Details of the 10 'disruptors' of the restaurant world chosen for The Power List: Restaurant magazine's 100 most powerful people in the restaurant industry.
Will Shu. The co-founder of Deliveroo has shaken up food delivery and given restaurants that wouldn’t normally look at the sector a route to market. The business can take much credit for the number of brands now bolting-on an off-premises sales element.
Jonathan Downey. Jonathan Downey took the fragmented world of street food and gave it credibility with his markets Hawker House, Street Feast and Model Market. Now, with London Union, Downey has set his sights higher, with plans to create the world’s best food and drink market in London and – with the backing of some serious heavyweights – run similar projects abroad.
Peter Miller. As the COO of Westfield, Peter Miller has played a leading role in redefining shopping centres. To say that Westfield – the world’s largest shopping development brand – has set new standards is an understatement, with a strong restaurant offering now central to the success of both new and existing schemes.
Luke Lang. Luke Lang co-founded crowdfunding platform Crowdcube with Darren Westlake in 2010 and has given would be restaurateurs a new option when raising finance. The UK leader has so far raised more than £145m through crowdfunding, with food and drink brands, including The Italian Job, The Yorkshire Meatball Co, Pull’d, and The London Cocktail Club, all using it to raise money.
Mobile payment companies. No one company can lay claim to fully owning the mobile payment space, but thanks to the likes of Velocity, Zapper and Flypay a large number of restaurants now take mobile
payments, a trend set to grow exponentially.
Petra Barran. Petra Barran has had a huge influence on the street food world (and by extension the restaurant world) since founding eat.st in 2009. She launched KERB in King’s Cross in 2012 and has taken the street-food collective to a number of other London locations. She is also on the London Food Board.
Roger Wade. With rents increasingly unaffordable, Roger Wade’s BoxPark has given many players the chance to trade in a prime location. The pop-up container mall in Shoreditch, with a second in Croydon coming this summer, is prompting arethink on use of development land.
Richard Turner. Chef and grilling master Richard Turner is responsible for bringing the Meatopia barbecue event to the UK. The three-day event at London’s Tobacco Docks has become the place for
international chefs to show off their grilling skills and has helped raise the UK’s profile of cooking over coal.
Carousel. Run by cousins Ollie, Will, Ed and Anna Templeton, Carousel is a supper club-restaurant hybrid in Marylebone. The Templetons’ ability to curate an eclectic line-up that gives younger talent a chance to shine makes them stand out.
Fred Sirieix. The manic maître d’ has worked tirelessly in recent years to put the service side of the industry on a more even footing with chefs in terms of media attention, and he’s achieving it in an unconventional way. As the ‘love guru’ on Channel 4’s First Dates he’s helped raise the profile of a career front of house and make the roles of waiting staff ‘sexy’ for the first time.
