Licensed Trade Hero 2020 is a brand new category at this year’s Scottish Bar & Pub awards reflecting the times we’re living through and this got us thinking about Hospitality Heroes that have gone above and beyond during the Covid crisis. Today we honour Stuart McPhee, Aberdeen’s Siberia Bar & Hotel Director and chair of the Aberdeen Hospitality Together forum.
Stuart McPhee really earned his stripes by setting up the Aberdeen Hospitality Together forum to give city operators one voice during the city’s local lockdown in August. To date, it has 141 members.
Stuart was incredibly vocal at the time across the media on how a balanced approach was required to ensure safety protocols were observed while protecting the 14,000 jobs in the industry and the ripple effect on suppliers to the trade. He also drew attention to a lack of enforcement and launched a public campaign raising awareness on how everyone could play their part to make hospitality venues safer via radio and print advertising and case studies.
Said Stuart, “I don’t know about hero – I have never been so active before and pre-Covid my primary concern has always been my business and when that was taken away from me I did anything and everything to make sure that my voice was heard.
“All our businesses are interconnected in some way and we have all been supporting one another by being compliant.
“I speak regularly with EHO, the police, and licensing and this helps us stay ahead of the curve and I keep fighting – I was on BBC’s debate night programme recently and I gave Kate Forbes a really hard time.”