Every year Public Sector Catering magazine convenes a panel of industry experts to draw up an annual list of the people who are driving the agenda on issues such as obesity, sustainability, health & wellbeing, malnutrition, recruitment, the cost of living crisis and much more.
Molly Shaher
As chair of the Professional Association for Catering Education (PACE), Molly sees her role as encouraging catering educating institutions to work together to manage the challenges of continuing change.
She regularly publicises the fact that there remains strong interest among young people to join courses at the same time as the catering and hospitality industry is crying out for more staff.
Phil Shelley
The senior operational & policy manager with NHS Estates and Facilities, he chaired the Independent Review of NHS Hospital Food that saw the publication of eight new National Standards of Hospital Food for patients, staff and visitors that all NHS organisations will be legally required to meet.
He has led efforts to embed the review recommendations through the formation of an NHS Chef competition, the creation of the NHS Chef Academy, and using 20 ‘exemplar Trusts’ to highlight best practice.
Alexia Robinson
The founder of Love British Food and the national food celebration, British Food Fortnight, which are now the most established promotions of British food in the public sector.
Recently she has been instrumental in setting up industry working groups for school chefs, with LACA, and for hospital caterers, with the HCA and the Hospital Food Review Team.
Brad Pearce
When appointed chair of LACA, the school food people, Brad vowed to champion the great work school caterers do up and down the country.
He recently celebrated National School Meals Week (7-11 November), calling on the Government to increase the funding per meal for both universal infant free school meals (currently £2.41) and free school meals (currently £2.47) to address the cost of living crisis.
Public Sector Catering will reveal four more names tomorrow.