Food Innovation

Obsessed with what comes next

I have spent my working life trying to understand why people buy what they buy, and more recently what they might cook and eat next. Ten years at Unilever took me from the UK to the United States, India and Thailand. I then founded Great British Chefs, ran the customer team at Hearst, and have invested in and advised a string of food and drink start-ups along the way.

Today I lead the innovation team at Hot Pickle, helping brands, retailers and restaurants work out where food is heading and what to do about it. The work runs from everyday staples to the biggest supermarkets, from spirits to yoghurt and even dog treats. A good chunk of my year is spent eating my way around the world’s trade shows, markets and restaurants, looking for the signals that will shape what Britain eats in three years’ time.

Why innovation is the heart of this show

The best ideas in food rarely start on a supermarket shelf. They start in a restaurant kitchen, a market stall, a café menu in Tokyo or Lisbon, a farm trying something that shouldn’t work. Hojicha was on specialist menus for eighteen months before a lunch chain put it in an iced latte. The French have made frozen food aspirational while we still treat it as a budget choice. A Korean art curator with no food background has a tin of kimchi in Selfridges. Those are the stories The FoodTalk Show exists to tell: how food actually moves from culture to plate, who is quietly doing something new, and what the rest of us can learn from them.

Because I have sat on the other side of the table, the conversations go deeper than the origin story: why a product works, what it costs to make it properly, how it gets to market, and whether it has a life beyond the trend cycle.

Know someone we should talk to?

If you are a producer, founder, buyer, farmer or operator doing something genuinely interesting that nobody has noticed yet, or you know someone who is, I would love to hear from you. Overlooked brands, new arrivals to the UK and the people behind the scenes of how Britain eats are exactly who this show is for. Drop me a line at hello@foodtalk.co.uk