QSR Media Conference & Awards 2023 powered by Red Bull

Brett joined El Jannah in early 2020 to partner with the founders in making the brand a strong national QSR player. Having transformed the brand, store formats and design, customer experience, technologies, governance and built a strong team, El Jannah is now growing locations across NSW, VIC and ACT and will look to expand significantly over the coming years across Australia. In 2022 the brand was recognised as QSR Multi Restaurant of the Year at the QSR Media Awards.

Brett was previously the Group CEO of Craveable Brands, leaving once he completed a successful sale from Archer Capital to PAG. Brett led the turnaround and transformation of the business, growing the network footprint domestically and internationally, significantly increasing network sales, franchisee profits, and group profitability.

Prior to this, he has held senior executive roles at the Star Entertainment Group, News Corporation, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Brett is a chartered accountant and company director, is married with 3 children, and loves surfing and running.

Carlos Cacho is Chief Economist for Jarden in Australia. Prior to joining Jarden, Carlos spent three years as Australian Economist at UBS Australia, and previously five years at Colonial First State Global Asset Management.

Carlos holds a Bachelor of Economics, as well as a First Class Honours in Economics from the University of New South Wales. 

Simon-Kucher is a global consultancy firm with over 2,000 employees in 30+ countries focused on unlocking better growth that drives measurable revenue and profit for their clients. Mitchell Taylor is a Partner based out of Simon-Kucher’s Sydney office. He leads the Consumer Goods and Retail practice within Australia, and the Restaurant practice across APAC. He specialises at working with clients in the Restaurant space to use levers like Pricing, Menu, Promotions and Customer Management to drive long-term measurable growth.

Josh Ludski leads River Capital’s Strategic Investments business which takes a long-term view to investing in great Australian businesses (both private and listed). River Capital manages approximately $1B on behalf of Australian high net worth and family office investors. Josh is a non-executive director of portfolio companies The Cheesecake Shop, Cannatrek and Lightning Broadband. Prior to River Capital, Joshua advised some of Australia’s largest businesses as a strategy consultant for global management consultancy, Bain & Company, where he focused on consumer product and retail business, as well as private equity. Joshua holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce from Monash University.   

Engaging and captivating, Therese inspires audiences to think less and do more. With a warm presence and relatable style, she passionately speaks on various topics, including driving high engagement from your Franchise network, effectve multi-site leadership, transforming organizational culture, how decision fatigue and cognitive load, impact leadership effectiveness, and the power of working with founders. Therese has 20+ years experience in the QSR industry and is currently the CEO of Mad Mex.

Tom joined Barrenjoey in July 2021. He has over 18 years of buy and sell-side experience. Prior to Barrenjoey, Tom was an investment analyst at Firetrail Investments, and spent 11 years at Morgan Stanley including as Head of Consumer Research. Tom ranked #2 and #3 in the 2022 Peter Lee survey in the Food & Bev and Retail sectors, respectively, in both the Top 20 and All Investors segments.

Karen is a senior retail and consumer executive who has worked in some of Australia’s most iconic retail brands: Woolworths, BIG W, Caltex (now Ampol) and Rebel Sport. Karen has been a CFO, COO, GM of Strategy, Transformation and Replenishment and is now the Group CEO of Australia’s largest born and bred quick service restaurant group, Craveable Brands, who operate around 600 Red Rooster, Oporto, Chicken Treat and Chargrill Charlie’s restaurants. Karen is a CEW and ARA member, and is passionate about retail, people and diversity.

Shane has over 25 years’ experience in managing and driving growth for multiple MNC food brands across ANZ, Asia, Middle East & Africa. With taste, food, innovation, and multi-regional development at the heart of his career, Shane joined Subway® in 2022 and has quickly focused on driving brand growth and partner returns to ensure Subway® is set for the future.

Shane has multi-regional experience across commercial, operations and product development within the packaging, flavour and ingredient companies across multiple industries including QSR, retail and commercial. Having previously held senior leadership roles in two of Asia Pacific and ANZ’s major QSR food and packaging companies, Kerry Taste & Nutrition and Detmold Packaging, he is no stranger to change and growth.

The food industry has been at the heart of his career for many years and will continue to be with Subway®.

With a career spanning 22 years in the media industry, Danielle is dedicated to growing partnerships and delivering solutions that are impactful and memorable. She started her career during the humble beginnings of Nova Entertainment back in 2002 and has invested 15 years into the audio industry working both in Australia and Canada across key accounts and agency groups. A 3-year stint in the Broadcast world led Danielle to follow her passion for digital media where she was the founding Industry Lead across Tech, Telco, Media and Entertainment verticals at TikTok AUNZ.

Thriving in this fast paced global tech start-up, enabled Danielle to weave her expertise across global key accounts like Canva, Linktree, Apple, Samsung, Dell and Vodafone. Recently promoted to lead the sales team across all Consumer and Tech brands, Danielle continues to focus on inspiring creativity and bringing joy to our communities each and every day.

Emma is a Consulting Leader focusing on technology transformation in KPMG Australia, particularly within the Retail and Food Services Industry.

Prior to KPMG, Emma worked with Genpact as the Australian Transformation Lead, focusing on large scale retail and consumer goods digital transformations.

Emma also previously worked for McDonald’s for 26 years, spanning roles from working in Restaurant Operations through to Finance and Technology leadership roles. This included her role as the technology business partner for the then Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa (APMEA) region.

Ross is a Partner in KPMG Australia’s Cyber Security Practice with a focus on corporate businesses. He brings over 17 years of experience working in both professional services and operational roles, across the UK, Europe, Middle East and Australia.

He works with organisations to first identify the assets that require protection and the possible threat actors (attackers) who may target them, their motives and objectives. With this understanding Ross helps organisations to build the correct defensive cyber security and technical controls to best manage these threats and protect the business.

Ross maintains a deep technical interest in cyber and technology and enjoys working with clients to think about future opportunities, threats and how best to approach them.

Sanjev is the Director of Foodservice at Circana, the leading foodservice market research company. In this role, he supports Circana’s clients and partners as an Industry Adviser. In addition to his work at Circana, he has over 10 years of market research experience in other sectors including social services, travel, technology, and FMCG.

Olivia has worked in marketing for over 20 years, primarily within FMCG working with brands such as Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, and Thank You. Her career has taken her from the UK to Australia and New Zealand, as well as working across ASEAN.

Olivia made the move to Krispy Kreme and the QSR sector 3 years ago and hasn’t looked back. She loves the fast-paced nature of a daily fresh product, owning your own retail stores helps drive connectively to our consumer and the brand. With a 10 year plus partnership with 7E and recent expansion into BP and Woolworths Aus / Progressive NZ, every day is different and brings a new challenge.