Is Social Media Hospitable?

An essay(?) by Program Director, Justin Garcidiaz.

What do you mean I have to use social media? Says who? 

I get it. For the past at least 15 years social media use has felt ubiquitous, even essential to everyday life. But there was, in fact, a time which existed before social media. It’s not like we – individuals and small businesses – just blinked to life in 2010 when Instagram launched. Many of us, I’d dare say millions, can even remember that time when social media wasn’t a “thing,” but now, almost two decades later, we’re walking around, staring into our phones at the constant stream of social media apps, while the news is full of reports about all the negative effects of this usage has on our lives.

So…why? Why do I have to use social media? I remember a time when it didn’t exist, so I know that all the functions it serves are still attainable without it. I know how bad it is for mental health, for culture, for teen girls, for spreading disinformation. And thanks to screen time-tracking apps, I know how much time is wasted on each individual platform. So, again, why? Why do I have to use it? Why, if I’m a small business owner, do I have to use it to sell my business? 

I’m not going to bother to “both sides” the argument. I’m not going to balance my position with all the virtues of social media in an attempt to appear unbiased because I am biased, and quite frankly, if you’re looking for a fair and balanced analysis of the pros and cons here, you can go elsewhere; this won’t be that. Social media companies have proven time and time again that they too are biased – against us, their users. They have shown nothing but contempt for their clientele. They know they’re abusing their consumers, gleefully causing harm to us as individuals and as a society, and they laugh in our faces about it. So I’m not going to waste my time trying to balance my argument with favorable pontifications about how they’re in any way good or useful or altruistic or even inherently necessary at all because they’re not. They are not necessary in the sense that we couldn’t possibly function without them. We did before, and we can again. 

Right now, about 96% of small and medium businesses engage in social media marketing. Most of that is done through Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn (and probably TikTok, but that one is a little up in the air right now). And while it’s hard to say exactly what portion of resources are being allocated to this form of marketing, with 82% of all consumer internet traffic going to social media platforms, it’s probably safe to assume that businesses are going to be investing a significant portion of their resources in them. But how effective this is is incredibly hard to say. There’s no meaningful way of determining how the ROI of social media marketing works for your company. Say you spend 5 hours per week posting and engaging on social media for your business. Could you say with any degree of certainty  how many revenue dollars that translates to? Probably not. What about if you employ a full time social media manager? Are you actually able to calculate whether or not their salary is being offset by consumer engagement and dollars spent? Probably not. 

The problem is that social media – from the consumer’s standpoint – is a mostly passive activity. Just think about all the time you spend simply scrolling through Instagram, not clicking on anything, not buying anything, certainly not logging off and going out to spend money at the businesses you’re following. You’re window shopping – walking through a virtual mall but not going into any of the stores. Every time your favorite local restaurant posts a picture of a dish, you “like” it, but did you eat it? Did you go there and purchase that item from the menu and enjoy the experience of eating it in the restaurant? Probably not. 

Perhaps as a business owner you look at your follower count and consider that a decent measurement of whether or not your investment in social media marketing is paying off. You have 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 followers and think “wow, I’m killing it! People love us!” but then you look at the books and wonder why you’re barely squeaking by. If only those 10,000 people came into your restaurant or shop. How many of your followers even could? How many of them are local vs spread all across the country, or even the world? How many people followed your restaurant because they saw your name on the James Beard Award list or in an Eater article and clicked “follow” but have never, and probably will never, come visit your restaurant? What good is a follower if they’re not a consumer? Sure, we all like the validation of having thousands of followers, but validation doesn’t pay your staff or the utilities companies or the vendors and purveyors. That dopamine hit you got when you saw your follower count go up won’t mean much if you can’t keep the lights on. And sure, having more followers means you can game the algorithm and reach a wider audience. But again, what good is a wider audience if they’re miles away with no meaningful way to support your business? 

Certainly someone must be benefiting from all the time and resources we’re investing in social media marketing, right? Right – but it's probably not you, and it’s probably not the kind of person who needs more money. Meta, TikTok, X, they all get their money through ad revenue. Social media users will see a sponsored ad for a thing on, say Instagram, click it and buy whatever the thing is, and *cha ching* a billionaire somewhere gets his wings or whatever. But billionaires don’t need more money. You know who needs more money? You do! Your team does. Your community does. Your local businesses and restaurants and neighbors need more money. Billionaires have enough money, it’s right there in the name. We need this to work so our businesses can make more money, and they’ve convinced us that social media marketing is supposed to help with that, but is it? 

Maybe you’re thinking, “but I never buy things I see advertised on Instagram.” Hooray for you, I applaud your avoidance of the siren call of targeted advertising. But guess what? You’re still feeding the beast. *whispers sharply* They’re stealing your data and selling it! That’s right, you may not be buying anything through your clicks, but your clicks are providing data, and that data is worth money. Who you are, where you are, what you look at, how long you look at what you look at, all of that is valuable data that these companies are collecting and selling to the highest bidder. So even when you don’t want to be, you’re commodifying yourself so these tech CEOs can get richer and richer while your business continues to struggle. So keep not buying things all you want, you’re still being bought and sold left and right.

You *didn’t* read it here first folks: Social Media is Harming Our Culture. That’s right, surprising absolutely no one, social media has been linked to increased rates of anxiety and depression, suicide, body image issues, attention span decline, cyberbullying, disinformation, and at least a couple really questionable presidential elections. Fact: Suicide rates among teens were up 150% between 2009 and 2019. One hundred fifty per cent! That’s not even how “per cent” is supposed to work! Social media platforms are designed to exploit the brain's dopamine reward system, similar to gambling, making it addictive. Social media users report feeling lonelier than ever, and the rise in social media use correlates with a decline in face-to-face interactions by 40% since the early 2000s. One in three divorces now cite Facebook or Instagram as contributing factors. False news travels 6 times faster than real news on X, and studies show that false political ads on Facebook reached 10 million people during the 2020 election alone. 

If appealing to your morality doesn’t work, perhaps an appeal to your vanity will. Look in the mirror. Bags under your eyes? Constant downward gazing – like when you scroll Instagram all day – leads to premature wrinkles and sagging skin, too. In fact, looking down at your phone adds up to 60 lbs of pressure to your neck, leading to chronic pain, spinal misalignment, and early arthritis. Repetitive scrolling causes tendonitis and trigger thumb, where the thumb locks in place because of overuse. Do you lay in bed and scroll? The blue light emitted from screens suppresses melatonin production, which disrupts healthy sleep, which shrinks grey matter in the brain, which affects memory, focus and emotional regulation. It’s also bad for your eyes – reducing blink rates by 66%, leading to dry eyes, eye fatigue, and long-term damage to the retina and early-onset macular degeneration and blindness. Check your TikTok while you’re on the throne? Sitting on the toilet for extended periods of time significantly increases the risk of developing hemorrhoids. If we keep it up, we’ll be a species of blind, gnarled, unhappy Quasimodos!

Should I go on? I could, but I probably don’t need to. The moral injury of knowing all these statistics and (admittedly cherry picked) factoids is enough to weigh heavily on our conscience. What does it do to your psyche to knowingly use something so terribly harmful, but then use it anyway, despite the harm and despite the knowledge of it? Can you honestly say that you’re able to live in integrity with your values and morals if you know all this, but use social media anyway? I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, but I would encourage you to at least think about that. Be curious. Think critically about how social media use has affected you, your loved ones, your community, and your business. I’m not saying you have to stop immediately – heck, quitting any addiction is hard – but maybe just…think about it?

There. We know it’s harmful. We know it's exploitative. We know it’s very likely a waste of time from a marketing standpoint. Now what do we do? What did we do before all this – before social media got its hooks in us? The first step is…Subscribe. Subscribe to IRL. Make the commitment, here and now, to engage with the world around you, rather than simply peer at it through the window of your phone. Everywhere we turn, we’re inundated with messages about the loneliness epidemic and the urgent need for community. Stop talking about it and be about it. Subscribe to real life! What do the kids say – go touch grass? Do that. Join a club or community organization. If you’re a business owner, join local business associations, chambers of commerce, or trade groups. Attend local events, fairs, and networking meetups. Pick one club, group or association that is relevant to your business and commit to going to a meeting.

Look for ways to collaborate, rather than compete. Much has been said about the role of competition in our economic system, but somehow we all got hung up on the notion that competition means that for you to have some, others must have less. That scarcity mindset isn’t helping anyone and it doesn’t have to be that way. “Competition” can simply mean “variety,” it can mean more options for more consumers and can lead to the rising tide that lifts all boats. Sure, if you own a restaurant it would probably be nice to be the only restaurant in town, but since you’re not the only restaurant in town, it might be better to try to look at your peers as collaborators rather than competitors. More restaurants in the community means more options for consumers which means more consumers willing to go out and try new restaurants in the community which means more restaurants can thrive. Look for ways you and the “competition” can work together. Reach out to local businesses in your industry and talk to them about what they need. Chances are, it’s all the same things you need and knowing that can help you explore ways to get those needs met together. You’re already sharing the same customer base, whether you’ve admitted that or not, so why not capitalize on that by cross promoting each other’s businesses. Advertise for one another by spreading the word. Create incentives and events to draw in new customers. Pop up at trade shows or markets. Do collabs, organize “business crawls” for the community – people love a map with stickers from each business they visit! Spend money at your “competitor’s” businesses. Show up for each other. 

Invest in old fashioned, boots on the ground style marketing. Sure, posting a pretty photo on Instagram is nice, but are you just shouting into the void? If you live in a city with a strong urban core, you’re probably seeing a lot of real estate development. You know who lives in apartment buildings? Customers. Reach out to the 3 closest new builds and talk to their property management team. They’re always looking for ways to engage their residents. Maybe you host an event in their building or create a promotion for them. Imagine you’re a small yoga studio next to a new high rise condo – what if you host a Saturday morning yoga class in their community room and then offer a 10% discount to residents who sign up for studio memberships? Maybe the buildings agree to put up a poster or a stack of postcards or pin a flyer to their community bulletin board. It's a start, and if it turns into a dollar earned for your business, at least you can say it wasn’t a dollar you had to share with Mark Zuckerberg and doesn’t that feel nice?

What do you care about? The environment? Reproductive rights? Sustainable farming? Jesus? Doesn’t really matter what it is, I bet there’s an organization that supports it out there. Find it, reach out to it, and see how you can help. If the average salary for a social media manager is costing you $62k per year, that’s about $1300 per week give or take. What if you invested that $1300 into an event with a charity or organization aligned with your values? Not only would that make you feel good about having an impact in the world around you, it would also expose your business to like-minded people who will very likely turn around and invest their dollars in supporting you. It’s like a win-win-win! 

Look, there aren’t any easy answers but shouldn’t we ask the questions? No matter what you do, you’re going to need to invest time and money into how you market your business and engage with your customers, whether that’s through social media or something else. You don’t have to take my advice, quit social media, and focus your efforts on healthier, more holistic, more community-oriented practices. You also don’t have to maintain the status quo, either. You could continue to use social media until your thumbs fall off and democracy crumbles. Or you could not. Either way, it’s your call. But just…think about it. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Accountability is Hospitable

Accountability is the key to managing labor costs and to delivering more value to your business and your team!

A common mistake we see leaders make is shying away from engaging with low performing team members. Why? We often hear that it’s because they don’t know where to begin the conversation or don’t want to “rock the boat”. 

Instead, we see folks react to emerging challenges by throwing more labor dollars at the problem and putting more people on the schedule, rather than addressing the opportunity to refocus and redirect the efforts of the team that’s already on the clock everyday. This creates waste for your business and limits the potential value that an hour’s work can deliver to team members. 

To fix this problem, effective managers invest time to create an ongoing dialogue that clarifies expectations, ensures common understanding, secures commitment to doing better work and provides regular, actionable feedback about what is being observed. This sets the stage for the accountability that helps folks know where they stand and where to focus their efforts. 

Accountability isn’t just about driving efficiencies, it’s hospitable!

Here’s a guide to getting started on the path towards a more accountable and Capable Culture. Yes to that!

True Hospitality Starts with Yourself

The demands of this time of year can often be a major source of stress for both leaders and teams. As we juggle seasonal problem-solving with strategic planning for the upcoming year, maintaining team engagement requires thoughtful, hospitable leadership. This means anticipating individual needs, communicating clear expectations, and inspiring a positive vision for the future. 

This is a tall order. Let’s make sure we’re ready. 

To prevent overwhelm and ensure we aren’t operating from a place of stressed reactivity, before attempting to take on complex challenges and take care of others, let's turn our hospitality efforts inward towards our own well-being. 

Here's our recipe for Optimism and Hospitable Responsiveness:

I. Sleep. Our daily foundation. Struggling with getting enough sleep? Instead of stressing about going to bed early, we can flip the script and try waking up at the same time every day. This gives us a consistent starting place to build from. 

2. Stillness. Our source of reflective awareness. Before the news, before social media, before we allow anyone or anything else to influence us, let’s take time to pause, reflect, and think for ourselves. Strategic insights on what matters most and planful intentions often emerge here. 

3. Fuel. Our intentional intake supplies our minds and bodies. What we eat matters. What we drink matters. What we read and watch matters. Be intentional. Skewing our information and nutritional intake towards the positive makes it easier to cultivate the defiant optimism we need. 

4. Flow. Our way of connecting with presence to stoke joy and optimism. Exercise, paint, write, bake cookies, let’s do whatever we can to feel connected, remind ourselves what it's all for and recenter our perspective.

5 things you can do to grow and thrive in 2025

How to cultivate opportunities, make more money, get ready for that next job and make this your best year yet. 

1. Identify a new goal or new job you want to work towards. Learn what qualifications are necessary to become ready. Make a point to tell others about your goals and ask managers what things you can focus on today to start working towards them. Identify possible mentors and strike up a conversation about it all.

1. Work to make sure you’re able to consistently show up at your best. This starts with treating yourself well and setting yourself up for success. Prioritize getting consistent sleep. Then plan ahead to give yourself time each day to mentally prepare your gameplan and walk into work with an intentional mindset.

2. Be a source of hospitality for your team. Be a positive force. Make an active effort to connect with those around you. Learn the name of everyone you work with, say hello, smile and make eye contact as you’re getting to work every day.

3. Ask for feedback from peers and managers. Learn what your strengths are and any areas of improvement you can be aware of. Use the situation you’re in as the training ground to practice and learn new skills to get better at what you do.

4. Sharpen your skills by helping others develop theirs. Think about what you do really well and learn how to train others to do what you do. Identify someone that may need help and show an interest in their growth. You can start simply offering to help by sharing techniques you’ve learned work best for you.

Bonus pro-tip: Learn more about how the business works. Find ways to get involved in new areas. Share your interest in learning with leaders and offer to help with things like inventory, ordering, or special organizational projects to gain exposure to new things.

With a little planning and intention, you can chart a course for growth and opportunity and start making progress towards a more fun tomorrow right away.

Pause, Breathe, Thrive: The Art of Inward Hospitality

When faced with challenges, it's all too easy to slip into a reactive state. Deadlines loom, expectations pile up, and suddenly, you’re spinning plates like a contestant on a chaotic reality show—complete with dramatic music and a ticking clock you can’t escape. But here’s the thing: to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and offer genuine hospitality to others, you must first extend that same care and consideration to yourself.

Self-hospitality isn’t selfish; it’s strategic. By taking care of yourself, you’re better equipped to support your team, customers, or whoever else depends on you. So how do you escape the reactive state and provide yourself with a little well-deserved hospitality? Let’s break it down.

Step One: Pause

First things first: stop. Just stop. Call a timeout. Hit pause. Whatever you want to call it, the principle is the same—you need a moment to breathe. Put everything down, close your eyes if you need to, and take a deep breath. Sure, you might look like someone meditating in the middle of a hurricane, but who cares? It works. It’s not just about relaxation; it’s about creating space to regain control.

Pausing allows you to enter a state of reflective awareness, where you can take stock of what’s on your plate and assess your priorities. It’s not about giving up; it’s about recalibrating. You’re not a superhero, and that’s okay. Give yourself permission to pause, even if it’s just for a minute. The world can wait.

Step Two: Anticipate Your Needs

Once you’ve paused and reset, it’s time to look ahead. Ask yourself: what do I need to meet these challenges? Time? Resources? A helping hand? Maybe just a nap, a tall glass of water, and someone to tell you you’re doing a great job? That’s the dream, right? Identifying your needs isn’t indulgent; it’s essential.

When you’re proactive about understanding your requirements, you’re better positioned to address potential gaps before they derail you. Think of it like packing for a trip: you wouldn’t leave without your passport, right? Anticipating your needs ensures you’re equipped for the journey ahead.

Step Three: Build Habits, Routines, and Rituals

Habits and routines are the unsung heroes of productivity—the trusty sidekicks who may not get the spotlight but keep the hero from falling on their face. They provide structure, allocate resources, and create a sense of stability when everything else feels chaotic. These are the tools that help you manage your work efficiently so you can make room for something even more important: rituals.

Rituals are those moments of connection and restoration that keep you grounded. Unlike habits, which are task-oriented, rituals are about renewal. They might include spending time with loved ones, indulging in a favorite hobby, or even just savoring a quiet cup of coffee. Rituals are your reward for the work you do and the balm for when that work becomes overwhelming.

The Hospitality Mindset

True hospitality starts with recognizing your own humanity. It’s the acknowledgment that you can’t pour from an empty cup—and that’s okay. By prioritizing your well-being, you’re not only better prepared to tackle challenges but also better positioned to offer meaningful support to others.

Pause, anticipate, build habits, and embrace rituals. These steps form a roadmap for exiting the reactive state and entering one of proactive, thoughtful action. When you take care of yourself first, you’re not just surviving; you’re thriving—and inspiring those around you to do the same.

So, take a deep breath, pour yourself a glass of water, and revel in the fact that this is your five-star service moment. You’ve earned it. You’ve got this.

Planning to not just survive but thrive in 2025?

This month, we worked with our friends at Poached, the nation’s largest job board for the restaurant and hospitality industry, to offer some tips for how to not just survive but thrive in 2025. Here’s what we came up with:

#1 - Rightsize your team to your business and rightsize your business to your team.

For the long-term health of your organization, you may need to make some short-term calls to shed holiday staffing to levels that meet the revenue realities that often come during peak winter months. This may also include reducing operational complexity by pausing some offerings whose sales don’t justify the labor required. 

POACHED: What are some examples of ‘Operational Complexity’ and how to spot them?

Well, some of the more significant adjustments you may want to look at making post-holiday could be shortening hours of operation during certain days of the week or shifting menus to streamline the prep hours required to be ready to open the doors everyday.

Also, depending on your concept, eliminating one or two items from a menu may be the difference-maker needed in order to redistribute work across fewer stations to execute service. Fewer stations to staff during service means less labor dollars per day. We recommend that folks start by looking at current and previous years’ product sales mix reports to get a good sense of any menu items whose sales numbers don't justify the prep time and labor deployment required to be at the ready just so they can stay on the menu and maybe get ordered a few times a day. 

As for making the call on hours of operation, your POS should be able to provide an hour-by-hour sales summary that you can use to identify the specific hours per week that you are staffing your restaurant to be open but not actually generating meaningful revenue to offset those costs. 

We often see a dip in later evening post-holiday, and it's not uncommon for folks to move to "winter hours" post-holiday. The key is to look at the data and make the call now versus waiting another month, bleeding money, and then making the change. 

#2 - Prevent future overwhelm and manager burnout by mapping out staffing adjustments for the year ahead.

Look back at 2024 and use the data and learnings you have to make an even better plan for 2025. When were you busiest? What week did it actually slow down or ramp up between seasons? Were there any surprising spikes in business you can better anticipate this year?

POACHED: We can’t agree here more. What we see is that a few smart managers and owners see the curve in the road and prepare for things like patio season, student population, big events and holidays… but MANY still panic and start looking for candidates to fill out their team way too late to have them ready for the impending rush. Starting early can cost you a little, but being unprepared for your busy season can cost you quite more!

#3 - Engage and develop your best team members. 

Identify those that are ready to grow skills and take on new challenges. Start planning conversations now and allocate time every week to connect, coach and train your best people to keep them engaged and get them ready for more in the year ahead. 

POACHED: Hiring from within is a fantastic strategy, and upward mobility is proven to increase employee retention, create a stronger team overall, and make a more productive and resilient workforce! Showing your team that there are opportunities to move up increases engagement at all positions, and those results will be clearly felt in your business’s success.

#4 - Plan just-in-time hiring, ahead of time. 

Determine the number of team members you’ll need in each role and by what date they each need to be ready and available. Set deadlines and work backward from those dates. Plot a timeline to have job posts ready, allocate time for interviewing, onboarding and training.   

POACHED: Couldn't have said it better, but here is another place where you can look back at 2024 and note how long the process was to fill any open positions during that time. If you need help looking back at your hiring activities, reach out to social@poachedjobs.com and we can likely pull your history to fill any gaps in your memory!

#5 - Calendarize it all! 

Decide where you’ll make notes and plans visible to everyone involved. Use whatever you feel most comfortable with (paper, Google Calendar, a whiteboard etc.) but make sure you have space to add and track enough detail to create a useful tool. Use this common reference to check and adjust your plan, fill in further detail, and guide decision-making. 

Let’s go! A little planning now will make all the difference towards preparing a more capable team ready to serve more customers & guests in 2025.

Hospitality Begins with Water

What’s the first thing a server brings you when you sit down in a restaurant? What does a host offer when you step into their home? Or, what might you be handed during a job interview? Chances are, it’s a glass of water. This simple gesture is a near-universal signal that a hospitality experience is about to begin. Whether it’s dinner at a fine dining restaurant or a board meeting in the C-suite, this offering sets the tone. And though it may seem inconsequential, it carries a deeper significance. The water is more than just a drink; it’s a metaphor. It symbolizes generosity, care, and the ability to anticipate the needs of others before they even have to ask.

Of course, it doesn’t always have to be water. It can be any gesture that communicates, “I see you. I’m present, aware of your needs, and willing to respond to them.” This act of awareness forms the foundation of what we can call Inward Hospitality—a principle that fosters human connection. It begins with a simple acknowledgment: “I recognize your humanity and honor your personhood. I understand what you need because I, too, share those needs. I will do my best to provide what you need to succeed in this moment.”

Leadership, in many ways, mirrors this act of hospitality. Think of a restaurant server. Their primary responsibility is to ensure the guest has a successful and enjoyable experience. This involves guiding them through the space, helping them understand the menu, providing the right utensils, and ensuring that their preferences and restrictions are accounted for. Behind the scenes, a team works tirelessly to ensure every detail is perfect—the table is set, the bathrooms are clean, the lighting and music are just right, and the food is prepped. A great dining experience happens because someone has anticipated every need, often before the guest even realizes they have one.

When we recognize the parallels between serving others and leadership, we unlock the potential of Inward Hospitality to enhance how we serve our teams. Viewing employees, colleagues, and even friends and family as “guests” whose needs we aim to meet enables us to step into our roles as supportive leaders. This mindset allows us to create environments where others can achieve what might otherwise be impossible on their own.

A strong leader does more than manage; they create memorable experiences and enable the success of their team, both collectively and individually. This involves several key responsibilities:

1. Enabling Opportunity: Leaders maintain an environment where individuals can step into roles and fulfill their duties effectively. Much like a restaurant needs guests, an organization needs a well-functioning system to provide opportunities for success.

1. Setting Clear Expectations: Leaders communicate the job requirements, cultural values, and behavioral standards. Restaurants, for example, set expectations around hours of operation, attire, ambiance, and decorum.

2. Equipping for Success: Just as servers ensure every guest has plates, utensils, and glasses, leaders provide team members with the training and tools they need. Whether it’s teaching someone to drive a forklift or equipping them with technical skills, preparation is key.

3. Providing Feedback: Leaders offer constructive, actionable feedback and invite input for improvement. In hospitality, this might look like a server checking in to ensure everything meets expectations. In leadership, it means fostering open communication.

4. Encouraging Growth: Leaders create opportunities for continued engagement and development. They provide resources and incentives that keep people motivated and invested. Just as restaurants entice guests with new dishes and experiences, leaders keep teams inspired with avenues for learning and advancement.

When you view yourself as someone whose role is to ensure the success of others, you embody Inward Hospitality. You see the people around you as deserving of your care and attention. By creating memorable experiences for your team, you build an environment that keeps them engaged, motivated, and performing at their best. Ultimately, this approach fosters a thriving, successful organization—all starting with something as simple as a glass of water.