UK Based AI Food Tech Company Spoon Guru Expands Its Leadership Team with Five New Hires

London-based AI food technology start-up Spoon Guru is strengthening its leadership team ahead of the revised HFSS legislation coming into force in October 2022. Hires include a newly created Head of Health and Sustainability role alongside senior recruits across marketing, sales and strategic counsel.

As a Registered Associate Nutritionist with the AfN, Johanna Bolinder has joined Spoon Guru’s team as the Head of Health and Sustainability. Johanna will focus on providing expert guidance on a broad range of nutritional issues to build long term value including leveraging her deep understanding of scientific/regulatory affairs and consumer and sustainability trends.

Markus Stripf, Co-Founder and CPMO, comments: “Johanna has vast experience working on business critical product change projects and will play an integral role in the business as we move towards making a positive difference at scale to the way we sell and buy food. Johanna’s passion about food and driving better health for people and the planet through sustainable food choices makes her a perfect fit for Spoon Guru and supporting our partners ahead of the HFSS legislation changes next year. “

Johanna adds: “To truly drive lasting change, retailers need to use the technology and tools available to them to help remove friction from food search and discovery. Shoppers want to be better educated about the health and nutrition of the food they buy, but research has found that they put retailers at the very bottom of the list of places they go to for this information. That, in itself, presents a very big opportunity for differentiation in the grocery space”.

Additional new hires at Spoon Guru include Shruti Chawla as Vice President of Marketing, Justin Yaxley as EMEA Vice President of Sales, Trusha Pandya as Head of Sales and Vice President Americas and Nicola Davis, Vice President Customer Success.

Shruti Chawla is an experienced marketing leader who has built a decade-long career working across the B2C & B2B space at both global enterprise technology companies and startups. Her passion for technology has proven to help her scale businesses in various verticals into successful and profitable organisations.

Justin Yaxley has worked for companies such as Unilever, Diageo, and Google. Justin will be bringing a wealth of experience in helping CPG and retailers to adopt modernising sales technologies.

Trusha Pandya‘s 15+ years of experience with top consulting firms, leading software providers in retail operations and store transformation have made her a strategy-focused sales and operations expert. She will focus on combining exceptional relationship building skills with a diversified background in all aspects of sales, logistics, product management and operations in domestic and international markets.

Nicola Davis has worked with grocery retailers around the globe for the last 20 years specialising in supporting clients to leverage data to drive customer-centric experiences with a strategic focus across all channels. Nicola will bring vast knowledge of customer insight analysis, personalisation, and driving value from customer data.  Leading the Customer Success team at Spoon Guru, Nicola will be helping clients to achieve the maximum value from Spoon Guru’s services alongside creating strategic digital customer experiences.

Markus Stripf summarised: “These new additions to Spoon Guru’s team will support the AI technology brand ahead of the HFSS legislation changes. The new team will also be invaluable while the business continues to focus on creating a healthier and sustainable shopping experience and enabling grocery retailers to help their shoppers eat healthier, sustainably and more consciously, at scale. Our goal is to accommodate personal dietary needs and various lifestyle goals among the end consumer while ultimately adding value to our partners’ businesses and increasing revenue potential through intelligent commerce.”