With 25 years of combined hospitality experience it means we get it.
Griff and Ed started Friska a quick service restaurant chain back in 2009 (pictured here on our first day). With a dream to scale the brand into a national chain. The DNA for the brand even as long ago as 2009 was great food, coffee and strong ethics. This was the ESG agenda before it had a name. For us this meant paying pensions before we had to, paying above the minimum regardless of age, providing a medical cash plan to every member of the team, sourcing high welfare meat, championing a strong plant based menu range, buying all our electricity from renewable sources, essentially trying to make the minimum impact on the planet as we grew. The world has moved on and these initiatives that we and many other forward looking companies in our sector were already doing have thankfully become standard practice.
We were recognised by the Observer as winner of the best ethical restaurant in 2013, shortlisted in the Guardian Sustainable business awards and made a 3 star sustainability champion in the 2015 by the SRA. We know the world moves on, and this is what has happened. We are no longer involved in the Friska brand and the big challenge facing the sector, country and the world is the threat to our way of live from climate change, caused by global greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon Dioxide and equivalents (Co2e) output need to be captured more effectively in companies trading performance. We as a sector have a responsibility to lead from the front. We collectively have millions of customers to whom we engage with and eating out is a way of life. However, expectations on peoples’ favourite hospitality brands are going to increase knowing around mitigating Co2e emissions and showing what is being done proactively to minimise this impact. We believe this is going to be a key area of competition and important to staff & customer retention, accessing the best property deals, raising investment and broader shareholder & stakeholder relations.
Moving on from Friska in 2021, Griff and Ed are still active in the hospitality sector, running Double Puc Cafe a two store chain. Because of this we had an opportunity, despite our size, to look at our own operations and begin to map, track and offset our own carbon footprint. This led us to work on developing Supplir.io to help other brands in hospitality do the same. We see that we have the opportunity to unlock the power of AI and automation to help make this process dynamic, time efficient and crucially, embedded into day to day operations and financial performance, not a static reporting process. The world is changing and Supplir.io is the solution to get ahead. Build back stronger and greener.
Meet the Team
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Griff Holland
Co-Founder, Product & Operations
Griff is Co-founder of Supplir.io. Co-founding Friska in 2009, Griff has focused on building the brand (customer & employer) and operational aspects of Friska as it rapidly grew. He led the way in creating best-in-sector recruitment, training and employee culture whilst staff numbers climbed from 8 to 100+.
In Supplir, Griff leverages his network of industry figures and takes the lead on developing the produce to ensure its focused on the needs of our hospitality clients and also takes the lead on the operations.
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Ed Brown
Co-Founder, Finance & Commercial
Ed is co-founder of Supplir.io. 12 years experience in leading on the commercial side of Friska the chain he helped co-found back in 2009.
Instrumental in raising over $5m in funding through various rounds. Ed has experience of technology, originally scoping out, then project managing the bespoke EPR system which their hospitality business relies on for all aspects of its operations.
In Supplir, Ed takes the lead on the financial and commercial side of the company. Working closely with the technical development of the platform and the operations.
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Gabor Ferencz
Founding CTO
Gabor has worked with Griff & Ed for 10 years. Gabor developed the original ERP system which they used to run their hospitality brand.
After graduating from UWE with a degree in Computing for real time systems Gabor has worked for large corporates as well as small entrepreneurial companies both directly and as clients.
He is experienced in leading teams of talented front and back end developers. Gabor has built complex systems and websites using AWS, Azure, .net, Vue.js, Umbraco and utilised principals of DevOps extensively in his projects.
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