Founder Q&A: Bleecker Burger & Pizza Pilgrims

At these talks, the UK's leading voices will be sharing their stories about how they built their food businesses, and some of the valuable lessons they learned along the way.

This is an open session for aspiring food founders where we encourage participants to get involved, ask questions and apply ideas to their own projects and businesses.

Please note that this is an in-person event.

For this Q&A, we will be learning from Thom Elliot, founder of Pizza Pilgrims, and Zan Kaufman, founder of Bleeker Burger.

Pizza Pilgrims was founded in 2011 by brothers Thom and James, having embarked on a 6-week "Pizza Pilgrimage" throughout Italy. They sold their first pizza on Berwick Street Market in Soho in 2012, going on to trade at a number of events and markets. Their first bricks and mortar site opened in 2013, and now Pizza Pilgrims operate 22 sites throughout the UK.

Bleeker Burger was founded by Zan Kaufman after tasting the best burger she'd ever eaten in New York. Leaving a previous career in corporate law behind, Zan moved to London and started Bleeker in 2012, trading with KERB from a food truck. After many years of hard work in the truck, Bleeker opened their first permanent spot in 2015, a burger kiosk in Old Spitalfields Market. Today, Bleeker also operates sites in Victoria, Westfield, and the Bloomberg Arcade and along the way has won several accolades as the best burger in London.