John Stapleton

John Stapleton is an entrepreneur, business thought leader, CEO and Board Director. He has set up three successful consumer branded businesses and has over 25 years’ experience in creating and building brands in the FMCG sector in both the UK and the USA.

John actively manages a Non-Executive Director portfolio and consults to the food and beverage industry. He provides advice, guidance and mentoring to a variety of entrepreneurs and owner-CEOs of growth businesses in the FMCG sector. John solves the typical problems and challenges that brand owners encounter in this sector in scaling and growing their businesses. Areas of specialisation include: sourcing appropriate growth funding at acceptable terms; developing and implementing clear and focused growth strategies; attracting key staff, developing a proactive company culture and building effective teams; effectively delivering sales and distribution initiatives targeting major High St Retailers; generating and implementing marketing campaigns; delivering business performance improvement; rebranding and communicating brand values to target consumers.

John is an expert at creating and growing new and innovative consumer-focused products and categories and has worked closely with Private Equity partners to support rapid growth in his businesses. John has wide-ranging experience in both operational management and strategic leadership roles and has operated as a board director for over 20 years.

In 1987 John co-founded the New Covent Garden Soup Co Ltd., which pioneered and grew the fresh soup category in the UK. In 1998 he co-founded Glencoe Foods Inc., bringing the fresh soup concept to the United States. On returning to Europe, John established a consumer branded food consultancy and has worked with a number of clients across the FMCG sector in the UK, US and Europe. He has worked with a wide range of companies including large corporations as well as numerous start-up and growth-phase businesses. In 2005, John co-founded Little Dish which supplies fresh, healthy, natural and convenient meals to children over 1 year. Little Dish created and established the chilled toddler food category, has full national UK High Street retailer distribution and is the dominant brand in chilled toddler food (73% market share).