What happens when you take senior chefs out of their kitchens and ask them to rethink food from first principles?
Last week we hosted Cohort 6 of the Forward Programme with @compassgroupuki led by @marcuswareing .
Two days in Devon:
– Foraging
– Fermentation
– Reframing food waste
– Cooking without habit, but with intent
But this isn’t about techniques.
It’s about changing how chefs think about food as a system.
Every cohort is different. The brief evolves. The expectations rise. And so the programme evolves with it, built collaboratively with the Compass team.
What I find most interesting isn’t just the creativity in the room (although that’s always there).
It’s the moment chefs start to connect:
– curiosity with structure
– creativity with constraint
– ideas with application
Because the real challenge isn’t making something exciting in a workshop.
It’s:
Can this thinking scale?
Can it translate back into a business like Compass?
Can it make a difference at volume?
That’s the lens we apply to everything we do.
And when that clicks — you don’t just get better dishes.
You get better decision-making and seeing that thinking carry back into the business — that’s the most satisfying part.
That’s where the impact is
