Sponsored by
Alex Head
The owner and founder of the Social Pantry catering company, the Social Pantry café in Battersea, and restaurant Soane's Kitchen in Ealing. Head's positive ethos focuses on giving a second chance to ex-offenders by employing them across its various London sites, through mentoring work with charity Key4Life.
Asma Khan
A trailblazing restaurateur, Asma Khan runs Darjeeling Express in Kingly Court. The modern Indian restaurant boasts an all-female team of home cooks-turned-professional chefs, and it also raises funds for the Second Daughter Charity, which aims to empower second-born daughters in Khan's native India.
Chris Young
The coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign, an offshoot of food and agriculture-based charity Sustain, Young has been flying the flag for real baking since 2008. He's the brains behind Real Bread Week – a celebration of real bread and the people who make it – and can often be found lobbying supermarkets and shops to be honest and open about their bread production. Young also serves as the editor of London food magazine Jellied Eel.
Danny McCubbin
While McCubbin has played a crucial role in Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners programme and the Fifteen apprenticeship scheme, he is also the founder of the UK San Patrignano Association and serves as its UK ambassador. The social enterprise in Italy is one of the world's progressive, successful drug rehab communities, helping residents overcome addictions through skills including winemaking and restaurant placements.
Jack Monroe
A four-time cookbook author, journalist and activist, Jack Monroe specialises in creating accessible, healthy and delicious recipes for food bank users, the disabled and large families on tight budgets. Monroe is an active campaigner on poverty issues, particularly focussed on trying to highlight and end food poverty in the UK alongside The Trussell Trust.
Karen Lynch
When Lynch became CEO of Belu Water back in 2011, she relaunched the brand to create a pioneering social enterprise and ethical business model which not only works with the UK Hospitality Industry to deliver the right water offering for restaurants and hotels, but also invests 100% of its net profits into WaterAid. So far Belu Water has passed more than £3 million on to the charity.
Marc Gosschalk
Gosschalk is the founder of Hackney Roots and a member of the Hackney Social Enterprise Place Partnership. His work involves promoting community collaborations and boosting the growth of natural connections within the borough via the support of multiple community projects. Gosschalk is also the creator of Africa Week, a programme of community-led events held in Dalston.
Natalia Ribbe
Natalia Ribbe is the co-founder of Ladies of Restaurants, the hospitality network using food, drink and social spaces to connect with other women in the industry and raise them up towards success, which currently counts more than 1000 members from all areas of the industry. Ribbe is also founder of hospitality initiative Eighty Six List, and works with food charity Magic Breakfast.
Rose Lloyd Owen
The founder of Fare Healthy, a feel-good festival of food, exercise, and wellbeing, and Peardrop London – a lunch delivery service from a West London kitchen that uses natural, seasonal and fully sustainable ingredients and packaging. Lloyd Owen also runs the Plastic Pledge Supper Club.
Ryan Riley
After losing his mother Krista to small-cell lung cancer four years ago, Ryan Riley was inspired to set up Life Kitchen, a charity offering free UK-wide cookery classes and food events for people living with cancer. In the space of a year, Riley has already worked with more than 400 people, with plans for a permanent Life Kitchen cookery school and dedicated cookbook on the cards, too.
