Funkin Cocktails Innovation Forum

To help Funkin, the leading premium cocktail ingredients producer, get on top of the key trends influencing some of the UK’s leading bartenders, and mixologists it held an Innovation Forum bringing up to 20 of the leading names together.

Richard was brought in to not only chair the event, but also ensure key messages, and discussion points that Funkin wanted to cover were brought up during the course of the event.

He also had the task of ensuring all 20 members of the roundtable were given the opportunity to share their thoughts.

Philippa Browning, director of Lime PR that organised the event for Funkin, said of Richard’s performance:

“We hired Richard to mediate a drinks trends forum hosted by cocktail experts Funkin in July. Attended by 20 of the leading London bartenders and drinks consultants, Richard had the task of chairing the debate ensuring we were able to cover a wide range of topics covering the key trends in the cocktail and bar scene in what was a restricted period of time.

“He not only led the debate with good humour and generated great discussion, he was able to encourage all participants to get involved. 

“As an experienced and respected business editor I would very much recommend working with Richard on future similar events as he able to combine excellent chairing skills with the insights of a business journalist.”


JF HILLEBRAND CONFERENCE AT VINEXPO 2015

 

Richard was invited by world leading logistics company, JF Hillebrand, to chair its first ever conference at Vinexpo 2015, the global wine fair held every two years in Bordeaux. 

The conference was held to look at the opportunities for international wine producers in distributing and selling wine in China and the role a logistics partner like JF Hillebrand could play in making that happen.

This high profile conference was the first time Viinexpo had opened up its contents programme to the wine service sector and it attracted a large audience.

Richard's role was to not only facilitate the conference, but to work with the different speakers before the event to determine what different angles they would take in order to lead them through a wide ranging debate.

Cindy Grimaud, marketing and communications manager for JF Hillebrand France, said: 

"Richard chaired our Vinexpo conference with the utmost professionalism. He prepared every theme with each speaker individually, understanding their expertise and different fields and looking for interaction between speakers, audience and him as a chairman. He is very experienced and it was a pleasure to work with him."