The UK’s gig economy which was recorded as “£68 billion in 2023”, according to Rita Kastrati, the founder and CEO of Pioneering People, receives significant criticism for its treatment of workers. But it’s often overlooked that the businesses using them, especially in hospitality, often get a bad deal too.
Kastrati is on a mission to change gig work for the better, giving workers better pay and conditions and offering businesses more affordable and reliable options through her gig economy startup Pioneering People. In the latest of our TechTalks with TFN series, she told us about her background, how London-based startup is fixing a broken system, and the challenges of being a female founder.
Check out the full interview below:
Learning from a family legacy of hospitality
Hospitality has been part of the Kastrati family for four generations, and growing up it was inevitable that she would become involved. “We’ve run, owned, and consulted for restaurants, bars, and hotels around the world, which is an incredible and dynamic environment to grow up in,” she told us. “But also meant that I served more drinks than I consumed as a student! I was always being pulled into shifts: if we were having a busy evening, I’d have to come in and help.”
It meant she grew up with a strong work ethic. “I grew up seeing hustle — seven days a week, every week — and always being on. For me, that’s just a lifestyle that I’m very much used to,” she explained. “I think that to do something that actually makes a change, it’s going to be difficult, and it’s going to be laborious.”
But she also saw the less appetising side of hospitality. Wanting to gain experience outside her family’s businesses, she signed up with agencies. “I just wanted to go out there and experience the world, and not just work for my parents, but I was severely undercut on my salary, and I’d wait two months to get paid.”
Combined with the inefficiencies she saw from the business side of the transaction, she realised that something needed to change.
Fixing gig work for workers and businesses
Kastrati agrees that the gig economy is not working well. “The gig economy does not have the best reputation in the world, 75% of people that work in the gig economy in the UK get paid under minimum wage,” she told us. However, the businesses are not getting a good deal either. “In the pandemic, we were only allowed to open for takeaways, but the big platforms that we could deliver food on were taking 35 to 40% of our revenue. That’s all of your profits. It made a lot more sense to close the business than to open for takeaways.”
Her vision for Pioneering People is to create a worker-first, business-friendly platform. Businesses only pay a 12% fee, making their overheads manageable. Staff are paid above the living wage and, importantly, promptly. “When the business presses ‘hire’, we hold that money in escrow, this gives the worker peace of mind that the money is actually there,” Kastrati explained. “If you do a shift on a Monday night, by Tuesday morning, before you’re buying your morning coffee, that money is in your bank account.”
The aim is to create a trusted system with immediacy; businesses know they can quickly get reliable staff, and the staff know they will be paid fairly and promptly. Kastrati points out, with some pride, that more than 70% of businesses return to Pioneering People, and that 100% of workers returned to the platform after their first shift.
Navigating a male-dominated funding scene
Kastrati also spoke about the challenges of being a female founder. Sadly, safety — as well as misogyny — is a problem. “I’ve had some horrible experiences with investors that were not investors at all. They didn’t have any money in the bank and actually had completely different intentions,” she recalled. “A male founder never has to worry about that.”
More generally, she’s found that male and female founders tend to have to prove different things. “Men typically get funded on potential, women typically get funded on traction, actually showing what we’ve done.” She noted that this can create a Catch-22 for female founders. “I need money to do something; but if I don’t do something, I don’t get the money.”
But as well as changing the attitudes of funders, she suggests some female funders may need to change their attitudes, too. “It’s difficult to build confidence in a male-dominated space,” she said. Instead, she began to reconsider who was really offering the opportunity. “I told myself, ‘It’s an advantage and a big opportunity for investors to invest in me, I’m giving them a slice of a fantastic pie!’”
Redefining gig work, inspiring the next generation
Pioneering People is proving that the gig economy can work without exploiting workers or overcharging businesses. Offering a blueprint for others, Pioneering People is a B2B2C service: it provides businesses with a platform that gives them access to reliable workers, even at short notice, while giving those workers a fair and reliable payment system. It means both sides benefit from the flexibility gig working provides without risk.
Whether it’s as a female founder, or transforming the gig economy, Kastrati calls on the ethos of hard work she inherited from her family and its businesses. “It’s easier to sit around complaining than to just get on with it,” she told us. “I think the best thing to do is, get on with it, see what we can do, and make those waves in the movement. Hopefully, we’ll be role models to the next generations.”
