Panel Talk: The Price is Tight

Running a small food or drink brand has always been hard. But the past five years have compressed a decade's worth of external shocks into a single operating environment - a global pandemic, a cost of living crisis, double-digit food inflation, a post-Brexit trading landscape still finding its shape, and a commodity market that has tested the resilience of even the best-capitalised businesses.

For founders with lean teams and tight margins, the combination has been extremely difficult. This panel brings together founders who have kept their brands moving through that period - not by insulating themselves from the pressures, but by making better decisions under them. The conversation creates space for the honest, cross-disciplinary reflection that founders can draw key learnings and insights from. What have these founders actually done? What has worked, what hasn't, and what do they wish someone had told them earlier?

Topics the panelists will be covering:

• Setting the Scene: What Has the Past Few Years Actually Felt Like?
• Supply Chain: Building Resilience Without Buying It
• Commodity Prices, Input Costs & Margin Management
• The Political Landscape: What Do Policy Changes Actually Mean?
• Inflation, Consumer Behaviour & the Cost of Living Squeeze

About the speakers:

Bonnie Chung - Founder, Author & Start Up Agony

Bonnie is a food entrepreneur, writer and mentor with over a decade of experience building, scaling and exiting a food brand from scratch, She founded Miso Tasty in 2011, growing it into an internationally distributed brand across retail, food service and wholesale before it was acquired by William Jackson Food Group in 2023. The brand won three Great Taste Awards in 2025 and the Golden Fork Award from the Guild of Fine Foods, and is now stocked in over 5,000 stores globally. Bonnie has published three cookery books and written for Food & Wine, Guardian Feast, The Independent and Waitrose Food Magazine. Today she mentors food founders through coaching that blends business advisory with personal leadership.

Alexander Emmanuel-Jones - Commercial Director, The Black Farmer

Alexander represents the next generation of The Black Farmer, building on his father’s legacy while shaping its future. Alexander oversees innovation, partnerships, The Black Farmer's London farm shops and lead export growth. The Black Farmer are seeking premium, sustainable food and drink brands with bold flavour, strong values and a clear, authentic story.

Tom Palmer - Founder, Yep Kitchen

After living in China for a decade, Tom became so obsessed with Sichuan food that it led him to build his own chilli oil factory. Tom launched Yep Kitchen to bring authentic Sichuan flavours to the UK. Since then, he has scaled from a shared kitchen to a custom-made factory, improving gross margins alongside the rising costs of raw materials, imports, and labour without passing a penny on to customers.

Nivi Jasa - Founder, I AM NUT OK

Nivi is the founder of I AM NUT OK, a vegan cheese company based in Hackney Wick, and Third Culture Deli, a plant-based café in Hackney. Born in Italy to Albanian parents, his third culture background shapes everything he builds - food that is culturally rooted, brand-led and commercially serious. With over a decade in graphic design and brand building across startups and scale-ups, Nivi brings a rare dual perspective of half creative director and half operator. I AM NUT OK has grown from market stalls to national retail such as Ocado, Whole Foods and Planet Organic, and over 300 independent stockists. Third Culture Deli extends the same philosophy on a smaller scale, that lean operations aren't a constraint on creativity, they're a forcing function for it.

‍

About these Panel Talks:

Join us for some lively discussion about the highs and lows of making it in the food business world.

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

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

Ticket includes access to the panel talk, networking and post-panel food and drink.

Please note that this is an in-person event.

‍