Food Season Awards 2025

Question 1

Lorraine Copes

Lorraine Copes is a multi-award-winning social entrepreneur, board member, communicator, and coach. Having spent two decades as an executive director for brands including Gordon Ramsay Restaurants and Corbin & King, Lorraine felt compelled to establish Be Inclusive Hospitality CIC in 2020 due to the persistent lack of representation of people of colour in positions of influence and across the supply chain. This social enterprise now plays a leading role in igniting much-needed conversations and delivering initiatives to drive meaningful change within the hospitality, food, and drink sectors.

Question 2

Kath Dalmeny

Kath Dalmeny is a passionate food campaigner and advocate for action on social and environmental justice, and is the Chief Executive of Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming. Over a career dedicated to improving the food system, Kath has helped instigate and run projects including the Sustainable Food Places Network, Campaign for a Better Food Britain, Beyond the Food Bank and the Campaign for Better Hospital Food. During Covid-19 Kath worked with the Good Law Project and Doughty Street Chambers to launch a judicial review of the government's approach to children's hunger during school holidays. Outside these specific initiatives, as Chief Executive of the charity Sustain, Kath helps facilitate and coordinate a broad alliance of organisations, agencies, places and individuals committed to improving the food system for citizens, producers, animals and the environment. Kath's irresistible energy means she can bring disparate groups together to find solutions to complicated problems. Kath is a great strategic thinker, able to see the big picture, but she also has the compassion and humanity to understand and respond to the ways that a broken food system impacts on people's lives and our environment. 

Question 3

Ravneet Gill

Ravneet Gill has worked as a pastry chef for over ten years. After completing a Psychology degree, she studied at Le Cordon Bleu before working her way up the ranks in different pastry sections all over London - most notably, St. JOHN, Llewelyn's, Black Axe Mangal and Wild by Tart. In May 2018 she set up an organisation called Countertalk; a platform designed to help connect chefs, provide education and promote healthy work environments in the hospitality industry. Through Countertalk, Ravneet holds much-lauded food-based events, industry talks and aims to create a more equal and supportive workplace to help foster new talent. Through her work with Countertalk she has shone a light on the more negative side to hospitality and restaurants - sexism, inappropriate language and  behaviour, unfair working hours - and has affected real change. 

Question 4

Nick Jefferson and Ella Cooper

Nick Jefferson and Ella Cooper - founders of Wylde Market online farmers’ market, dedicated to sourcing the best food in the country straight from micro, artisanal producers. It’s a dynamic model of fresh seasonal food and drink from around the country, made by sustainable producers who set their own prices. But what makes Wylde stand out beyond even supporting small producers and finding the ‘best’ food from around the UK is how Wylde is challenging head-on the food system status quo. Wylde is fearless in questioning the role of supermarkets and showing how a reliance on them is damaging to the food system, health and the environment. Nick has made it his mission to empower a stronger understanding of where our food comes from and its impacts. 

Question 5

Louise Lateur

Louise Lateur is the managing director of e5 bakehouse. Louise drives an ethical bakery with a commitment to sustainability and biodiversity, while nourishing a passionate team. Louise shines in the way she supports local communities and individuals by making space for ad hoc events, humanitarian fundraisers, up and coming chefs and food and drink talent in e5's arches. 

Question 6

Andy Swinscoe

Andy Swinscoe is a cheese expert, communicator, Affineur and owner of the Courtyard Dairy in Austwick, North Yorkshire. Each farmhouse cheese in Britain is a unique food: closely tied to landscape, history and skill. They are also increasingly rare, and often endangered foods. As one of the most knowledgeable, engaging and proactive experts in this area, Andy Swinscoe would be a worthy recipient of a Food Hero Award. As a successful cheesemonger he has built up a business that’s become an important platform for farmhouse producers to sell cheese and tell their story. This has become a lifeline for the many small family farms he works with, but it goes much further. From opening a museum telling the history of cheese, through to organising experimental collaborations of cheesemakers and advising farmers how to improve the quality of what they do, Andy is adding much needed energy and innovation to one of most important and delicious foods in the UK.  

Question 7

Simon Wright

Simon Wright is the founder and director of Cegin Y Bobl (The People’s Kitchen), a charity based in Carmarthenshire, Wales that runs transformational food education programmes, developed by some of Wales’ best cooks, growers and food experts. Named Food Ambassador for Wales in 2010, Simon is a key member of Food Policy Alliance Cymru and advises Government on food policy. He has run award-winning restaurants in Wales for over 30 years, was former Editor of the AA Restaurant Guide, and worked as a Restaurant Consultant for all the UK episodes of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Simon’s role in developing the Cook24 programme laid the groundwork for Cegin Y Bobl, which is already garnering significant media attention across the UK, despite only launching in 2024, and developing a reputation for facilitating exceptional, transformative food experiences for those it serves.

Question 8

Tilly Robinson-Miles

Tilly Robinson-Miles has long been a well-respected voice advocating for older people. She has worked for legislative and societal change on the importance of food throughout life. As part of the Eat Well Age Well project her work led to a commitment by the Public Health Minister for Scotland on tackling malnutrition. As Policy Manager for the Scottish charity Food Train she played a central role in ensuring the relationship between access to food, social care and mental wellbeing, particularly for older people, is recognised in legislation. Now as part of the Living Good Food Nation Lab at the University of Edinburgh she is leading the lab's work with partners across the food system to ensure this legislation truly creates a Good Food Nation for all. Sadly, older people are often overlooked within society, but Tilly’s past and present work means older people’s food experiences are increasingly recognised in food policy and food systems transformation work.

Question 9

Ben Drinkwater

This proposed article aims to explore how the surprising rise of British wine reflects deeper tensions in the nation's relationship with its land and food production. By tracing the history of viticulture in Britain, it seeks to reveal how colonial legacies and changing values have shaped, and continue to shape, British agriculture, food security and identity.

“Often British wine is seen as a curiosity, but the judges were convinced by the thesis of this entry that as climate change and isolationism increases, British viticulture will have a more important part to play in the ongoing conversations about self-reliance and the state of British agriculture.” – Food Season Awards Judges

Question 10

Michela Siuni

This proposed article examines culinary misnomers, along with wrongly attributed national toponyms. It will look at the impacts that wrongly attributing origin can have, and its interplay with themes of identity, international trade, linguistic imperialism and soft power.

“The judges loved the playful concept of this entry, which looks not at how a physical dish has evolved, but rather the words we use to describe it. In doing so, it uses food as a way to discuss the unromantic topics of marketing and trade, as well as tension points in national identity.” – Food Season Awards Judges

Question 11

Stella Swain

This proposed article presents an exploration of British farming in contemporary food culture, informed by an investigation into the changing status of farming and food production.

“The judges were immediately interested in how this entry intends to tackle such an unwieldy topic as land use, using a personal connection to an underwritten-about government scheme to discuss what it might teach us about land use today, and the timely topics of farmers protests and the green transition.” – Food Season Awards Judges