Marc Warde, Managing Director

Marc started his career on the Mount Charlotte Thistle Hotels graduate programme - the youngest person ever at that time to be accepted. After this he returned to his home county of Suffolk to work for Greene King and then as Deputy Manager at the now famed Crown and Castle Hotel in Orford.

Marc has managed restaurants, both fine dining and chain (Café Rouge), as well as working as a consultant for a Cambridge based company. In this capacity Marc was privileged to work with and alongside some real ‘foodie’ companies, including Brindisa, Fresh & Wild, Konditor & Cook and Rachel Cater Foods, amongst many others.

Marc then became a Group Manager with the Massarella Catering group, looking after the catering operations at, amongst others, House of Fraser London Stores, Hamleys and Dickens & Jones. After two successful years with Massarella, he was headhunted to start up Crussh Juice bars as Operations Director.

He has since worked for Restaurant Associates, running catering contracts such as  LWT and the Willis Group; Unilever Ventures as Operations Director; and then, prior to founding Couture, with Artizian, an independent contract caterer, first in operations then as Sales Director.

Jonathan Davies, Commercial Director

Jon started his catering career through working as a chef at Café Rouge whilst studying for his politics degree at York University.

Immediately after university, Jonathan was accepted onto Sodexho’s Executive Trainee Scheme, a fast-track graduate programme that involved placements at various operating units as well as internal training courses on accountancy, project management, human resources, sales and marketing.

After four years with Sodexho (now Sodexo), working both as an Operations Manager and at Sodexho’s head office working on strategy & planning, Jonathan joined Elior UK as a Business Analyst, providing research, tools and analysis to aid client retention and the successful gain of new business.

This developed into the role of Strategic Sales Manager and he was heavily involved in the winning and retention of many prestigious accounts, including Kempton Park Racecourse, Bloomberg, J Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Lloyds of London and Marks & Spencer.

Roy Westwood, Operations Director

Roy has excellent client liaison skills and is a real ‘hands on’ operator who loves the ‘nitty gritty’ of the day to day challenges that a business such as our throws at you! Roy has a particularly unflappable style that just gets on with the job...

Roy previously worked as an Operations Manager for Artizian Catering (where he reported into Marc). He looked after many prestigious accounts, including the large catering operation at Ernst & Young. Roy also has extensive commercial experience through working at Café Rouge and Café Uno.

Jonathan Cross F.C.A., Consultant Finance Director

Jon is managing partner of the Everett Group (http://www.everettgroup.co.uk/) and works closely with us as our Financial Director Consultant and oversees our accountancy and payroll functions. Jonathan has been a Chartered Accountant since 1980 and as the Group Managing Partner he has “hands-on” experience of business and people management including all the problems and challenges associated with running a complex business in these legislation driven times.

Caroline Maitland Brain, Consultant Human Resources Director

Caroline works for Couture as our Consultant Human Resources Director, providing us with expert help and advice on recruitment, TUPE issues and staff development & training.

Caroline has with 12 years experience in Human Resources,  having come from a catering background herself is well versed in the challenges of a fast paced growing business, it’s a huge asset to have HR Director who intrinsically understands our business and its challenges-a-plenty. Caroline loves training which is handy as with us she gets to deliver loads of it!

Anne Haywood, Finance Manager

Anne has relocated to join us as our Finance Manager, Anne is the lucky person responsible for the Accounts and Payroll functions and assisting all our managers keeping their accounts in order..

Anne has worked in accounts for over ten years, and around seven years with payroll. Anne’s style is partiucularly organised a place for everything and everything in it place, which comes in handy.