To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we interviewed some of the amazing women who work at Greene King. Meet Kayte Whitehead, General Manager at the Blue Cap, Sandiway.
Tell us about yourself, Kayte
My name is Kayte Whitehead, and I am the General Manager of the Blue Cap. I've been here for nearly a year now. I've worked for Chef & Brewer for 15 years and I’ve worked in pubs in the Midlands and now here in Sandiway.
How did you become a General Manager?
I worked my way up, as I just knew it was always what I wanted to do. I was very lucky–most people don't. A lot of people fall into it and then think they've got lucky.
But I knew, I knew I wanted to be in hospitality. I used to play barmaids in the bath with the bottle tops and the shampoos. I'm not even going to lie to you, I did!
What is the thing you love most about being a General Manager?
Well, it's the people. It’s the guests and our customers and it's my amazing team. I'm watching them develop and get to where they want to be and helping them whatever that journey is, even if it might not necessarily be carrying on in our pubs. I’ve had a great career, I've won the awards, I've done it all and now I’m training them to do it. I'm making sure that they're the best they can be at their job.
Would you say a General Manager or a ‘pub landlord’ is a traditionally male role?
I believe it’s always been known as a male role and I'm not going to lie to you, for years I've had to have a better cellar than a lot of male managers because landlords historically were definitely male. A woman can't have a cellar. A woman can't look after cask ale. So, as my career developed, I made sure I knew everything about my cellar. My cellar was spot on. I befriended cellar services too, so that whatever I needed, it was right there.
Do you think there are still quite a lot of gender stereotypes in hospitality, or do you think that things have changed a lot?
I think we've moved on an awful lot, and Greene King is really pushing that.
What would you say to women who, like you, want to build a career in hospitality?
I'm a big believer that you can be whatever you want to be. You've just got to work for it, and you've got to find the path. And that doesn’t just go for hospitality. If you want to be an astronaut, go be an astronaut. If you want to be an Olympic swimmer, go be an Olympic swimmer. Whatever you want to be, you can get there. You can do it.
If you desperately want to run a pub, you can do it! But start at the bottom—just go in, start at the bottom, get your bearings, get to know the right people, and then work your way up.
We know how passionate you are about developing your team and helping them succeed—how do you empower them and build their confidence?
I think with the team, you have to be very careful, and it's quite good because sometimes people can remind you of this and you're always open to criticism yourself. So, one of my girls recently said to me, “Kayte, don't tell me. Show me, then let me do it.”
So, you have to be very respectful of people because sometimes, when you're as busy as we can sometimes be, you want to just do everything. With a lot of teams, it might take a bit longer, and it might be a different way of doing things, but it's important to take the time to show them and then let them do it.
It's being mindful of your training, and how people learn. I also want to not just go in like a bull in a china shop and do something my way because it’s easier. I like to stop, think, and then ask them, “How would you like to do it? Do you know a better way of doing it?”. That way they’ll feel a lot more engaged and want to be involved because they'll have had a bit of input into the task.
If we went and asked your team now, what would you think that they would say the best thing that you've taught them is?
Oh goodness me, I don't know, it depends. It might be anything like wiring a plug, with the brown wire on the left. No! The brown wire goes to the right because the second letter is R. Yes, the brown wire goes to the right because the second letter is R. And the blue wire goes to the left because the second letter's L. It could be anything. It could be what an Edison screw light bulb is. It could be how to book a holiday. It could honestly be anything. And everybody gets a different part of you, don't they? So, it depends on that individual's needs as to what bits of you they get.
What would your team think your best quality is?
I'd like to think it's that I’m positive most of the time, I'll listen and not judge. And I try to make their lives easier. So that's all, we're always looking at ways of making somebody's life easier.
The theme of International Women's Day this year is Accelerate Action. How do you personally interpret that?
I mean, it depends on what context it's in. We can accelerate to help people find where and what they want to be, making sure that the tools are available.
Accelerating action would also be speeding things up so there are less hoops to jump through for someone to get to where they’d like to be. To me, as long as you've got the basic skills, we can train the rest, can't we? With hospitality, if somebody can smile, you can pretty much train them. If they can’t? Well, there’s another job out there that’s better suited to them!
You mentioned that your team has been built with individuals that are all different. How do you ensure that you treat all members of your team equally?
We have regular one-to-ones with the team, and we always have an open-door policy. Anyone can talk to anybody about pretty much anything. No topic is barred. We don’t have, “I can't talk to you about that,” or “I can't talk to you about this,”, because I think the days of shying away from topics are gone.
You don't always know what someone's going through and you don't know what their backstory is. You don't always know what's going on in their life. And it’s about being aware of people. You can often tell if someone's not quite right, and you then know to approach things subtly and tactfully, instead of asking questions that maybe aren't appropriate. As long as my team feel that they can come to me when they need to, that’s all I can ask for.
What would you say women in hospitality, whether that's in a pub, support centres, or even in Brewing & Brands, can do to help each other more?
Just support each other. Talk, listen, support, advise each other and be open-minded, because we can all be a bit set in our ways and think, ‘That's the way to do something.’
Being open-minded to a different journey or different path or somebody else's way of looking at something, that's certainly one that I've learnt this year. And you can use different people for different things, so I might have somebody who's great at social media. Better than I am! And I'll be like, “Oh, will you show me how to do that?”. Over the years, you know, I've had to post videos on TikTok and try it a few times until I’ve got it. All in all, I think, don’t be narrow-minded and look outside of what you can see.
What do you think Greene King as a business can do to support the women who work for them?
We need to be open and honest with all options and all opportunities and make sure that there's a safe space where employees can say if something's not right or if they're not comfortable with something. But we need a safe space that's got no repercussions, because I think there might still be a bit of a feeling that you shouldn’t say some things for some reason. Whatever and however you feel, if you feel something needs to be said, it needs to be said. If somebody feels they need to be heard, they need to be heard, whatever that context is.
It's that two-way communication, isn't it? Making sure that two-way communication is open and available. Sometimes you might have a frustration, or you might want to say something, but you don't know where to direct it. If you've got a supportive BDM and you've got a supportive team around you, it really helps.
I've got a female BDM and she's great. She empowers me and we work together. I'm not saying we're besties! We can disagree, but we respect each other, and that’s really important.
A clear pathway to get to where you want to is great, and I believe we are just about there.
What would you say your proudest achievements are in your personal life, and in your professional life?
Okay, so in 2023 I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and that has been a journey that I wouldn't wish on anybody. You might have to bear with me because when I talk about it sometimes, I can still get a bit tearful. I've had chemo, radio, mastectomy, you name it. I wear a wig and I’m on meds, because of the type of cancer it is.
Cancer is a club that nobody wants to be invited into. But, in this club, you look out for each other. And I've come out the other side. I've done it with support from lots of fabulous people, like my great BDM, my head of brand. My partner, my family, my friends and my amazing team. Everyone was supportive, everyone did everything they could, so I battled that journey at my own speed and at my own pace. I was allowed to do bits I wanted to do. People were telling me, to be off work and I was off work, but I needed to dabble to keep myself sane. So that’s what I did. And that's my personal journey.
Professionally, I think it's all about the people. I've got assistant managers running their own pubs, I've got old team players and managers who are now ops directors in other businesses, in various places. You know, if you've had an impact on someone's life and they can tell you you've been an inspiration to them in any way, well, that's why you do your job, isn’t it?
Tell us about some of these awards that you've won!
Oh, goodness me! In the old days, we've had all kinds, haven't we? We've been to Prague, we've been to, we've been skiing. We've been to Coca-Cola sports days. It was great, actually. This was kind of pre-Chef and Brewer. We've won lots of sales incentives. We've won lots of lovely things.
Is there anything else you want to tell us?
I consider myself very lucky to do the job I do. Don't get me wrong, I work hard, it's not an easy job and it's not for everybody. However, you do get out what you put in. You get it back in bucketfuls.
I think my most recent journey has taught me a lot about myself. It's taught me a lot about taking a bit of a breath and looking after yourself. I think we used to say we needed good time management, well, we don't. We need self-care. We need to spend a bit of time looking after ourselves, really, and think about what we need. You'll always say, I'm going to drink more water, I'm going to eat properly. But are you? Are you doing it?
My team is really important for that, because they work hard, and it means I can have a good work-life balance. It's work hard, play hard. I like my holidays. I like my time out. I like to go away. I like to do nice things. I have a nice car. I have So, you get out of it. If you have good people around you and invest the time into training them, you get a better quality of life. Mm hmm. You know, if I suddenly got tickets for a gig next week, I’d just say, ‘Harry, will you cover me?’ and he'll cover me – it works both ways too.
But I couldn't do it if I didn't have a team of trained people and a business that worked. So, it is hard, but you've got to prioritise the most important things. Look after your people and they will look after everything else for you.
If you had one piece of advice for your 15-year-old self, what would you say?
Do you know what I would say? Probably don't go out with that boy. Don't do that.
Seriously though, just grab it with both hands. Don't miss the opportunities, don't say no, (stop saying no!), make sure you say yes more, because there are probably some things that I could have done or should have done, but I didn't do because of whatever reason. But if you don’t say yes, you’ll miss something.
And, finally, look after yourself.
