Despite its potential to create a positive impact on lives, communities, and economies all across the world, the hospitality industry has not always had the best of reputations for prioritising sustainability. This, however, is changing in response to consumer expectations, government policies, and competitors’ actions.

Whilst the industry moves towards being more environmentally conscious, can companies also rise to the challenge of becoming more ethical employers to reverse the exodus of employees following the pandemic?

Our distinguished panel of Shamil Thakrar (Co-Founder, Dishoom), Giles Gibbons (Founder & CEO, Good Business), and Chantelle Nicholson (multi-award-winning chef) will lead us on a wide-ranging discussion spanning animal welfare, waste management, localising supply chains, and investing in employees.

Jivan de Silva (Nando’s UK Strategy and Transformation Director, and Conduit board member) will chair.

Speakers:

Chantelle Nicholson is a multi-award winning chef, former chef-owner of now-closed and much-loved Covent Garden restaurant Tredwells (the recipient of a green Michelin star in 2021) and All’s Well, a ‘pandemic pop-up’. As one of the leading female voices in the UK’s hospitality industry, Chantelle is an advocate for seasonality and sustainability, championing veg-forward cooking through both the restaurant and her cookbook, Planted. Originally from NZ, and a trained lawyer, Chantelle is committed to creating a more sustainable future across her operation and activities, whilst also being an independent board member for ReLondon – moving London towards a more circular economy. Chantelle’s continuing efforts lead to Tredwells being awarded a green Michelin star in January 2021 for its commitment to sustainability.

Shamil Thakrar co-founded Dishoom in 2010. Dishoom now has five restaurants in London and one in Edinburgh, and employs over 750 people. Before 2010, he had, amongst other things, been a management consultant for five years and worked in the food industry for eight years. Shamil and the Dishoom team care enormously about creating beautiful and democratic shared spaces which pay homage to the old Irani cafés of Bombay. They also care deeply about creating a company which is an awesome place to work. Dishoom has been awarded the Best Small Group award by the Good Food Guide UK in 2017 and The Sunday Times ranked it #36 in its ‘100 Best UK Companies To Work For’ list in 2017. It has also been voted Best Restaurant in the UK by Yelp! users in 2015 and 2016, and the Cool Brands expert panel voted it the ‘Coolest UK Restaurant’ in 2016.

Giles Gibbons is one of Europe’s leading thinkers on the evolving role of social entrepreneurialism – among businesses, charities, social organisations and government – in creating a stronger society for all. For the past two decades, he has inspired and advised some of the world’s biggest names, from Coca-Cola to UNICEF to the BBC, to understand, innovate and act on the opportunity to spark social change. Giles is a founding partner and the CEO of Good Business, a strategy consultancy that helps businesses to be more successful, by being more responsible. Since 1997, Good Business has created innovative business strategies for Nike, Microsoft, McDonald’s, O2, KPMG, L’Oréal, The Walt Disney Company, British Airways, Kellogg’s and many others. In 2010, Giles set up the Sustainable Restaurant Association, a groundbreaking not-for-profit organisation supporting UK restaurants to become more sustainable – dubbed ‘the Michelin stars of Sustainability’ by The Sunday Times and now used by Harden’s Restaurant Guides to rate the sustainability of restaurants.

Jivan de Silva has been involved with a number of leading hospitality businesses, as part of investment teams and in advisory and management roles. He has been Strategy Director at Nando’s UK & Ireland since 2015 driving the commercial success of the business, including a transformation to becoming multichannel, while pushing forward Nando’s Changing Lives programme. As a result, he has a track record of value creation at all stages of the investment life cycle generating over £1.5 billion of shareholder value across several sectors, while also improving people and planet outcomes.

Share This Event

Upcoming Events