Our Team
Emma Schwarz, Founder
Emma has always been a foodie. She is also a retail merchant through and through. First, she climbed the ranks of Marks and Spencer plc, then became an Interior Designer, she then found herself in retail again and helped found a premium furniture brand which bought Sofa Workshop from MFI. Next she became a mother of three, then in 2008 she founded The Rare Brand Market Ltd. Emma is about to create her own physical retail food chain by opening her first site, The Barn, Little London in Chichester, West Sussex. In her spare time she is Chairperson of Slow Food Sussex, Non-Executive Board Director of food waste charity UK Harvest and a keen food writer, and she loves to run, do yoga and meditate.
Kate Tulett, Business Development Director
Kate’s background is solely retail. Having grown up working in and eventually running her family floral and interiors business (where she first met Emma!), Kate has spent the last ten years working for American-owned retailer TJX Europe, earning a place on their Buying and Merchandising Graduate Scheme, moving on to various roles across their nationwide store network and head office. More recently in the Homesense brand division’s Store Operations, she worked closely with their central strategic team as they grew the chain from 30 to 70+ stores.
Lou Galbraith, Executive Assistant to the Founder
Lou is a cordon bleu cook, food obsessed and huge advocate of artisan and small batch produce. She is also a great organiser and project manager. Along with running restaurants Lou has also run private estates and households.
Emma Webley, Head Office Manager
Emma is a passionate environmentalist having most recently spearheaded the development of the Goodwood Estate Sustainability Education Centre for the Goodwood Education Trust. Emma also comes with experience work for projects for Tuppenny Barn Community Small Holding and the Sustainable Restaurant Association. Emma supports our Head Office Brand Strategy with our Founder’s EA.
Advisory Board Directors
Katie Vanneck-Smith
Katie Vanneck-Smith is CEO of Hearst UK. She has a wealth of experience innovating in the media industry, having worked for both large-scale corporations and more recently launching a successful startup. Her Hearst role started in December 2022.
Prior to this she co-founded Tortoise Media, a global media outlet. Previously she was President and Chief Customer Officer of Dow Jones, where she helped build and lead The Wall Street Journal’s successful online membership-based business.
Katie has also held senior roles at The Telegraph Media Group and The Times. As Chief Marketing Officer at The Times, Katie led the architecture of the newspaper’s early move to paid digital subscriptions and was responsible for creating the UK’s first news membership brand, Times+.
Sarah Moore
Sarah Moore is best known as a prominent BBC TV presenter, hosting the show Money for Nothing. The series follows disposed items being transformed into desirable products, which then get put up for sale.
Sarah is currently pursuing new TV opportunities and making a name for herself as a serial Sustainability focussed household name.
Jamie Barratt
Jamie’s 20 year career included senior managing director roles as Board Director at Nomura bank and trading positions in the fixed income trading division of Credit Suisse. He now mentors, invests and has board director and advisory positions for a number of SMEs specialising in the non cyclical sectors: Spark Media Partners Ltd, Like a Shot Ltd media, Radiant Ltd, Currency Stream Ltd and Sevenoaks Private GP Ltd. Jamie has helped some 15 companies set up under the EIS scheme. He also manages investments in alternative assets and property development in his family company Agenda Capital Partners Ltd.
Oliver Black
Director of Bright Horizons, former MD of My Family Care and a non-executive director at Tinies and Stature PR, Oliver started his career at P&G as a brand manager with Oil of Olay and was part of the team that introduced P&G’s trailblazing maternity support programme. He was the first person in the UK to move the childcare market online launching Tinies in 2000 which went on to become the UK’s largest supplier of childcare and nursery staff. My Family Care was founded in 2006 with support from IBM’s work/life balance fund and established itself as the leading provider of Work+Family solutions for many of the UK’s best known employers. The service has received numerous awards including the Daily Telegraph CPP Trailblazers award, BT Business, Microsoft – The People Business awards, Smarta 100, HSBC Start Up Stars. In 2019 My Family Care and Tinies was sold to Bright Horizons. In his spare time Oliver is a proud father of three young children, which some describe as “living the brand” and has an unhealthy obsession with endurance races and sport.
Antonia Jamison
Antonia is helping out on strategy advice, she brings a proven track record in successful brand creation, growth and delivering return on investment gleaned through her experience of being a business owner and managing investments on behalf of family offices. She began her career in private equity running an early stage investment portfolio for a family office, she left to help run her family farm in West Sussex. She is passionate about gin and was part of the founding board team at Sipsmith. Antonia currently provides brand strategy advice on behalf of family offices and founders. She is currently a co-founder of Lockstep Capital Partners and has directorship roles with OTO cbd, Hattingley Valley English Sparkling, Fishers Gin, Unrooted Drinks and The Cornish Geothermal Distillery.
Bruce Langlands
Bruce was always destined to have a career in foods being born into a fishing community in Scotland where quality and customer service was key. To follow his passion for retail he joined M&S because they were leading the way in food innovation. Now with over 30 years’ experience within the food industry and latterly as a Director on the boards of two of the world’s best-known, best-loved brands, Harrods and Selfridges, Bruce has established himself as a highly commercial business leader with a hands-on approach. His passion is supporting artisan producers and in 2019 was one of 20 food industry experts in the UK to be awarded the title of Food Icon by Speciality Food. In addition he is the Ambassador for the Scottish Retail Food and Drink Awards, a member of The Guild of Fine Food, the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts and the Academy of Chocolate.
Sam Norman
Sam spent 20 years as an Oil Trader, all of which involved working for BP in London. He is in the process of handing over his role at BP to depart in 2021. Sam is currently a Director of Dirty Bones restaurant group and a Co-Founder of Hard Yards, a nascent investment company based in Winchester.
Will Becker
Will is an experienced advertising and tech business builder who has founded four highly profitable tech companies. He founded and led Advertising.com Europe through to sale to AOL Time Warner, and co-founded leading fintech TotallyMoney.
Will is currently Non-Exec Chair of TotallyMoney, alongside tech and greentech investing and other NED roles.
Yvonne Thomson
Founder of UK Harvest, Yvonne is a highly experienced social, economic and physical regeneration specialist, qualified in community education and gaining a post graduate in Housing studies form Stirling University and Master of Philosophy in Urban Policy. She has worked tirelessly on behalf of those who are socially excluded and have no voice, opportunity or choice in life. She has worked in the public, voluntary and private sectors.
Yvonne believes that only through joint working and alliance that we will solve food poverty in the UK.