My name is Olly Smith. I’ve spent the last two decades leading award winning culinary teams for some of the world’s most admired food brands. I also founded Meryl Streep’s local grocery store.
I’m currently available for interesting conversations.
My life is shared between the Cotswolds (UK) and Los Angeles, though the last ten years I have called New York home. Happy dual citizen of the UK and USA.
Work has so far been a collection of brilliant opportunities, each chapter teaching me something new and significant, in turn shaping my food philosophy.
Daylesford Organic , where I worked as a chef and developer in my twenties, showed me the value of doing things beautifully. My first stint at Pret was in the UK where as a developer I learned that scale doesn’t have to mean compromise. As Head of Food at Nando’s I learned the importance of bringing each and every member of the business along for the journey. My second stint at Pret was as VP Food for the US business, where i really learned to understand food and customers, observer and alien, everything thrown into question, and there can be no better place to do that than a food obsessed metropolis like NYC.
How my experience has equipped me to consult with other food and drink business, I have laid out here.
Strategy
Defining proposition, Driving consistency, Determining the right amount of local autonomy … A few of the challenges I’ve been tasked with creating strategy for, all of them requiring cultural transformation. That scale of challenge, genuinely cross functional, excites me, as does the generating the thinking to support it.
Innovation
Identifying opportunity, building teams, identifying suppliers, concept development, commercialisation, winning prizes. I’ve managed the end to end delivery of food and drinks development in food-to-go, restaurant and retail businesses, fancy and less so. My own developments have won awards, so too have the businesses i have worked with.
Inspiration
Never short of an idea, I love getting people hungry. Good working knowledge of how and where to eat well in London, New York, Los Angeles,Turin, Rome, Florence, Milan and Puglia. Often found reorganising 1500 cookbooks and a treasured collection of Gourmet magazines. Cyncial of big data. I am good at igniting the imagination when food is in question.
Vince Gwilliam, Bridgepoint Capital following the sale of Pret to JAB Holdings in 2018.
“ There was always a joy about your love of food and a commitment to always do the right thing.”
Julia Stevens, DOMINO Magazine on Westerlind Pantry in 2021
