators
to then spend and essentially meet the demands of the end
customer. Yeah, right.
Generate revenue for the for thebusiness.
And your question was kind of what do we see last minute
versus kind of more forecastable.
So around 30% of the gigs. So we called kind of the gig,
(12:40):
30% of the gigs posted are last minute, which means for us the
definition of that is that they were published to the platform
matched and then the start time was within a 24 hour window.
So there's, I tell the story a lot.
There's a hospitality brand thatwe work with a lot in London,
(13:01):
and a lot of their gigs are published at like 3 AM, 4:00 AM
in the morning. Who the hell is?
And you can imagine, you can imagine the operators like
taking a look at the bar at the end of the night going, we need
more people, right? Oh God, that was it.
Or. Walking into a kitchen after
service just going Oh my God there's more food on the floor
than there isn't 100. Percent.
So we see a lot of this kind of like out of hours use as well
(13:23):
where a high percentage of our gigs are published outside,
within unfavourable hours or outside of business hours.
Which says to me that actually the CFOs and these guys have to
be involved, right? Because the, the ability to go
and spend money potentially on, on labour that might not be
needed. But having that pre planned
budget, the flexi budget as you talked about, or having the,
the, the ability to say, do you know what I need to dip into my
(13:45):
bucket this month? Because we, we haven't got the,
we haven't got the people. Yeah, of course.
And that that's a fantastic way of being able to access because
at the front of all this is service, right?
If you haven't got decent service, you haven't got a
business. That's it.
And every operator we speak to, they love the platform.
Yeah, right. It's rarely an operator that
says, you know what? We don't need this.
But it's like a drug once they're running.
(14:09):
It's once they see how easy it it can be, they love the speed,
the flexibility that it can bring.
It's that site managers who loveit because I'm interested to
know because it's both. It impacts them, I suppose.
The site manners, site managers that they feel a pain and then
you're kind of like your more regional operators.
(14:29):
They're the ones that are saying, well, yeah, you can use
it because I want to solve your pain.
But it needs to meet a certain percentage of Labor cost, right?
But they need to be enabled withthis flexi budget.
So, yeah, there's a little bit of change management, which is,
which is not, yeah, like we, it's a little bit of a new
market we're creating here, right.
(14:50):
So we're doing a lot of education around this as well.
Yeah, I agree. I totally agree.
And I remember speaking to someone a while ago about this
and we were probably last year as a hotel sector and we were
talking about it saying that it's here already.
I'm going to say this word now you're going to freak out
agency. But and I'm sure he just walked
out. My throat became dry.
(15:12):
But you know, that existed, right previously and I know it's
a different an animal. And I suppose you should kind
of, we should give you the rightto kind of explain what the, I
mean, I think we have explained all the differences.
But do you get, do people reference you as that sometimes
from all the time? Yeah, because it still exists,
right? All the time, especially in the
hotel world. We correct them, right?
Like, we're definitely not an agency.
(15:33):
Because it has a taint, doesn't it too?
I think. I think it has a all the word
I'm looking for. But there's something about
agency that makes me. You said it not.
Me. But you can't say that I can't.
So, yeah, but no, like we're again, we're, we're just a
technology platform. We're, we're an enabler here.
But we speak with some of the same, same people who have
(15:55):
traditionally used agency. And again, I think one of the
one of the, I guess one of the misconceptions is that it's
either or. And that's not how I see it at
all. Like we're we're building a new
layer on top which wasn't there,which is this flexible layer.
(16:15):
And you're also accessing peoplethat previously weren't
available to these brands, right, Which I find the most
exciting part. Of it 100% right.
So you've got you've got a you've got a couple of different
channels to find talent. One is through your traditional,
traditional recruitment method, your your website guide where
you'll get X percent, then OK temp temp agency where you'll
get another percent. And then what you have is like
(16:38):
26% of people in the UK who werenot there.
Yeah. So if you're not using a tool
like this, then you're missing out on.
Talent and I think there's an age of so my boy is now 18, but
when he was just turning 17, he could not find normally give him
a chance, right, because he was fresh out of school, right, or
(16:58):
whatever. So, and I think there's a huge
part of the workforce that can'taccess jobs because through the
normal means or through LinkedInor whatever, indeed, all those
places, they're just getting lost in the noise.
It's not that. Whereas this way I can control
it, right? So I can if I don't even know.
I thought I didn't tell you about this, but.
It's noise or it's not that it'snot interested.
And you'd probably flip, you know, a manager looking will
(17:20):
probably flip past them because they don't have that experience
or whatever. But those guys are perfect for
you, like for a Saturday night, just helping clear some tables
or whatever it might be, you know?
Sure. And we, we spoke with them, we
spoke with a large this, it wasn't hospitality, it was a
large retailer. And they were opening a huge,
huge store in a, you know, famous kind of shopping.
I love the way you avoided everybrand name.
(17:42):
Successfully. And what they what they told us
is that through their their typical kind of application
management, yeah, they were getting for a job, they were
getting thousands of applications like how do you
even manage that? And they were, they were still
doing paper contracts. Yeah.
So going through 1000 CV, I'm sure they didn't go through 1000
but the first 100. Yeah, you can't help but bias
(18:05):
just kicks it. We're not even biased, but just
the lack of wilt. It's a read to do.
It's a read through and they just don't have time.
Yeah. It's not that time.
So the, the cost, the administrative burden is huge
where kind of with with a platform like like young ones,
what what we do upfront, we verify kind of right to work
identification. So we support them here just to
(18:26):
make sure that you know there's a.
Lot of you do that legwork. So because trust is the big
part, right? And that was written here.
It's not just trust, it's it's trust and reliability, right?
Because you you've got to be able to kind of people is the
ultimate part of their business and they've got to put their
faith in you, right. And within hospitalities.
And This is why agency has that taint to it because I think
(18:47):
people will imagine the black waistcoat, you know, turning up
looking disinterested, not really want to be there.
How do you avoid all that stuff because that, you know, they're
obviously walking into a brand. So let's say a pizza pilgrims,
for instance, right. Heavily branded, really kind of
culture thick LED company. How do you kind of ensure that
that person going is not going to cause drama in their
forehouse that they're there? Good luck with that one.
(19:08):
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for this.
Well, so first of all, there's something that the tech does so
kind of right to work Jack's ID.So they're legal, get the
basics. Yeah, right.
And it's like, we're not. We're not required to do this.
This is something that we want to do just, you know, to build
up that trust, you know, legitimacy.
Then also things like contracts and also payroll is taken care
(19:31):
of within within the platform. But who?
How do they pay them? How who?
How does that work out? Who gets paid?
How do people get paid? Yeah.
So, So what? So for the operator, we
basically send them a consolidated invoice on a on a
mostly on a two week basis. And then the freelancer can opt
for to wait until the the operator pays or they can also
(19:54):
cash out with one minute payments.
That's cool. So they can get they can access
earnings. So the minute they've worked.
So the minute that the hours have been approved by the by the
operator in this case, yeah, yeah.
So that's, that's pretty cool from a, from a, from a
perspective from a freelancer. So we help, we help on on that
part. And then I guess from a trust
(20:14):
element. So within the platform, there's
we have a rating system which istwo way, so a two way rating.
So the operator can rate the freelancer and the freelancer
can rate the operator in this case as well.
And then on the freelancer side,we also have much more, I guess,
detailed ratings, skill based ratings as well, because just a
(20:37):
typical 5 star. Doesn't really tell you a lot.
Doesn't tell you a lot, right? So we go much more into detail
on within hospitality. Can they carry a tray?
Can they, can they, you know, latte art, you know, all of
these types of skills and thingsthat are important within the
hospitality sector. And then we allow also the
freelancer to build up much morequalitative profile, so they can
(21:01):
add any other detail, maybe workthat's happened off the off the
platform, all of their background.
And then when, when an operator posts a gig and they get
reactions, the operator has fulltransparency of which
freelancers have reacted to thisand basically said, Hey, I want
to work, including things like motivational notes.
(21:23):
So me as a freelancer, if I loveyour brand and I chop a lot of
your brand, or if I, if I visit Boo Dog Waterloo a lot, all
right, I can put it in there. I know the bar already, and then
they can also see all of this data.
So we're compiling this data forthe operator to have full
transparency of who is showing. Data set, you're building that
(21:44):
not just for the Opera, but for you generally as a business.
Yeah, interesting. There's a lot, there's a lot
there. So, but in All in all, the
operator sees who's showing up. Yeah.
And that's a, that's a big, that's a big difference between
potential other channels and yes, traditional challenge.
You can't say also agency. But you know, knowing who's
going to turn up is super is super important for your for the
(22:06):
business. Well, yeah, and and.
They have skills. Yeah, and it's probably that
part that was always the part that people have been nervous
about in the past, right, when tech didn't exist or didn't
wasn't there to support that kind of.
And also the, the need that or the want from a worker to behave
like this, right? Agency was seen as my job before
it was seen as I worked for an agency.
I get these gigs, I go my waistcoat and I go and do 5 or 6
(22:28):
gigs every week. Whereas now it's very much like
I'm going to do 3 because that'swhat I want to do.
Because that's what I want to do.
And that's the important bit is I want to be there.
Yeah. So who?
The person that's going to come through your door?
Yeah, because they're asking wants.
To be there, yeah. So you're going to see higher
motivation. We see like higher attendance
rates. Our no show rate is minimal.
(22:49):
And do they tend to keep going back to the same brand then or
does it, does it not have a really?
Varied role like I said before, like average around 5 different
roles. So no like freelancers are
looking for for varied work. Because it happens.
Why wouldn't? That I want different skills or
I just want stuff that's around my my, my other kind of schedule
stuff. So yeah, it really does really
(23:12):
does vary I. Find it.
I just think it's, I think it's quite exciting because for so
long the recruitment market generally has been a bit not
dull, but nothing really exciting has happened in it.
If you know, there's some peopledoing some good stuff now like
you guys. And I think I've seen some of
the AI stuff creeping in at the front end where people are able
to stop the thousand CV thing orat least work through it
(23:33):
quicker. But I, I, I it's great to see
putting the power back in the job seekers hand well.
Yeah, the the power the we're putting power in on.
Yeah, both sides, yeah. Like the the job seeker,
essentially they're, they're freelance, right?
They, it's crazy. So it's their reputation, it's
where they want to work, whom they want to work for and when
(23:53):
they want to do it. And then for the operator, it's
the ultimate, ultimate kind of transparency.
And what about the cities? So are you, I mean, I'm guessing
you launch a new city when you, you know, how far and wide are
you in the UK right now? Are you just, are you just in
London or are you? No, so we're, we're, we're far
out of London. So we're all the way up to
Glasgow, Edinburgh, a lot of places in.
Middlesbrough so. We've had a good not, not, not
(24:16):
in Bora, I think. I think we've had two gigs in
Bora and I was think about you. The emojis on Slack were wild.
Where we got this one? No, but we're we're in around I
think around 15 different cities.
All right. OK.
So in the UK, OK, great. Well, the flexibility of the
marketplace as well means that we can be somewhat client LED.
(24:37):
Yeah. So we've had a lot of
opportunities. There's one large retailer now
within the UK where we're live in 30 more.
So yeah, if you bring on a big chain, I suppose that all of a
sudden that opens up all the cities, right?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
So we, we, we can, we can grow alot with brands.
One of the one of the biggest stories that we tell a lot and
one of the biggest themes we seefrom hospitality is, hey, you
(24:59):
know, we're in London. Yeah, OK.
We're pretty happy with our agency, but we're going to
Manchester, we're going to Birmingham.
Our agency is local, they can't support us.
We've. Got a security right?
Yeah. So how so who does it?
So we're able to, I guess the, the liquidity of a marketplace
from that perspective of a pool of job seekers, it's much easier
(25:22):
for, for us to acquire versus anagency because again, it's, it's
their freelance. And I think previously when I
was used to, we used to open sites all outside of London.
My old job was I think we opened60 odd outside of London.
And always the challenge was finding obviously recruit your
team, but that you need to coveryour backside, right, because
(25:43):
you only get one chance to make a good impression and just
having enough availability for that period of time when you're
growing or embedding in a city again, just this young ones just
makes complete. Sense it makes it a lot easier
because like typically what we see with hospital is that
somebody from the core team in London will they'll live in
Manchester, right? But now they do, because.
And they'll build up the, they'll build up that core team.
(26:04):
They do a lot of the recruitment.
And this is where traditional recruitment is super important
still, right? Because you need a core team,
you need to invest in that team.You want, you want to retain
that team. Like retention rates within
hospitality, again, like 4050% annually, right?
It's, it's, it's, I don't know if I've got comparisons against
other industries. And I was running at one time
for a while. So yeah, you know, you're
(26:24):
literally turning your team 1.2 * a year, Yeah.
It's crazy, not great, so not great.
So you know, you need to invest in that core team and this is
through traditional, traditionalrecruitment and traditional kind
of like employment kind of empowerment.
But then this Hyperflex layer ontop is again, within new cities
that you're going to allows you to grow very quickly without
(26:46):
having to find a new agency or go to traditional recruitment
methods outside of outside of your where your core business
is, I guess. It makes total sense and and
you're servicing my son and the Gen.
Z and what they must show you, Isuppose, or you must learn more
from that generation. Really interesting because I
(27:06):
think we're learning more and more every time we see tech
being spun up for them. I suppose that will change
eventually, but what are you learning from them or what are
they teaching you about what they want or how?
I mean, we've covered it a little bit properly, but is
there anything else we've missed?
Yeah, like, well, I, I think thefirst thing I think the first
thing to mention is that within the within the UK young ones,
despite the name, we have an average age of a freelance on
(27:30):
the platform of around I was going nine years old.
Yeah, how old, 2099? Wow, so I think that's still
pretty young, but I don't I don't know, I even I think
that's young. So so they're not they're not
young, young. We're not talking just kind of
like people graduating from uni and this type of stuff, right?
(27:52):
It's not it's not this type of this type of person.
Often they're already come with a bunch of experience, which is
great. But then when we look at kind of
like Gen. Z, like some of the things that
we spoke about like a lot is this like side hustle.
And this is really the, the biggest trend that that we're
seeing is that, you know, young ones is, is fueling a different
(28:16):
part of their either professional or personal or one
of their passions or something like this.
I spoke to a girl today who's just been made redundant from a
role or sales role in hostility.She's building her own tech
product. And she said to me, I need to
just find something to keep me, keep me ticking while I build
the product. And I was just like, yeah, there
you go. It's just a great, it's just a
great example of A use case straight away there.
(28:38):
And I think are you finding as, as, as you kind of get more well
known because were you born out of Amsterdam?
Were you born out of the UK? And not born out of Amsterdam.
So we've actually born out of a traditional recruitment business
agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Where the the 3-3 founders of that recruitment agency saw saw
(28:59):
a need. Yeah.
And they yeah, we're, we're kindof we've spun out of this
private from this recruitment agency and now we're standalone
business etcetera, etcetera, headquartered in is.
It similar in Europe then, I mean without taking too far down
the road, but is it quite similar?
Is the market similar in terms? Of pretty similar, yeah, it's
(29:20):
pretty similar again, it's, it'sthe same positioning, it's the
same use cases that we're seeingtime and time and again.
Yeah, very cool. Yeah.
It's mostly kind of you know what, you know when we, when
we're speaking with hospitality and we're seeing staff turnover,
we're seeing absenteeism, we're seeing late like late notice
sickness. You speak with any operator and
(29:42):
they're not affected by any of these then?
It's the one thing that I say that problems in hostility are
Evergreen, right? They never, I mean, people say
they go away and tech are going to solve them all.
And obviously I'm a big advocateattack, but the reality is these
problems are always going to be around because we're dealing
with humans and service and it'sjust, it's tricky.
What we can do is manage them better, which I think is what
you guys are proposing here. Disappointing, yeah.
(30:02):
Very cool and I have to have a fun question with you.
Yeah, tell me. Yeah, if you could invent well,
you've already got young ones, you can't have too much tech.
But if you can invent any piece of hostility tech to make these
lovely hostility workers lives easier, what would you do?
Yeah, well. One that so I saw.
I saw this question beforehand. No, that's why.
So I saw this question and I've been thinking about this and
(30:23):
again, like when I think about the freelancers using a platform
like young Ones, and it's the kind of diversity of skills that
they're developing. I thought I kind of like,
wouldn't it be cool if they had technology much more of being
able to kind of like draw the lines between all of these
different skills and build up this kind of like model.
(30:46):
So kind of like an AI, kind of like work coach of like, hey,
what kind of persona? What?
Type of people is that we building this.
Well, I hope so. I hope so.
Because like for me within the freelance world, because they're
working multiple different roles, because they're gaining
so many more skills, being able to see, hey, what's
(31:08):
transferable? Why do I want to be in five
years, 10 years and then being able to draw that path?
I think that's, I think that's like a really.
Cool, Yeah, it's really and actually I think there's a
there's a lot of scope around people generally in tech.
I think I was talking about scheduling.
I don't offend all the scheduling people listening, but
feels like there's a big there'sa still an opportunity to really
lead that field us that feel like it's hasn't changed loads.
(31:32):
God, they're going to kill me. Hasn't changed loads over the
years. And I think people employee
facing tech definitely need somesome love.
I think you guys are doing a great job there and it's super
interesting. We're doing a big project with a
I'm going to do what you do now with a big pub chain that I
can't talk about and hopefully you guys talking to those chap
so quite quickly. So it's really interesting.
So you're a london-based over here.
(31:53):
If someone's listening and they're thinking, God, I need
some help, which most of them are.
How do they get hold of you? Well, they can go to young ones.
Dot works, so they can find our website there or they can find
me directly on LinkedIn. Ping me we're we're around.
I didn't ask if I take on a job how quickly like so if I if I'm
do I need to contract or can I just go on today and get
(32:14):
started? How quickly can I?
So for for freelancers, they canthey can sign up pretty
immediately. They do need to verify ID, yes,
right to work, but those checks are done by kind of like our
third parties. So that's really cool.
So they can be up on the platform within minutes and then
operators as well. So ultimately we're a
self-service platform. So somebody could go to Young
(32:36):
Ones dot Works and sign up now and they could be posting a gig
in in in 10 minutes. Love that.
That's, that's, I think that's the point I was trying to make
it the immediacy. Often the problem around people
in hostility is that you need them and you can't get them.
So this this shows that there's an ability to get on there quite
quick and get going. Reaction So like the the, the, I
guess the power of the platform here is that we have over 11,000
(33:00):
freelancers in the UK that are signed up to to young ones.
So once you post a gig, you're accessing a pool of talent
pretty immediately. So reactions streaming in within
minutes. You know, as an operator, you're
looking at profiles. Yeah, within within minutes,
choosing who you need. You know, even at 3:00 AM in the
(33:22):
morning, you can do it. You're not caught.
You're not calling, you know. Rather drunk or knackered.
One of the two ways. That's why they're filling it
out. Really interesting, love.
Lovely to meet you. And I've been speaking on Slack,
which is the new way of bloody tea speaking to everyone these
days. But that's super interesting to
meet you guys and hopefully we'll see a lot more of you,
right? Yeah, yeah.
You know, we hope. We hope so.
Any plans left? Are you, are you visiting?
(33:44):
How long? Because you're in your base.
So how long are you in the UK? For the days, okay, yeah, some
some big client meetings and then fly back and of course
happy to be to be. Here as well, maybe a beer,
Maybe. And maybe you'd be here now,
yeah. All right, look, lovely to meet
you all. That was the young ones,
everybody. If you want to find them there
on the marketplace, you can alsofind James on LinkedIn.
It's James Mad and we shall see you all next week.
Thanks so much. Thanks mate, Bye, bye.
(34:05):
Bye.
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