Great Work | Episode Four: Alex Atwood on Training, Transparency, and the Future of Hospitality Staffing - Presented by Zeal

Episode Four: Alex Atwood on Training, Transparency, and the Future of Hospitality Staffing

Alex Atwood, Executive Chairman of GravyWork, shares how in-person training and tech-enabled transparency are redefining hospitality staffing and building loyalty in a people-first industry.

Episode Four: Alex Atwood on Training, Transparency, and the Future of Hospitality Staffing

September 16, 2025

Episode Breakdown

00:00 – Introduction to Alex Atwood
01:15 – Growing Up in a Staffing Family
04:30 – Building the Hospitality Training Institute
06:41 – Why Hospitality Requires Unique Skills
09:45 – Training as Loyalty and Community Builder
12:52 – The Current Landscape of Hospitality Staffing
15:30 – GravyWork’s Worker-First, Tech-Enabled Approach
18:53 – Cutting No-Shows with Transparency and Data
22:11 – Who the Best Customers Really Are (and Firing Bad Ones)
25:00 – Generational Shifts in Hospitality Management
27:36 – High Turnover Industries That Need Staffing Most
29:21 – Making the Sales Case in Razor-Thin Margin Businesses
30:57 – What Energizes Alex About the Future of Work
32:32 – What “Great Work” Means to Alex

Kirti Shenoy (00:00)
Welcome back to Great Work. Today's guest is Alex Atwood, Executive Chairman of Gravy Work. Staffing is in Alex's DNA. His grandfather, parents, and extended family all ran staffing companies. Alex grew up in the industry, but instead of keeping it traditional, he built the Hospitality Training Institute, bringing in-person training to an industry that always relied on shift-based, seasonal, and on-demand work. That foundation eventually led to Gravy Work, his platform that pairs training with technology to cut no-shows, onboard workers in minutes and give clients transparency into every shift. In our conversation, Alex shares what makes hospitality staffing unique by training builds loyalty and how technology can scale a people-first business. Let's get into it.

Kirti Shenoy (00:57)
Alex, you've built so many companies across the hospitality space, from staffing to institutes over the past couple of decades. And now you're leading GravyWork, which is an on-demand hospitality platform. For the listeners, who may not know your full journey. Could you walk us through how your career evolved and what ultimately led you to build GravyWork?

Alex Atwood (01:15)
Absolutely. And I want to thank you very much for inviting me on the Great Work podcast. It's great to be here and talk to you. My path actually started from my genes, from my lineage. My mother and my father both started a staffing company before I was born and then they separated. Both of them had their own staffing agencies. My grandfather, who came in from the old country, which is Iran, started a staffing company when he came into the country. I grew up in staffing, doing things like folding timesheets. When I was old enough, I would greet people when they were coming in for interviews. I learned the key components of an interview, and all of that. So when I graduated from college, naturally I didn't want to get into staffing because I was kind of tired of it. A good friend of mine who I grew up with, who was a technologist, said your core competency is staffing. Therefore, we partnered and built something future forward. In 2000, future forward meant online, like a searchable relational database where you could find certain skill sets in your candidates. We did that, but soon learned that the hospitality industry was very slow to adopt technology enhancements.

(Continued from interview) In 2007, we stepped back from technology and I launched the Hospitality Training Institute. Around 2008, 2009, the Obama administration put out the Workforce Improvement Act, which allowed funds to come from the federal level down to the Unemployment centers. We partnered with them in the different markets that I was doing staffing in, launched a training center, and really leveled up the quality of training and candidate we were sending out.

Hospitality is cyclical, seasonal, shift-based. It was scrambling to keep up with high demand. That led us to launch Gravy Work in 2018, coinciding with advancements in technology. We prioritize in-person training because you can’t teach certain skills effectively online.

(Additional Topics)

What Great Work Means: Great work is about enjoying your job daily and finding fulfillment in it.