Tell us about Brigad
Founded in France in 2016, Brigad was born to provide a solution to growing concerns within the hospitality industry including a high number of vacancies, irregular and unsociable working hours and poor wages. Following success in France, Brigad launched in the UK in 2018. It has been founders Florent and Jean’s aim from the start to reignite the passion in as many hospitality professionals as possible and make work attractive and accessible to all.
Through Brigad, talents (freelance professionals) choose their clients and missions (shifts) via an easy-to-use app. Freelancers simply register for the platform and, after a thorough vetting process, are invited to set up a profile detailing their experience, skills and preferences.
Since its launch, Brigad has supported over 12,000 businesses across the UK and France as well as over 23,000 self-employed professionals.
What do you think makes this company unique?
Brigad works to empower hospitality industry workers and help them to gain full control of their working lives. Through Brigad, freelancers are able to select the missions (shifts) they want to work rather than being assigned shifts. This way, they are able to control their own schedule and develop a stronger work-life balance while also removing any concern over losing shifts in the future if they do not accept. This sets us apart from agency models or similar systems. In fact, 60% of talents using Brigad revealed they would have left the hospitality industry if they had not found us.
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How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
Since being founded in France in 2016 and later in London in 2018, Brigad has grown from strength to strength. To support this expansion, we’ve implanted a specific UK-based team, including myself. The move to London has been hugely successful for the company, and we have seen very strong interest from hospitality businesses since Covid. The number of missions posted on the app tripled compared to 2019 and we hope to double this again next year.
What can we hope to see from Brigad in the future?
Brigad has huge plans to expand further, targeting additional large cities in the UK as well as other countries and industries outside of hospitality. With over 100 million skilled workers across Europe and a huge rise in the number of freelancers across various industries, we hope to provide support and stability for each business and talent using Brigad.
