Food & Beverage
Street Food Box
By using our clever, re-usable solution, everyone can play their part in reducing the amount of packaging waste ass
Field of Expertise
Food & Drink Brands & Retailing
Expertise
Through a career spanning more than 40 years, Eddie has amassed an enviable food and drink innovation client portfolio spanning from the multiple-retailers (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, M&S, Co-op), through major food manufacturers (Premier Foods, ABF, Hains Daniels, 2 Sisters) to entrepreneurial start-ups and emerging brands with whom Eddie has a great empathy as he is passionate about helping new brands achieve success. Current clients include Diet Chef, the UK’s most successful delivered diet company, Corkers Crisps, an international brand just five years from launch, Hey Like Wow (a new preservative free drinks concept using innovative cap technology which launched nationwide into Tesco) and Boom Bod which has become the UK’s fastest growing diet brand in less than a year with sales in excess of £20m. His passion for understanding what consumers do and how and why products and brands influence their purchasing behaviour has taken him on an exciting journey of discovery and learning. Different life styles, cultures, life stages, aspirations, needs, thinking, desires and technologies all shape how consumers interact with brands. And with consumers faced with ever increasing choice in an age of accelerated culture, he helps clients work smarter to gain the attention of a target audience. With the largest food retailers stocking over thirty five thousand product lines and with the regular purchase repertoire of the average consumer restricted to just one hundred of these, he believes that product and brand relevance supported by precise audience definition is key. As a consequence, he has developed a number of innovative research techniques which have proved invaluable in identifying real insights and opportunities and personally manages all qualitative consumer research activity. He enthuses clients to best express their idea and then enhances it with his knowledge and skills – bringing it to life by guiding and supporting them, ensuring they avoid costly errors on their journey from concept to launch by creating and implementing a robust brand strategy with a commercial focus – and doing so with passion, enthusiasm & brilliant thinking every step of the way. He also helps businesses secure investment and for those seeking retail listings, he manages introductions and relationships with retailer buyers. His extensive food sector network of product development partners, ingredients suppliers, chefs, manufacturers, packaging suppliers, designers, PR and marketing experts, enables him to bring together a customised resource for each and every project. He has given presentations on ‘Grey Consumers’ at Leatherhead, ‘The last 3 feet’ at the FDIN, ‘Reduce, Re-use & Recycle’ in Dublin, Branding for Export’ at EEDA and ‘21st Century Brands’ at The Marketing Forum as well as various presentations on strategy, trends and branding. And in March 2017 he was one of the participants in the ‘Towards Sustainable Packaging’ think tank, initiated by global bottled water brands including Nestle, Britvic, Danone and Highland Spring. He has also appeared on television and radio as well as in numerous newspapers and magazines including Marketing and Marketing Week where he has provided expert comment. And he is presenting his thoughts on ‘Emerging Innovation Opportunities in Food and Drink’ at http://www.leisurefb.co.uk in November of last year.