The Trade of Missing Persons

Why Hospitality Is Losing the People Who Built It — And Why the Rest of Us Are Still Here, Clinging On Like Lunatics

Some days — usually the ones where you’re scraping congealed lime pulp out of a blender or restocking a bar fridge that feels like it’s been designed by a sadist — it hits you: hospitality has become a trade of missing persons.

Not the ones whose faces end up on the news. The other kind. The ones who should be here. The ones who used to be here. The ones who stuck around long enough to become the backbone of a bar, a kitchen, a whole bloody scene.

We’re missing them.

And in the fog of shift dust and adrenaline sweats, we start realising we’re missing the people we used to be, too.

There was a time when hospitality was a magnet for the beautifully broken. The dreamers. The kids who didn’t fit into the polite parts of life. The ones who lit up at 2am, not 9am. The ones who felt more at home in the neon glow of a late-night dive than in the curated sterility of a corporate morning meeting. You walked into the trade because you were running from something or running towards something — didn’t matter which. You stayed because you found a tribe.

You learned how to hold a bar together with tape, charm, and a prayer.

You discovered that a walk-in fridge is a holy place — sanctuary, confession booth, therapist’s office.

You learned to move fast, swear well, and drink like a condemned pirate.

Most importantly, the trade taught you to show up — hungover, exhausted, heartbroken, it didn’t matter. You showed up because the people next to you showed up. There was honour in it. A messy kind. A kind you’d never put on a CV, but it held you steady.

Where the Lifers Went

And those people — the lifers, the grafters, the cracked geniuses who could run a bar fight and a cocktail station at the same time — they’re disappearing.

Hospitality is full of ghosts now.

The trade of missing persons.

Where did they go?

They slipped out through the cracks we didn’t see forming. Burnout squeezed them out. Shit pay shoved them out. Toxic managers, toxic hours, toxic customers — all part of the attrition. But that’s not the whole story.

Why No One’s Replacing Them

The real punch in the ribs?

The people who would’ve become us aren’t turning up anymore.

The new generation has options we never had. They can make money from their bedroom on a laptop that costs more than their first car. Everything is frictionless. Everything is instant. Everything is achievable without ever having to mop up someone else’s bodily fluids at 4am.

So why would an 18-year-old with a ring-light and a half-decent phone choose to haul ice buckets in a basement that smells like a crime scene? Why would they trade content creation income for being screamed at by a man in a football shirt who thinks shouting “OI!” is a form of communication? Why would they willingly enter a trade that chews people up, spits them out, and pays them in bruises, banter, and questionable staff drinks?

They’re not coming.

And the ones who do come are tourists. They’re passing through, doing a season, grabbing a bit of pocket money, taking a selfie in the staff room, then fucking off before the industry leaves claw marks on them.

The Last Ones Still Standing

That leaves us — the dwindling weirdos who still think this madness matters.

We’re the ones patching the holes. We’re the ones dragging the trade forward by the ankles. We’re the ones still convinced that hospitality is noble in its own fucked-up way. Because for all the chaos, for all the stress that takes five years off your life for every Christmas rush, for all the techno-dystopian bullshit trying to replace human connection with QR codes and automated check-ins, we know something they don’t:

Hospitality is real. It’s visceral. It’s tribal.

It’s alive in a way that the dopamine-hit goldfish bowl of the online world will never be.

It’s crafted by actual humans doing actual work with actual sweat. It’s about feeding and watering strangers until they’re not strangers anymore. It’s the closest thing we have left to community in a country that keeps setting its own social fabric on fire.

But doing something real is hard. And it’s not “hard” in the inspirational quote sense. It’s hard in the “your feet ache, your back’s ruined, your skin smells like citrus and despair, and your patience has eroded into dust” sense.

So the people who might’ve once become the next great manager, chef, GM, nighttime warlord — they’re off somewhere else now, earning money without acquiring trauma.

And here we are. The few. The stubborn. The half-mad bastards who still give a shit.

We’re missing the people we used to rely on.

We’re missing the ones who might’ve replaced us.

And we’re missing versions of ourselves that got lost in the grind — the ones who were less tired, less cynical, less carved out by disappointment and fluorescent lighting.

The trade has hollowed out. You can feel the echo in the walls. The swagger is thinner, the jokes darker, the hope stretched like clingfilm over a spill that never quite dries.

The Magic That Won’t Die

But here’s the weird part — and the bit no SEO consultant would approve of, even though this is the truth that sells:

We’re still here because hospitality still has magic in it. Not the pretty, Pinterest kind. The dirty kind. The kind that gets under your fingernails. The kind that reminds you you’re alive in a world that’s sleepwalking itself into death by convenience.

We might be the last ones standing, but fuck it — someone has to hold the line. Someone has to teach the next lost kid how to pour a perfect pint, handle a crisis, and find themselves somewhere between the cellar and the close-down checklist.

So yes — this is a trade of missing persons.

But the missing aren’t forgotten.

And the ones who stayed — the ones still showing up, still fighting, still believing — we’re proof that hospitality isn’t dead.

It’s just waiting for the next wave of misfits brave enough to enter the fire.

Until then, it’s us. The few. The faithful. The mad.

The ones who stuck around long enough to realise that even when the trade breaks your heart, it’s still worth it