QSR Media UK Conference & Awards

James’ role at IGD is to help businesses anticipate and cope with strategic events such as economic pressures, geo-political change, social developments and environmental stress. He is well-known for speaking at both UK and international events and is often in the press. He has worked with clients across the industry and non-industry groups such as government departments, financial businesses and NGOs.

Rhian leads IGD’s Food-to-go and Eating out research and also heads-up the consumer insight programme. Both programmes give operators and suppliers the tools and knowledge to inform strategic planning and decision-making.

An expert in both qualitative and quantative research techniques, Rhian is a seasoned market research professional. Prior to IGD, she managed the Customer Insight team at B&Q.

Steve Mangleshot is the global executive chef at wagamama and has been with the company for 20 years. 

With over 30 years experience in the restaurant industry as a fully qualified chef, Steve is the creative director of menu innovation at wagamama and has been doing so for the last 12 years. He is responsible for creating dishes which he takes inspiration from Japan and wider Asia, bringing eastern flavours to the west.

He has a vast amount of media experience and is regularly interviewed for print and TV channels including Fox News, Channel 4 and has assisted the producers of Masterchef and appeared alongside Gordon Ramsay in Future Food Stars.

Adam Parkinson is an accomplished executive with over 20 years’ experience working in well-known QSR brands, and in particular has extensive knowledge into working across European and Asian markets to drive growth. His experience working with Asian QSR brands led him to his current role as Business Head, Europe for Jollibee. Here, Adam is responsible for leading Jollibee’s £50million European expansion plans, having opened 14 stores across the region and plans for another 50 within the next five years.

Before joining Jollibee as Business Head, Europe, Adam was CEO at Hungry Jacks, Australia where he was the main point of communication between board members and corporate executives, providing strategic direction among various divisions of the company, including marketing, operations, development and finance. Adam was responsible for the brand’s overall performance, supporting the company’s 16,000 employees across 430 restaurants nationwide.

He was also responsible for driving financial profitability and contributing to annual revenues of over $1 billion, in addition to annual capital spending of $50 million. Adam achieved the highest profitability results in the company’s history, and initiated the restructure of the business to streamline efficiencies and costs, generating over $3 million in savings. Adam also introduced the brand standards team and the Hungry Jacks mobile app, pre-order prepays, delivery and kiosks.

Previous to that Adam was Sr. Director, General Manager, South Division for Burger King in Singapore. He started his career as a restaurant manager in Burger King in Warrington and over 14 years worked his way to head up the South Division. Here he achieved the highest profitability results within the region and increased the franchises profitability by 20% year-on-year.  In addition, Adam also improved operations across all franchisees by 10% year-on-year, measured through guest feedback and external audit program and enabled partners to make more profitable business decisions, through deep detailed analysis.

Adam has a passion for leading, collaborating and building relationships with individual and teams, from restaurant employees to C-level, to ensure all are driving forward a brands vision and most importantly enjoying their day-to-day role.

Mark Hilton, CEO of PAUL UK since 2019, has over 30 years experience in the food and hospitality trade, with a focus on Franchise and International Restaurant Operations as well as Supply Chain Management. Mark has served positions such as CEO for PAUL, Pizza Hut, and KFC in Romania and COO for Yum! Restaurants Intl in Europe.

A recognised Retail and Hospitality business leader with over 20 years’ experience across brands spanning QSR, restaurants and coffee shops - and now leading the growth of Denmark’s favourite all-day bakery [Lagkagehuset] in the UK. Nixon previously led Costa’s UK Drive Thru and London operation of over 350 sites and the UK operation of Le Pain Quotidien.  Lee joined the Ole & Steen team in June 2020 and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both teams and customers, having traded all London bakeries throughout the COVID pandemic. The Ole & Steen team are now going from strength-to-strength, having opened several new sites in 2021 and 2022 will see additional growth along with significant investment into new bakery facilities.

Jon Lake is Managing Director of CHOPSTIX, and has been at the helm of the company since 2018.

Highly respected within the hospitality sector, Jon has 30 years’ experience in a number of key roles within multinational organisations, including Fine Food Capital, where he was Development Director, and Deloitte, where he was Director of M&A specialising in the licensed retail sector. Prior to that, Jon held senior management posts with both Punch and Whitbread.

Working closely with CHOPSTIX’s co-founders, Sam Elia and Menashe Sadik, Jon has overseen the growth of the company, which now comprises 80 locations across UK and Ireland, and franchise partners including Welcome Break, Applegreen, and Haven.

Ed Anton is Vita Mojo's Head of Client Success. Vita Mojo is the technology company powering the best food and drink businesses in the UK and Europe. Trusted by 100+ brands including Nando’s, YO! and LEON.

Ulyana Guseva is an Industry Manager at Waze UK leading partnerships across the QSR sector. Her main focus is working closely with Waze's partners across the industry to help them connect with drivers in a meaningful way through destination-based marketing. Ulyana has been working with a variety of Waze partners over the past three years helping them drive awareness, visits & sales via Waze Ads. Her previous roles include digital strategy consulting for top advertisers across Central & Eastern Europe at Google as well as marketing consulting for such companies as Colgate, Victorinox & BCG.

Mark brings over 20 years experience in the foodservice sector to his role at GlobalData. Mark joined the GlobalData team in 2017 following 5 years living in Canada where he was an insights leader for PepsiCo.

Mark is an acknowledged thought-leader in the foodservice industry, often seen chairing or key-noting conferences and providing consistent new actionable insight for his global clients.  Mark brings significant expertise ranging from restaurant segmentation and market sizing, to innovation and assortment strat planning, and the study of global best practices.

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Gemma fell into the hospitality industry in her late teens, fell head over heels for the people around her, and the industry has been stuck with her ever since. Always passionate about people; have worked in casual dining, cocktail bars, gastro pubs, and premium dining in the UK, she has taken great pride in building dynamic, engaged teams. She moved into a dedicated Learning and Development role in 2017, went back to studying for her CIPD in HR and soon, her role organically grew into a HR Generalist role. She has been working with Neat Burger since January this year, and she couldn't be more enthusiastic about the direction Neat is going in - rapid growth, passionate about people, driven by ethics, and being better ambassadors for a diverse, creative, agile industry.

Anthony Round Franchise Director, Burger & Sauce has worked in the franchise industry for over 30 years, with great brands like Dominos Pizza, Papa Johns, Yum brands GDK, and the COOP.  Experienced working in both Development and Operational Roles, franchising is Anthony’s passion, and he loves the challenge of matching great people with great brands, then seeing them develop into highly skilled and very effective multi-site operators.

Glenn has been part of the Leon family since spring 2011, joining as Operations Director following his previous eleven-year tenure at itsu Heading up Operations, Food & Brand. He took on the role of President for LEON USA Inc. in 2017 before returning to the UK as Director of Growth and Culture early 2021. Glenn went on to become Managing Director, leading an accelerated nationwide growth strategy of traditional format LEON along with a newly developed Drive-Thru format. LEON will exceed 100 sites this year, living the original LEON mission, making it easier for everybody to eat food that tastes good, does you good whilst being kind to the planet.

Steven is a disabled motivational speaker, based in London.

Themes spoken about:

• Disability
• Forced Change
• Planning for Resilience, and
• Dealing with Uncertainty

Steven Dowd committed to get fit and agreed to compete in a charity cycling event.

He bought a bike, started training and rode to work like thousands of others.

Early one June morning he was headed to a friend’s flat to do the daily commute together, but never arrived…

A freak accident left him paralysed from the neck down.

With candour and humour in keynote talks for international corporate audiences Steven shares his story, the highest highs and the lowest lows of an against-all-odds recovery journey and how he approached the situation to achieve his greatest successes to date.

Amenyah started content creation and streaming during his last year of uni back in England. Amenyah was playing Fifa in his spare time, and uploading some short vids to YouTube. Everyone was commenting saying that he should stream because it allows people to convey their full personality beyond a 6min vid. Amenyah started in January 2019 and by Feb 2020 after streaming 5-6 days a week consistently managed to reach Twitch partner. Shortly afterwards Amenyah was invited to participate in a TV show by G2esports, one of the biggest esports organisations in the world. The show involved living in a house in Berlin with other streamers, competing in challenges to win cash prize and a contract as a content creator for their organisation. After 2 months of chaos and drama Amenyah won the show.

Since signing with G2 in February 2020, Amenyah has had the opportunity to host shows for Ralph Lauren at Wimbledon and Berlin, appear on TV adverts for the release of Adidas’ new boots, commentate on Pro gaming events and working with other brands like Red Bull and Dominos.

Rosalind Hunter is a Partner at Simon-Kucher & Partners in London and leads the UK’s restaurant practice.

For over 35 years, Simon-Kucher has focused on boosting clients’ TopLine by optimising growth strategies, marketing, pricing and sales. In the restaurant industry this means putting the customer at the heart of commercial decisions. Examples of the types of projects we address include:

• Beating inflation: ensuring price increases don’t impact customer value perceptions
• Growing covers: developing promotional strategies which drive high-value incremental sales
• Optimising delivery: developing robust commercial strategy which optimises sales on delivery as well as in store/restaurant 

Prior to joining Simon-Kucher & Partners 10 years ago, Rosalind worked as an economic consultant focusing on the impact of mergers and wider commercial agreements on pricing and competition within an industry. She holds a Masters in Economics from LSE.

Nick Liddle is commercial director at Vita Mojo, the food-to-go operator turned tech provider. The company creates solutions for the likes of Nando's, Leon and Honest Burger, which include mobile order & pay, self-service kiosks and click & collect.

Vicky leads the Marketing for Popeyes UK the famed American fried chicken brand. Popeyes launched their first restaurant in November 2021 in Westfield Stratford, which is now Popeyes most successful restaurant globally out of 3,700 sites. Following runaway success since its launch, Popeyes’ UK has kicked its national rollout up a gear - with sites confirmed across the country in Nottingham, Gateshead, Oxford, Reading, Brighton, Romford and Ealing, with many more sites expected to be announced imminently. Having spent 5 years leading Marketing for Neapolitan pizzeria Franco Manca and previously of PizzaExpress & Heinz, Vicky has a passion for hospitality, marketing, (food!) and growing restaurant brands.

David leads the marketing function for Island Poké - the UK's fastest growing poké brand. Having spent his career in the hospitality and retail sectors working with brands big and small, David has nurtured a passion for the industry and all things marketing.

Guy Meakin is Interim UK and Ireland Managing Director at Pret A Manger. In his current role, Guy is responsible for overseeing Pret’s operations in the UK and Ireland and helping to deliver the business’s ambitious growth plans. Guy has been at Pret for almost half a decade and has held various roles including Head of Commercial, UK Food & Coffee Director and UK Trading Director. Guy is passionate about foodservice and retail, boasting a wealth of experience with other major brands including Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's and Gu.