A Talented Bunch
It’s not just our food that is made up of all the best ingredients. Our team combines the perfect mix of highly experienced managers, creative professional chefs and dedicated foodies across the whole company.
Professionalism and a highly motivated team come from recruiting and training can do people with the right attitude. At Accent we give our teams the opportunity to flourish with development and training coupled to great support, meaning you always have inspired staff working for you. Our professional handling and friendly approach to TUPE helps us develop stable, loyal teams throughout our business and you will be handing your teams over to a great employer.
Once we have the right team in place, we always take the time to acknowledge and reward outstanding work whether they’ve delivered spectacular special day, outstanding function or warm and friendly customer service. We make sure everyone knows about it through our weekly “Friday Flyer” newsletter shared amongst the business and quarterly, our recognition and reward scheme called “Shining Stars” rewards the outstanding teams or individuals. For a 5 star food hygiene certificate from the EHO, they receive a certificate of excellence and a bottle of champagne (naturally for home consumption only).
Get to know some of our team a little bit better…
The Directors
Derek Warman
A Chartered Accountant, Derek has developed a clear, easy-to-follow accounting system and integrated it across all our sites, giving clients complete peace of mind that their service is always securely and effectively managed.
Clare Piggott
The driving force behind our fresh food vision, Clare is a former restauranteur and craft-trained Chef. She can often be found out and about, visiting clients and ensuring we are delivering our promise of great food and great service.
Ian Crabtree
From Business & Industry, Education, Fine Dining, Travel and even Healthcare, Ian has held a senior role in every contract catering sector he’s worked in, meaning there’s rarely a situation he hasn’t had experience in dealing with!
Denise Hill
Denise has more than 30 years’ experience in retail, education, B&I and contract catering, giving her the perfect perspective positioned to advise and guide our teams on every aspect of a truly customer-focused service.
Paul Merry
An award-winning Chef with 28 years’ craft experience, he’s always bringing his considerable expertise to bear, whether he’s refining menus for individual clients, innovating mouth-watering new recipes or holding interactive educational workshops for our teams.
Jayne Day
A dynamic and dedicated Operations Director, Jayne thrives in a team-oriented business. Alongside Denise, she oversees new contract launches, and attends key client meetings and reviews.
Operations
Caroline Whyman
Before she moved into the catering business, Caroline thrived in the customer service industry, making her a skilful and nuanced communicator who knows exactly how to bring a personal touch to any working relationship.
Besnik Aliu
Besnik is adept at building the kind of close-knit, enduring relationships that form the bedrock of our business, and has flourished as an Operations Manager for both Blue-Chip B&I accounts and Education contracts.
Angela Harris
Angie has a keenly-developed eye for what fantastic food should look like in her units – after all, she’s gathered experience across every managerial role in contract catering, as well as having prepared meals for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II!
Amanda Austin
Amanda brings over 17 years’ worth of experience in a variety of different roles from Head Chef to Operations Manager, meaning she’s a particularly well-rounded individual capable of handling any situation that may arise.
Ian Harman
Ian has a sharp eye for detail and a holistic approach to catering. He believes great service can only be truly delivered by understanding to each client’s requirements, which makes him a perfect fit for Accent and our commitment to tailored catering solutions.
Robin Smith
With over 25 years’ experience within the hospitality industry, Robin thrives in menu development and customer service, but he’s happiest of all in the kitchen alongside his teams, helping them create mouth-watering and imaginative new dishes.
Colin Wills
An enthusiastic and attentive Operations Manager, he has significant experience in the Education sector and his ability to develop his teams across Primary and Secondary Schools makes him a valuable new addition to the Accent family.
Charles Renton
Charles brings years of experience as a Catering Manager for some exclusive B&I institutions. Prior to this, Charles worked as a government butler giving him the experience to deliver the highest standards in food and service provision.
Alex Youngson
Having been a craft-trained Chef before moving into management, Alex has over 20 years’ experience in contract catering. Priding himself on instilling a passion for fresh food, Alex ensures every service is run efficiently and professionally.
Damian Sidorowicz
Damian has extensive experience in the Education sector as both a Head Chef and Operational management. His expertise are on hand to support the day-to-day running of the kitchen, ongoing training and guidance and hospitality events.
Food Development Team
Richard Nicholson
Paul’s right-hand man, Richard is an endlessly-creative Chef who loves working with great food and great people, delivering new recipes, concepts, training and organising and implementing new kitchen launches.
Dave Jennings
A versatile and highly-imaginative Chef, Dave spends much of his time working on the recipe development and the creation of new food offers, including running a major project, featuring an extensive range of sweet and savoury hand held snacks.
Harry Richardson
Harry has a background that includes fine dining restaurants and event catering, and since joining Accent he’s quickly developed a niche for focused projects, working alongside the teams and mobilising many of our Independent school kitchens.
Daniel Leah
Daniel joined us with a wealth of experience developed in some of London’s top Michelin starred kitchens. With outstanding culinary skills Danny’s focus is on developing the talent within the business and passing on his significant experience to all of our teams.
Relief Chef Team
Ken Brown
During his career, Ken has worked as a Head Chef in hotels and restaurants, and in Chef Development Management. He's very passionate about creating good quality nutritious food. Ken joined the education sector 3 years ago and finds it extremely rewarding teaching, training and passing on his experience.
David Brooks
Richard Hills
Shaun Lavender
Shaun has been in the education sector managing for almost 10 years, he strives to produce great food and service and loves to be hands on in the kitchen.
Marius Narkus
Marius is an experienced manager who is very familiar with client contract practices. He has the passion for service excellence and commercial development, although, sometimes is a bit aloof.
Marketing & Sales
Lily Wilkinson
Our Creative & Design guru, Lily is always developing imaginative and eye-catching marketing, branding and promotions across our business, and she works with each client to produce tailored design suites that are uniquely theirs!
Emma Ferris
Having recently graduated from University for the Creative Arts, Emma has hit the ground running at Accent, supporting Lily across our Marketing & Design function, and playing a key role in developing our new marketing suites for our Education business in 2020.
Natalie Varley
The hub of our Design & Branding team, Natalie’s creative spark sees her turn her hand to a huge range of different tasks, from designing tailored logos for our clients to making our sales documents much more pleasing on the eye!
Gary Irwin
The key cog in our sales function, Gary can call upon a Diploma in Hotel & Catering services, as well as a rich and varied experience in chef roles. He’s since discovered, however, his skills are even better suited to selling, rather than serving!
Tom Collins
An invaluable support to Gary in the sales team, Tom’s degree in Journalism & English Language helps him deliver clear and focused bids for our new business tenders, as well as catching (most) spelling & grammar errors!
Carolyn Fort
Our in-house teleseller, Carolyn’s wealth of experience in both the sales and catering industry mean she’s perfectly positioned to understand how we stand out in the market, and more importantly, how to articulate that to potential new clients!
Kathryn Dockerty
Kathryn joined us in 2015 as a Bid Writer, and her enthusiasm and eye for detail soon saw her progress to the Business Development Manager role, where she’s become an integral part of our Sales team. She’s passionate foodie outside of work, too - with a particular fondness for cheese!
HR & Payroll
Sarah Stevens
Having worked in HR for over twenty years Sarah provides a wealth of management experience in all matters HR. Infused with a passion to share her knowledge and experiences, Sarah builds and strengthens her team to ensure they provide seamless support for all our employees.
Leila Zoghbi
Having completed her psychology degree and after dabbling a little bit in psychology work, Leila decided that HR would be a better option and started her career at Unilever. She subsequently joined Accent in 2013 and has been a mainstay in our HR team ever since.
Ashley Stroud
Having worked in a variety of customer service roles, Ashley found her personal touch and outgoing personality were perfectly suited to the world of HR. She’s especially important in ensuring we are hiring the right calibre of individual to work for Accent.
Trier Atkinson
The newest addition to our HR Team, Trier is in charge of our recruitment function, making sure our kitchens are staffed with the very best people for the job. Having previously been in customer facing roles, she’s relishing a role that involves being on her feet less of the time!
David Clarke
David has extensive experience in payroll, having worked for companies such as B.A and VSO for over 25 years. This makes him perfectly equipped to handle any pay enquiries from our 600+ members of staff.
Finance
Alison Rushworth
Alison is one of Accent Catering’s most long-standing employees, having been with the company since its early days in Taplow. Alison spends the bulk of her time assisting Derek in most aspects of finance department’s work.
Andrew Rushmere
Andy provides front-line support for both our IT and Accounts departments, so there’s rarely a moment where his phone isn’t ringing! He’s also AAT qualified , a globally-recognised finance accreditation.
Virginia Wells
With an encyclopaedic knowledge of every invoice in the company, Ginny ensures every penny is accounted for at Accent. Having previously worked in Cyprus, Ginny traded sun for sums when she moved back to the U.K!
Vidhya Prabagaran
Having originally joined as an Assistant Management Accountant, Vidhya’s expertise in both Budgets & Trading, as well as coding, has seen her take on dual accounting and IT-assistance roles at Accent, making her an indispensable support to Andy.
Lesley Johnson
Despite having gained a Chef’s qualification, Lesley has long-since swapped pasta sheets for spreadsheets as she uses her gift for numbers to supports our sites with their monthly finance audits.
Veerle Mansell
Born in Belgium, Vee came over to England as an au pair in 1996, but her eye for detail and flair for numbers soon saw her moving into an accounting role. Vee works in tandem with Lesley to support our units with their monthly purchasing and bookwork.