Fairway are delighted to announce the appointment of Coral Rose as our new Chief Executive Officer.
Coral has joined our organisation on September 1st, replacing Chris Binge who has held the CEO role since 2001.
Coral, who has 30 years’ experience in the foodservice sector, joins us from Country Range Group where she has held the position of Managing Director since 2013, having joined CRG in 2010 as the groups marketing and project manager.
Previous to that, she ran her own consultancy, Foodservice Marketing Solutions and held senior marketing roles with Brakes and Premier Foods.
“I have enjoyed my time as MD of CRG and the members have been great to work with. I am leaving on good terms as I wanted a new challenge. I am delighted to join Fairway and help the members grow their businesses profitably.
I understand the ethos of Fairway Foodservice and I think I will be able to bring some different insights to the business and keep things progressing to be ready for changes which we will inevitably have to contend with our the next few years”
Our departing chief executive Chris Binge added: ‘“I have been looking to retire for about 18 months. Our internal candidate Steve Jeavons (purchasing director) decided not to take the CEO role as he is looking to retire in a few years himself, and so we went through a process of over 200 applicants.
We had a specific template of the skills and knowledge and experience we wanted, because foodservice is a different environment to retail, and a member buying group is a different organisation to other types of business because we have 20 independent-minded and entrepreneurial companies. The board was unanimous. Coral was outstanding. With her experience and qualifications, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a more suitable candidate.
The key thing for a chief executive is to be always thinking about what’s coming in a year’s time, what’s coming in three years’ time, what’s coming in five years’ time, and get businesses ready for that, and Coral’s got that vision.”
Chris will become chairman of Erudus, a source of allergy, nutritional and technical product data. His role will not be hands-on; it will be more strategic and will be about the direction of the business.
