Meet Simon Denton

Founder, White Label Kitchen · Helping food businesses hold their margin without losing their integrity

Twenty-five years in professional kitchens — the first half earning the craft, the second leading it. I cooked my way from head chef in two-rosette country-house hotels to culinary director of one of London's best-known event caterers. Somewhere on that road the food on the plate stopped being the only thing holding my attention. The business holding it up did too.

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By the time I reached director level I'd seen the pattern from every angle — the fine-dining room, the contract kitchen, the P&L. More centralised, more data-led, more inclined to push the same safe, profitable options at everyone. I kept coming back to the food I'd come up on: properly sourced, properly made, the good stuff that used to be ordinary. And to a straightforward conviction — no good reason it couldn't reach more people than it did.

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Too often things carry on simply because that's how they've always been done. There are practical ways to do it differently — production closer to local communities, shorter supply chains, less waste. The question is never whether it's a nice idea. It's how you make it work in practice.

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That's why I founded WLK Projects. The work runs two ways now, and each feeds the other. As a consultant, I help owners, communities and farmers shorten supply chains, sharpen margins, develop concepts and reconnect their operations to the people they serve. As a chef, I still do the hands-on work — building kitchens, writing menus, steadying teams, holding standards on the ground.

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I've sourced from the field and handed back the numbers. The craft and the P&L were never a trade-off; done properly, each pays for the other.

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What hasn't moved is simpler than any of it. I like watching people gather round good food, and everything I build is in service of that.