Hospitality is a team sport. You feel it most on a busy service, when everyone’s tired, slightly wired, and relying on each other to get through the shift. Jean Baptiste Dumas, JB to his friends knows that world well. He worked at France Soir for years, and noticed something familiar: the same people who thrive in service also light up around sport. In 2019, he turned that overlap into something practical. A five-a-side soccer tournament for hospitality venues. It began as a kick about in a Melbourne park. It’s now the Hospitality Cup, with tournaments across Australia and the US. The Hospitality Cup has united teams from some of Australia’s most iconic venues and groups, including Rae’s, Icebergs, Aria, Merivale, the Scott Pickett Group, Attica, DOC Pizza, Freddie’s Pizza and the Reymond Group.
Hi JB, thanks for having a chat with me. I feel like you’ve had a really good idea, and it’s really taken off. But, let’s start with who you are, and where you fit within hospitality in Melbourne?
My name is JB. I’m a former hospitality worker in Melbourne at a place called France Soir, and I also founded a hospitality event, that is called the Hospitality Cup, which is a five-a-side soccer tournament for hospitality venues in Melbourne, and also in Sydney, Gold Coast, and now in the US.
I saw that. New York, Austin, and Miami. It’s amazing. You have a big year ahead.
It’s our biggest year yet. Yes, we only had Austin in the U.S. last year. It went really well, so 2026 being a Soccer World Cup year, we thought it would be a good year to expand our footprint in America.
It started in Melbourne. When was that?
We started the first one in 2019 in Melbourne, which was really a kick about in the park, I would say. It was back in the day when I was working at France Soir, as I said, but we had a lot of different hospitality people coming. There were a few debates on football and soccer, especially with some Italians. So many different restaurants with cuisine from different countries started coming. It seemed like a good concept. We started that, and then we stopped during COVID, and only started again in 2024, and since we started again, it’s really picked up a lot.
I guess it’s word of mouth, that other cities have heard about this and want to also be part of it. Is that how that happened?
When we started again in 2024, we did a lot of content. We tried to really tell the story beyond the people in hospitality, but also behind the people in the game, and we always thought there were a lot of similarities between football and sport in general, with hospitality, especially being a team sport, so we tried creating content that outlined this link between both worlds. A lot of people have used football just like hospitality to create new connections. People saw the content and we were like, oh, we should do something like that. First in Sydney, then Byron Bay. The first time we did Gold Coast was actually Byron Bay.
How many teams are involved?
Melbourne is the first one on 2 March. We have 42 teams this year. We had 24 last year. I think we had 14 in the first year, so it’s definitely growing. Melbourne, obviously, being our home base, I would say, is, also one of our favourite tournaments, and so it’s great to see that. We don’t even know all the restaurants, but they sign up and we learn about them.
I think it’s really timely to have this kind of thing. There’s a lot of talk about mental health and hospitality. I guess the teams, they must practise together as well. So, maybe, instead of having knock off beers, they’re going out and having a bit of a run around. Was that the idea, as well?
Yeah, obviously, the tournament is the pinnacle of all of that, but yesterday, we were shooting content at Freddy’s Pizza in Chapel Street. For a month now they have had a Monday morning training ritual. All the team comes, everyone gets ready, everyone gets fired up. What we’re trying to do is, if we can have a bit of impact on all the staff for their well-being, and if that can help people get back into some sport, that’s amazing. One thing we realised as well, when we started, was that a lot of the gathering in hospitality is always around wine tasting, or dinners, or late nights after shift. This is a great way to create new connections in a more healthy way. Good for the head, good for the body as well.
Will you travel around all the different places?
Yes, we do, which is good. We’ve met so many great people along the way. And in America, when we started, we didn’t know if it was going to work, and then, by the end, we spent maybe about a month in Austin last year, and that’s felt a bit like a home away from home at the end.
I feel like America has got really into soccer. Is that popularity in America fairly recent?
It’s an interesting demographic. There’s obviously a lot of Latin American workers there, football fanatics, and there’s also a great thing, which is that football, soccer, as they call it, is mainly women’s sports there. We always have a mixed tournament, so we’re trying to be inclusive. We encourage every single restaurant to have females participating. We didn’t really have to encourage that in the US, which was great. Every team had female players. We had some amazing players that played college football, and they were just amazing on the beach.
So, here with 42 teams, is it just one day? That must be a long day, and you get a winner at the end, or is it not really about that?
There is a winner at the end. For a lot of people, it’s really about that. It’s 5 aside, so we use a big pitch, we cut it in two. This year we’ve got two pitches. It’s going to be 8 games at a time. We try to have everyone coming at 9.30 for warm-up, coffee, croissant, breakfast, 9.45, we have a word with the captains for a quick briefing on the rules. We obviously try to adapt a little bit of rules to limit contact as much as possible. We always tell everyone, everyone needs their legs to work in this industry. The goal is to do the after party at the venue and not at the hospital. We try to put everyone in good spirits. 10am kick off, usually by 5pm we’re done. We always see the same thing where people arrive at 9.30 and they always ask, where’s my game? When do I play? Usually after a couple of games, people are not as excited to play anymore. They’re just a bit tired, the more you go through the day, the more the more people are quiet, which is good.
What we’re trying to do is, if we can have a bit of impact on all the staff for their well-being, and if that can help people get back into some sport, that’s amazing. One thing we realised as well, when we started, was that a lot of the gathering in hospitality is always around wine tasting, or dinners, or late nights after shift. This is a great way to create new connections in a more healthy way. Good for the head, good for the body as well.
Jean-Baptiste Dumas, The Hospitality Cup
Have you always been in hospitality until now that you’re slightly adjacent to hospitality?
Yeah, mostly, but I had a little break and I was working in sports marketing. But I have always been hospitality and a sports fanatics, always trying to mix both passions.
And you’re a soccer player yourself?
I played a bit. I wouldn’t call myself a soccer player.
What drew you to hospitality, do you think? Did you grow up in France?
Yes, I grew up in France. My first ever hospitality job was in England. I went to learn English after the Baccalaureat and worked as a glass collector in a pub. That was my first job, then I went back to France and went to work in a restaurant, and then I went back to uni in France, and when I came to Australia in 2014, the first job I found was in hospitality, I liked it and stayed in this job for a long time, which was at France Soir.
Is this your full-time job is now, organising the tournament?
Yes. That is pretty recent, but it’s good.
And I guess in hospitality, you need to look for ways of being sustainable as you get older, because you are very much on your feet, late nights and all that kind of thing. So it’s a good way of supporting hospitality, but, perhaps looking after yourself as well.
It’s a physical job, for sure.
And do you have plans for more countries or more cities?
We want to grow the US, and we’re planning Europe, but we need the right partners, the right timing.
Can people go and watch the tournament, is it a ticketed event?
No, it’s free entry for spectators. We always tell our participants to bring their friends, bring their family, bring their colleagues. We have an award this year for the best fans, so hopefully everyone will bring a little bit of a of a crew.
Congratulations on making an idea come to fruition, and it’s obviously an idea that everyone loves, so that’s really great.
Thank you so much. I’m always surprised compared to when we started. And the idea we had, we haven’t really changed the concept, which is crazy. It’s always been the same. Now it is more sponsored. More participants, more word of mouth, more content. It has been growing amazingly.