Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based COO’ operating in the Food and Beverage space. If you think a COO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Saasha Celestial-One
Co-Founder & COO of OLIO
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About OLIO: OLIO is a global food sharing app connecting neighbors, volunteers, and businesses.
Graham Corfield
Chief Operating Officer of Just Eat
Graham is the UK Managing Director, responsible for running the UK business and driving its continued growth. He joined Just Eat in July 2011 as UK Finance Director and was instrumental in helping just-eat.co.uk to its current market leading position. Graham began his career with KPMG, where he trained as a Chartered Accountant. Before joining Just Eat, he held a number of senior financial and management roles at technology and service-based companies, helping scale businesses during periods of aggressive growth and expansion, integrating acquisitions and turning around loss-making operations. Graham has an Honours degree in Accounting and Financial Management from Loughborough University.
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About Just Eat: Just Eat provides convenient and easy access to a huge variety of delivery restaurants and order food online.
Ronald J. Lewis
Chief Operating Officer of Ball Aerospace
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About Ball Aerospace: Ball Corporation is a provider of metal packaging of aerospace and other technologies and services
Chris Rennoldson
COO, Co-Founder, Head of Operations and Finance of Pasta Evangelists
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About Pasta Evangelists: Pasta Evangelists is freshly made by Italian hands every day.
Guy Farrant
Chief Operating Officer of Booker Group
Guy is the Group’s Chief Operating Officer. Guy has a wealth of food experience having worked in the food industry for 30 years rising to be Director of Food and, latterly, Operations and Retail Director at Marks and Spencer plc.
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About Booker Group: Booker Group plc is the United Kingdom’s largest food wholesale operator offering branded and private-label goods.
Miranda Khamis
Co-Founder & COO of Food Drop
Miranda Khamis is the Co-Founder and COO at Food Drop.
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About Food Drop: A tech platform to connect stores with unsold food to local charities
Stefan Catoiu
Co-Founder & COO of Vita Mojo
Stefan Catoiu is the Co-Founder and COO of Vita Mojo.
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About Vita Mojo: Vita Mojo’s menu allows anyone to eat for anyones’ individualized needs.
Mushtaque Ahmed
Chief Operating Officer of JJ Food Service
Mushtaque is currently Chief Operating Officer of JJ Food Service Limited-UK, with a special role in aligning IT with key business processes. He joined JJ in 1997 as a Business Systems Analyst and worked in various departments to understand and enhance the key areas of business using technology. Over the last five years, he has led the IT-enabled transformation projects at JJ in areas such as E-commerce, Mobility, Warehouse optimisation, Route optimisation, Forecasting and Master Planning. His recent data-driven supply chain project opened new dimensions for JJ which accelerated their business transformation program for some of their more innovative services like Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning, Mobile Apps and E-commerce.
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About JJ Food Service: JJ Food Service is a family-owned food service specialist.
Stephen Boyes
Founder and COO of Kurve Kiosks
As a devout technical engineer within IT businesses, I was thrown into the hospitality IT sector in 2000 when I acquired what later become known as, “EPoS Group”, growing it to become a thriving and well-known national player delivering solutions to household names including Chester Zoo, Parkdean Resorts, and Crussh. Following my successful sale and exit of EPoS Group (now re-branded Cunnighams Epos Group) in 2015, I’m now back in the hot seat as COO for Kurve, our vibrant self-serve and kiosk software solutions business which is shaping the UK’s adoption of self-serve across kiosk, online and mobile in the restaurant and hospitality sector.
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About Kurve Kiosks: Bringing the best-in-class self-serve solutions for quick service restaurants & the hospitality sector.
