I've worked with food, drink, and related businesses of all shapes and sizes, from CPG to start-up, across most sector categories, B2C and B2B.
Along the way, I've been at the coal face of the possibilities, opportunities, and challenges food and drink people and teams have faced. And, I've seen the success and failure factors that significantly affect their business growth.
I hold an MBA in Innovation Management from Imperial (with published works), and a Diploma in Digital Marketing (DMI). I spent my early career in London’s leading marketing, advertising, and design agencies working across consumer products, retail, financial services, health, and technology with brands like General Foods, Kodak, NatWest, and Microsoft.
I have an insatiable appetite for all things epicurean, and an extensive understanding of the food and drink industry, marketplace, consumers, categories, products, quality, flavour, recipes, cuisines, history, and futures.
I was professionally trained as a chef (Leiths School of Food & Wine), am certified in plant-based foods (Rouxbe/Chad Sarno), qualified in wines & spirits (WSET) and distilling (IBD), and have a Food Safety Level 2 in Manufacturing Certification.
I’ve worked in a number of high-end restaurants and caterers. And, for three years, I was General Manager of my family’s 16th Century Cotswold wool merchant's house, The Close Hotel & Restaurant. The Close was acknowledged as one of the top 40 hotel/restaurants in England (RAC Blue Ribbon). Among our guests, we provided hospitality for visitors to His Majesty King Charles III, then HRH The Prince of Wales, at Highgrove. I focussed The Close’s restaurant menu around dishes and ingredients from the regions of the British Isles, an innovative stance that gained extensive attention from the likes of the late Gary Rhodes, Hugh FW, and many others. We offered an extensive wine list organised by grape variety, an innovative and well-received approach to wine presentation.
For businesses with a sustainability message, and when the environment wasn't, but should have been, top of mind, I studied Environmental Science at Aberystwyth University (with published works). Modules included agriculture, animal behaviour, botany, biochemistry, biogeography, conservation, climate, ecology, geography, marine biology, microbiology, and zoology. My dissertation was The Role of Conservation in Farm Management, A Case Study of Little Hidden Farm, Hungerford, Berkshire. It included the first on-farm analysis of the effect of chemical spray and fertiliser drift on the flora diversity of hedgerows and woodlands.
Alcoholic drinks, bakery, beers & breweries, bouillons, cakes, condiments, charity (surplus food), chef-led, dairy, desserts, energy bars/balls, eggs, food service, energy/wellness drinks, fruit and veg, Fairtrade, food service, fish, free-from, juices, luxury, meat, plant-based, pasta & rice, preserved & smoked, producer coops, ready meals, retailer, sauces, seafood, smoked, snacks, sweeteners, tea/tisanes, vegan, waste, wine, and world foods; B2C and B2B.
Aartizen, Bakehouse (B2B), Bounce Foods (balls), Brindisa, Clarence Court, Claire’s Handmade, Country Markets, DRGN Drink, Duchy Originals, Edward Cavendish Wine Merchants, FareShare, Fortnum & Mason plc, Happy Maki (Brighton), Michelin Star Chef Marc Fosh, Hebridean Smokehouse, McCormick-Schwartz, Natural Balance Foods (Nakd), Oli’s Nectarous, Paramount Seafoods, Patriarch Wine Merchants, Pipers Crisps, Rebel Recipes, SAIDA MIA, SugaVida, Summer Isles Foods, Tanfield Foods, The London Tea Co., Tropical Wholefoods, Twofishwives, Unilever plc., and more…
