Our Mission
Hospitality Marketplace exists to do one thing properly: connect the brands that supply South African hospitality with the chefs, operators and buyers who actually make the decisions. We are not a consumer platform and we never pretend to be. Every subscriber, every reader, every member of our network is a trade professional with real influence over what gets specified, purchased and served.
We believe category leadership is earned in the conversation, not just on the shelf. Strong products deserve strong storytelling, and too many good brands stay silent while competitors do the talking. Our job is to make sure quality gets heard, in front of the people who matter, in the editorial environments they trust.
What We Represent
We are a trade media platform and a full-service creative partner in one. That distinction matters. When a brand works with us, they don’t arrive with finished copy or a brief in hand. Our in-house team builds the editorial angle, writes the feature, designs the assets, distributes across every relevant channel and reports on what it delivered. One brief, one team, one accountable partner. No agency add-ons, no production surprises, no noise.
Our reach spans the full hospitality supply chain through Hospitality Marketplace, Chef powered by SA Chefs, The Culinary Artist and our official media partnership with Hostex. That ecosystem reaches kitchens and boardrooms at the same time, creating both demand from the chefs who request products and visibility with the operators and buyers who confirm them.
What sets us apart is that we genuinely know this industry. We understand fats, oils, bakery, coffee, foodservice and hospitality at a level general agencies never reach. No category learning curve, no onboarding. Just trade professionals talking to trade professionals.
Jason Whitehouse, CEO and Founder
Jason Whitehouse
Jason built Hospitality Marketplace on a simple conviction: that the hospitality trade deserved media made by people who actually understand it. With over two decades in the industry, he has spent his career at the intersection of media, brand strategy and foodservice, working with brands across the exact competitive sets that define South African hospitality.
His approach has always been relationship-first. The partnerships behind Hospitality Marketplace, from the SA Chefs network to long-standing media rights with Hostex, reflect a way of working built on trust, shared history and proven results rather than cold pitches. Jason leads from strategy through to execution, staying close to client teams and treating their brands as if the margin were his own.
Under his direction, Hospitality Marketplace has grown from a trade publication into an integrated content and media platform serving the entire procurement and menu-planning journey of hospitality operators nationally.
