European Foodservice Summit 2023

David Bosshart

Rüschlikon, Switzerland

Author, Speaker, Executive Advisor. Dr. David Bosshart was CEO of the GDI Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute for consumption, economic and social studies from 1999 to 2020. Since 2020 he has been President of the Gottlieb and Adele Duttweiler Foundation.

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Christina Block

Hamburg, Germany

Christina Block is shareholder and member of the supervisory board of the Block Group. The Block Group is a broadly positioned family-owned company in the food business fields of gastronomy and hotel business, production as well as trade. Together with her two brothers and an extern management board, Christina defines the strategic alignment of the company. Before taking on this position, she founded her own sandwich bistro chain with three locations in Hamburg in 2001. Christina has a degree as a Master of Business Administration of the Edinburgh Business School, she worked on three continents in the hotel industry, completed a traineeship in a 3-star Michelin cuisine in Paris and started her profesional career at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof by completing a classical apprenticeship as a hotel management trainee.

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Karl Brauckmann

Essen, Germany

Karl Brauckmann is Managing Director of the Valora business unit Food Service Germany (including Austria and the Netherlands). Having previously worked for Valiant Germany and then managed and successfully sold the family business Behaton, Karl entered the foodservice industry in 2006. His first stop was the fast-growing self-service discount bakery format BackWerk of which Karl became the CEO in 2016. At the end of 2017, BackWerk went to Valora, where Karl took over the then established business unit ‘Food Service Germany’. Recently, Valora acquired Back-Factory which is integrated into this business unit, which currently operates in three countries with a network of around 4000 people. Since 2020 Karl also serves as head of the supervisory Board at PanPek, Zagreb Croatia - Croatias second largest bakery chain.

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Lou Cooperhouse

San Diego, USA

Lou Cooperhouse is Co-Founder, President and CEO of BlueNalu, a leading provider of cell-cultured seafood. Lou is recognized as a leading global authority in food business innovation and technology commercialization, with extensive leadership experiences throughout his 35+ year career in the food industry.  Most recently, Lou served as CEO of Food Spectrum, LLC, where he provided a broad array of strategic consulting and business management expertise to the food industry. Lou also served as a founder and the Executive Director of the Rutgers University Food Innovation Center (FIC), and led this program for approximately 15 years. With his deep and diverse understanding of the food industry, Lou has spoken at hundreds of conferences throughout his career, specializing in food trends, disruptive technologies, and global best practices in business innovation and incubation.

Cyrille Filott

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Cyrille Filott is global strategist for Consumer Foods, Packaging & Logistics responsible for setting and executing the research agenda for the Consumer Foods and the Packaging & Logistics franchises within Rabobank. Rabobank is a globally leading Food & Agribusiness bank. He and the team publish research that is relevant to food and agribusiness companies worldwide. Next to that Cyrille is the host of the Consumer Foods-to-Go podcast series. Cyrille spends most of his time discussing sector issues with food&agribusiness corporates. He is frequently invited at C-suite meetings to bring insights and to discuss business strategies in food. Also he is a frequent speaker at industry events. 

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Sigmar Gabriel

Berlin, Germany

Sigmar Gabriel is a former Federal Foreign Minister of Germany and politician of international repute. He has held numerous other high-rank positions in the German government, including Vice Chancellor (2013-2017), Federal Minister for Economic Affairs (2013-2017), and Federal Minister for the Environment (2005-2009).

Sigmar Gabriel is Chairman of Atlantik-Brücke, a non-profit association aiming to deepen cooperation between Germany, Europe and America on all levels. It advocates multilateralism, open societies and free trade. He is also a member of the Trilateral Commission and the European Council of Foreign Relations. Sigmar Gabriel serves as policy advisor and expert in European affairs for various advisory corporate boards.

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David Henkes

Chicago, USA

David Henkes is a Senior Principal and Head of Strategic Partnerships at Technomic. Since joining the firm in 1996, Dave has conducted and managed a wide variety of engagements across the global foodservice industry and has worked with clients in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He oversees the firm’s Beverage Practice and has worked in nearly every vertical within the broader food industry. Before joining Technomic, Dave honed his international food experience working with Nestle Germany in Frankfurt and was employed as a federal investigator in Washington, DC.

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Daniel Khachab

Berlin, Germany

Daniel Khachab is a German-Lebanese tech entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Choco. Choco is building technology to connect the global food system to solve one of the most pertinent problems in the world – food waste. Choco was founded in 2018, has raised USD 280m to date and the team currently includes 450 members across 7 countries. The company's latest funding round earned it unicorn status just four years after inception.

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Vincent Mourre

Paris, France

Vincent Mourre is the co-founder and CEO of WhiteSpace Partners. Prior to joining the restaurant industry, Vincent began his career in corporate and investment banking before his passion for food led the way to creating, developing, and managing a number of successful food and beverage groups. With over 20 years’ experience as a food service CEO, senior consultant focused on international restaurant group growth and private equity advisor, his extensive operational know how is matched only by his instinctive strategic insight, project-led precision, and financial acumen.

Christopher C. Muller

Boston, USA

Chris Muller is a leading academic expert in the field of restaurant management. His research has focused on multi-unit organizations, development and growth, and the training of multi-unit managers and leaders. He has held positions at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, UCF’s Rosen College, Boston University, and is currently Courtesy Professor of Executive Education at FIU’s Chaplin School of Hospitality.  He is an author and has lectured around the globe.

Thomas Nørøxe

Copenhagen, Denmark

Thomas Nørøxe is the CEO of the juice bar and coffee shop chain Joe & The Juice with currently over 300 units around the world. He has been part of the Joe & The Juice management team since 2019, and before that was a member of the brand’s board of directors and chairman for the audit and risk committees. He was previously a partner with Valedo Partners, a Stockholm middle-market private equity firm, which was an investor in Joe & The Juice. His career began at UBS Investment Bank in London where he was a director, before leaving in 2009.

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Matthew Robin

Estavayer-le-Lac, Switzerland

CEO of ELSA-Mifroma, a group of six food companies in Migros Industry. Robin has pioneered Migros strategy, investments and activities in the cultured meat area. Educated in England as a chemical engineer, he pursued a career in Switzerland and the USA in the pharmaceutical manufacturing and medtech area, before moving to the food sector.

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Charly Schillinger

Vienna, Austria

Charly Schillinger is the founder of Swing Kitchen, a vegan Austrian burger chain. The first restaurant opened in January 2015 and due to the great success, the second one followed in the same year. Currently, there are 13 restaurants being operated in the DACH region and for a year now, Swing Kitchen has been the European market leader in vegan system catering in terms of turnover. In order to defend this supremacy, the chain plans to accelerate its expansion and open eight to 12 new stores annually. Originally, Charly was a successful securities analyst and has become a vegan entrepreneur for ethical reasons.

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Anton Soulier

London, UK

Anton Soulier is the CEO and Founder of Taster, Europe's leading delivery-first restaurant group. Taster scales through a growing network of franchise kitchen partners who operate Taster’s food in 50+ cities across the UK, France, Spain, and Belgium. Anton founded Taster in 2017 after working for Deliveroo, where he was inspired to redefine the taste and experience of delivery food. The company has raised over $50 m to date from investors like Battery Ventures, LocalGlobe, Octopus Ventures, Rakuten, and Heartcore Capital. Taster partners up with influential foodies to create exciting digitally-native delivery brands including Pepe Chicken (in collaboration with celebrity youtuber Fastgoodcuisine), smashed burgers Saucy Buns (with WhatWillyCook), as well as Korean fried chicken Out Fry, Vietnamese street food Mission Saigon, and dirty vegan burger brand A Burgers.

Claudia Studtmann

Berlin, Germany

As Head of Retail DACH at Meta, Claudia Studtmann and her team support companies in successfully using Facebook and Instagram for brand building and driving sales. After her college education in Business Administration & International Management she started her career at Unilever in 1997 and served in leading local and international marketing and sales roles. In 2010, she moved on to Intersnack where she worked as Marketing & Customer Marketing Director for brands such as funny- frisch, Chio, Pom-Bär & goldfischli. In March 2018 Claudia joined Meta.

Gretel Weiss

Frankfurt, Germany

Gretel Weiss is co-founder and publisher of the two leading trade magazines – food-service (since 1982) and foodservice Europe & Middle East (since 1998). She is a recognized expert with insider knowledge of the chain-restaurant industry. Her background is farming, university degrees in Nutritional Science and Economics.

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Katrin Wissmann

Frankfurt, Germany

Katrin Wissmann is the Executive Editor of the b2b magazine foodservice Europe & Middle East and a long-standing editor of foodservice. She studied journalism and American Studies in Mainz (Germany), Pamplona (Spain) and in Middlebury, VT, (USA). After gaining initial professional experience in print, radio and television, she joined the editorial teams of foodservice and foodservice Europe & Middle East in 2006. Since October 2018, Katrin Wissmann has been responsible for content planning and coordination of Foodservice Europe & Middle East and was recently named the publication’s Executive Editor.

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