Meet the Collective
Monty Bhurjee
Small Scale Business Strategist
Monty Bhurjee is a food & beverage consultant with over 12 years of hands-on experience launching, operating and scaling small food businesses across the UK.
His background spans the full spectrum of modern food trading, including market stalls, long-term venue residencies, dark kitchens, pop-ups and extensive trading at music festivals — where he has spent the majority of his career. This breadth of experience gives him a grounded understanding of what works in real trading conditions, not just on paper.
Monty specialises in helping founders turn ideas into viable, commercially sound businesses. His work covers concept development and validation, menu pricing strategy, cost control, logistics planning, supplier sourcing, equipment setup and operational efficiency. He also advises on routes to market, trading models, scalability and how to adapt a concept to different environments without losing profitability.
A key part of Monty’s approach is practicality. Having operated at the sharp end of the industry, he understands tight margins, operational pressure, compliance requirements, and the realities of trading long hours in unpredictable conditions. His guidance is rooted in first-hand experience, with a focus on avoiding common mistakes, streamlining operations and building businesses that are sustainable for both finances and lifestyle.
Monty works with first-time founders and experienced operators alike, offering clear, honest advice and structured support at every stage — from early-stage idea testing through to launch and optimisation. His role is not just advisory, but collaborative: helping clients make confident decisions, trade legally and efficiently and build food businesses that are fit for purpose in the UK market.
Ed Farrell
Medium-Large Scale Business Strategist
Ed’s career in the food industry spans product development, manufacturing, street food, and multi-site operations. He began in food manufacturing, working in product development and process engineering for producers supplying major UK retailers, before deciding to build something of his own.
Inspired by the early food truck movement in the US, Ed founded The Duck Truck (www.theducktruck.co.uk), developing it from a single street food concept into a successful QSR-style restaurant brand. Along the way, he traded at some of the UK’s largest and most respected festivals, sold franchise locations, and appeared on national television food programmes.
Today, Ed works with established and growing food businesses, helping founders and leadership teams navigate the challenges of scale, structure, and sustainability. His work is grounded in real-world experience and driven by a genuine respect for the people behind food businesses — recognising that it’s the passion, resilience, and ideas of those individuals that continue to shape and drive the hospitality industry forward.
Pritesh Mody
Beverage Menu Developer
For more than 20 years, Pritesh has worked at the intersection of hospitality operations, brand storytelling, and modern drinks culture. His approach is equal parts creative and commercial: cocktails must look exceptional, taste balanced, and perform under service—whether they are designed for a high-volume venue group, a luxury hotel bar, or a national brand campaign.
From five-star hotels and premium bars to globally recognised consumer brands, Pritesh creates drinks programs that do far more than taste exceptional. Each cocktail is carefully engineered to tell a story, reflect the identity of the venue or brand, and deliver an experience guests want to order — and share.
His work combines creative cocktail design with commercial practicality, ensuring that menus remain operationally efficient, scalable for teams to execute, and designed to maximise sales.
Whether developing a full cocktail list for a new venue or creating signature serves for a brand activation, Pritesh brings a rare combination of industry credibility, creative storytelling, and operational insight.
Sean Charles
Psycho-dynamic Coach
Sean is a transformational coach working with founders, creatives, and leaders operating under sustained pressure. His work focuses on helping high-performing individuals remove internal friction, regain clarity, and lead from a grounded, regulated state rather than constant effort or self-control.
What distinguishes Sean’s work is that it is grounded in lived transformation, not theory. Over the past decade, he has navigated significant personal and professional challenges, including growing up across cultures, losing his father to alcoholism, divorce, chronic anxiety, and an ADHD diagnosis, and translated those experiences into a deep understanding of how identity, nervous system regulation, and decision-making intersect under stress.
Alongside this inner work, Sean has built and sustained high-performance careers in creative and commercial environments. He has worked remotely at the highest level as a voice-over artist for global brands (including Fortune 100 companies), while also working as an actor and creative professional in high-pressure, high-visibility contexts. This gives him a rare ability to relate to founders who are both ambitious and internally stuck.
Today, Sean works 1:1 with a small number of private clients at a time, supporting them through identity-level shifts that restore clarity, authority, and sustainable momentum. Not by adding more tactics, but by helping them come back into alignment with themselves.
Ed Kanerick
Developmental & Operational Chef
Ed is a senior culinary consultant with over 15 years of experience working at head chef level across the UK hospitality industry.
His career has been rooted in restaurant kitchens, where he has led teams, built systems, and delivered consistently high standards in fast-paced, commercially driven environments. Ed specialises in kitchen processes, health & safety compliance, menu development, and team building — helping food businesses operate efficiently while maintaining quality and consistency.
Ed has developed menus across a broad spectrum of cuisines, with particular depth in Italian and Pan-Asian food. His approach balances creativity with operational practicality, ensuring menus are not only compelling but also cost-effective, scalable and achievable within the realities of staffing, equipment and service flow.
Ed has advised on a wide range of projects spanning street food concepts, cafés and full-service restaurants. He brings a structured, systems-led mindset to every project, supporting clients with kitchen layout planning, workflow optimisation, food safety systems, staff training and the creation of repeatable processes that reduce risk and improve performance.
Ed works closely with founders, operators and kitchen teams, providing clear guidance grounded in real-world experience. His focus is on building strong foundations — well-designed menus, confident teams and robust operational systems — that allow food businesses to grow sustainably and deliver consistent results.
Ben Rix
Brand Architect
With over 15 years of experience in design and branding, I’ve worked extensively within food and beverage, hospitality, and culture-led brands, helping shape and grow successful concepts from the ground up. My work includes developing established UK food brands such as White Men Can’t Jerk and Popdogs, alongside collaborating with a number of well-known restaurants and hospitality projects across Lisbon, Portugal. I bring a commercially minded approach to branding, balancing strong visual identity with real-world application.
I’m a multi-disciplinary Creative Director and Designer with experience delivering full 360° brand output, from early brand conception and naming through to complete roll-outs. This includes logos and visual identity systems, menus and packaging, interiors and set builds, signage, digital platforms, web design, and ongoing brand guardianship. Whether a project requires a simple, refined identity or a fully realised brand ecosystem, I’m comfortable leading and delivering at every level.
Alongside hospitality, I’ve spent over 8 years working within the music and events industry, collaborating with clients ranging from major labels such as Sony and BMG to influential independent labels including Metalheadz, Goldie, and Ram Records. I also run my own clothing brand, The Wet Patch, and currently deliver design and production services for major festivals. This crossover between food, music, and culture allows me to build brands that don’t just look good at launch, but continue to perform, evolve, and stand out long after.
Daniel Spencer
Website Designer & Developer
Daniel Spencer is a digital designer and developer with 8 years experience specialising in the design and build of modern, user-focused websites.
With a background that spans web development, app development, photography, and videography, Daniel brings a multidisciplinary approach to every project. This allows him to create websites that are not only technically robust, but also visually compelling and aligned with a brand’s wider digital presence.
Daniel focuses on building clean, intuitive websites that prioritise usability, performance and clarity. His work covers everything from initial design and user experience planning through to development, optimisation and deployment. He has a strong understanding of how design, content, and functionality work together to support real business goals — whether that’s driving enquiries, bookings or sales.
His experience in photography and videography gives him a strong eye for composition, storytelling and visual consistency, ensuring that websites feel cohesive and engaging across all devices. Combined with his app development background, this enables him to think beyond static pages and deliver scalable, future-proof digital solutions.
Daniel works closely with clients to translate ideas into polished, functional digital products, offering a thoughtful, detail-driven approach that balances creativity with technical precision.
Scott Van Winden
Website Developer
Scott is a London-based web developer specialising in bespoke WordPress builds for businesses that require more than a standard website. With over 15 years’ experience, he designs and develops robust, flexible digital platforms tailored to complex requirements, custom functionality, and long-term scalability.
Since establishing his own company in 2013, Scott has worked across hospitality, music, media, fashion, and design — delivering websites that balance strong visual presentation with solid technical foundations. His work is particularly well suited to businesses that need custom structures, integrations, or content systems that go beyond simple brochure sites.
Before founding his studio, Scott worked in-house at EMI Music in London, operating across Parlophone and Virgin Records. During this time, he worked on digital projects for internationally recognised artists including David Bowie, Blur, Coldplay, Gorillaz, and Swedish House Mafia — experience that shaped his approach to high-profile, content-heavy, and performance-critical platforms.
Scott’s service is ideal for food and beverage businesses that need advanced website solutions, such as multi-page structures, custom booking or enquiry flows, integrations with third-party systems, or bespoke content management. His approach is methodical and considered, focusing on building websites that are reliable, maintainable, and capable of evolving as the business grows.
Alex Gardner
Tax Accounting
With over 30 years’ experience in accountancy and tax, Alex specialises in supporting small businesses with clear, practical, and reliable financial advice. Known for his deep expertise in all aspects of UK taxation, he helps clients stay compliant, reduce tax liabilities, and make confident financial decisions. Trusted, approachable, and detail‑driven, he delivers straightforward guidance that makes even the most complex tax matters easy to understand.