The Grateful for Hospitality Podcast: Ep.2 Paulo De Tarso
The Grateful for Hospitality Podcast features candid conversations with founders, operators, and experts shaping the sector. Practical insights, honest stories and ideas to make you think.
Watch Episode 2.
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 Soho, through Beverly Hills, to London’s most iconic rooms – The Wolseley, Scott’s Mayfair, and six years with Daniel Boulud at Bar Boulud – and into opening his own restaurant, Margot, in Covent Garden. Honest, opinionated, and full of practical lessons for anyone who serves a customer for a living.
About the Guest
Paulo de Tarso is a Brazilian-born hospitality leader who started as a busboy in New York in the early 90s and moved to London in 2005. He worked as maitre d’ at The Wolseley under Jeremy King and Chris Corbin, served Richard Caring at Scott’s Mayfair, and spent six years with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud at Bar Boulud inside the Mandarin Oriental. In 2016 he opened his own restaurant, Margot, in Covent Garden. Post-COVID he stepped away from day-to-day operating to launch his own hospitality consulting practice, which he runs today.
Key Topics Covered
- The one-sentence distinction that separates great operators from average ones
- How to hire for personality when everyone else is hiring for CV
- Why a real smile still out-performs a slick script
- The US vs UK service gap – and what each can steal from the other
- How to build confidence in junior team members by investing in product knowledge
- The tronc transparency problem, and why service charge has to belong to the whole team
- Reading the table – upselling by holding the customer back, not pushing more on them
- Turning one good meal into a lifetime regular
- Why hospitality is a discipline every industry now has to learn (retail, banking, hair salons)
- How to protect margin in a squeezed London market without cutting the training that makes the margin
What We Discussed
- Welcoming Paulo to the Grateful premiere
- The accidental start – a Brooklyn coffee shop with a Brazilian architect friend
- Getting fired as a dishwasher in Soho and walking up Columbus Avenue looking for a busboy job
- Discovering the craft on the floor – the uniform, the interaction, the tips
- The Guatemalan head waiter in Beverly Hills who said “every smile is a dollar”
- Reading Danny Meyer and finding a philosophy without a mentor in the room
- The London years – The Wolseley with Jeremy King and Chris Corbin, Scott’s Mayfair with Richard Caring, six years at Bar Boulud with Daniel Boulud
- Opening Margot in Covent Garden in 2016
- Stepping away during COVID and launching the consulting practice
- The working definition – service is the plate, hospitality is the feeling
- Regulars three times a week, and why consistency beats novelty
- Reading a table – stopping a guest from over-ordering and offering a tasting portion instead
- Why the customer walking out is your best PR agency, and the worst if it goes wrong
- The most underrated skill on the floor – a genuine smile
- Confidence comes from product knowledge – a company responsibility, not a staff flaw
- The Four Seasons hiring standard and the interview question that instantly disqualifies a candidate
- Values as the operating system – integrity, honesty, raising your arm when you mess up
- The white wine spill in Beverly Hills and the 25 dollars out of the pocket
- Hiring for personality in the US, technical skill in Europe – and why the best rooms do both
- Tipping cultures – chasing a tourist down the street in LA, receiving 2 pounds at The Wolseley from a table of four
- The tronc problem – why the UK system lacks transparency and what should change
- Service charge belongs to the whole team, back of house included
- Why customers should be kind to staff, tip well, and stop removing service charge by default
- How Paulo handles a guest who wants the service charge removed
- Hospitality is empathy – not judging a late guest because you don’t know their day
- Hospitality beyond the restaurant – retail, banking, hair salons, motorcycle dealerships
- Customer loyalty in a cost-of-living squeeze – why you can’t afford bad service in 2026
- The London market – Brexit, rents, tax, and the value-for-money challenge
- What excites Paulo about London hospitality right now, and why UK dining may now be the best in Europe
- The closing answer – the single thing anyone can do to improve hospitality
Key Quotes
“Service is how you get a product from the kitchen. What’s hospitality? How do you make the recipient of that product feel?” – Paulo de Tarso”You give me 50%. I give you 50%. Together, we’re a team. And that is really hospitality. It’s teamwork.” – Paulo de Tarso”Hospitality is to have empathy in your heart. It’s to not judge. You never know what someone is going through.” – Paulo de Tarso”The reason nobody ever complained about the 15 percent, where it was 12 and a half everywhere else, is because we never had a bad service.” – Paulo de Tarso on Margot
Key Takeaways
- Hire for personality, train for technique. You can teach a system. You can’t teach warmth.
- A smile, a recognition, a welcome back – the cheapest tools on the floor and the most underrated.
- Transparency in tronc and service charge is no longer optional. Every penny needs to be counted and every team member needs to see where it goes.
- Invest in training harder during a squeeze, not despite one. Well-trained staff are your margin.
- Stop treating every interaction as a transaction. Memories, not receipts, are what bring people back.
To find out how Grateful can assist your business, reach out to the team today.
