POWER LIST

So said Margaret Thatcher about her own status. With that in mind, we have decided to identify the people who hold power in the restaurant sector, whether it be chefs cooking food and creating trends, restaurateurs that have made their mark on the sector or the people behind the scenes pulling the financial strings.

But what constitutes being ‘powerful’ in the restaurant world? Power can be hard to define in specific details, but for the benefit of this process we have identified a number of criteria that people need to meet to stake a claim on this list. They are: having a wide industry reach; having the ability to influence change; having a strong, clear and identifiable voice; having scale and clout within the sector; and presiding over a brand, company or restaurant that is not only well respected but carries weight and significance.

Most people on this list meet more than one of these criteria and are therefore considered to be among the most ‘powerful’ or influential in the UK’s dining scene.

Entries are not ranked, and we have decided to not list them in alphabetical order. Instead, they are ordered in a way that demonstrates the diversity of entries within each category

Categories

To make this list as coherent as possible we have divided it into four categories – restaurateurs, casual dining leaders, trailblazers, and investment and property.

In the case of the restaurateurs group, we have included chefs who run multiple restaurants as well a business leaders who have set up and continue to run their own companies.

The casual dining category comprises those people at the top of large businesses but haven’t necessarily been there from the beginning. In some cases, we have put a person in this category despite them having been part of the business from the outset because of the scale to which the business has grown.

In most cases we have chosen the founders, the people deemed to have the final decision, although we acknowledge that there are many managing directors and senior personnel within these businesses that could also merit inclusion.

We have also chosen to include a trailblazers category, highlighting a group of people who are having a big influence on the dining out sector even though they may not be responsible for a large company. These people in particular are deemed as having the ability to shape food and drink and dining trends as well as spearhead cultural shifts in the sector.

As you read through the report you will notice it is not a list of 100 people, but rather comprises 100 entries, in acknowledgement of the multiple people at the top of some companies.

In total, there are 131 people on the list, of which only 27 are women, equating to just 21% of the list. While this percentage is not surprising it does show how male dominated the UK restaurant sector and its related sectors continue to be.

Finally, by limiting this list to only 100 entries, some people inevitably missed the cut. As such, this list is not designed to be exhaustive but rather to identify a group of individuals, and companies, that are significant players in the UK’s £19bn eating out sector.