The role involves identifying food trends for the business and designing concepts around these. He has worked for BM for the last ten years across a number of sites. During his time, Varma has developed vegetarian-focused food concepts that took inspiration from the diets of countries with the longest life expectancy.
He adopted dishes, ingredients and trends from nations such as Japan, Switzerland and Macau to explore creative ways in which BM could offer healthier dishes to customers. Varma also developed a popular raw vegetable pop-up concept around seasonal nutrition.
Pete Redmen, chef director at BM, said: “Varma has been with BM for ten years over a few different sites and is always contributing cutting edge street food ideas and bringing them to life at our client sites. We’re thrilled that he’s going to be using his new role to focus solely on pop-ups and look forward to developing some new creative concepts and explore new food styles with him.”
Varma led a project with Streets Kitchen in London’s Clapham to feed homeless communities and refugees during the pandemic. Every Christmas for the last ten years, he has worked as a head chef and development chef for charity Crisis at Christmas.
Varma commented: “I’m so excited to have been tasked with heading up BM’s pop-up and street food offering. I’ve seen how well pop-ups go down both with our customers and teams, and I can’t wait to explore and share the brilliant new concepts I have in mind with the teams.”