Maeve Webster

Founder and president of Menu Matters

Maeve Webster is the founder and president of Menu Matters, the food and beverage consultancy she launched in 2015 to cut through the industry’s flood of data and find the why behind consumer behaviour. She built the firm to be the source she felt was missing, one willing to step back and ask what all the available information was really saying about consumers, culture and the future of food.

Her perspective is grounded in a rare blend of hands-on and analytical experience: a Le Cordon Bleu culinary degree, an MBA, and four years owning an award-winning café, paired with a double degree in political science and history and an early career in theater. Together they shape an approach that is rigorous, human and built for storytelling, whether on stage or in a data report.

Across more than two decades, Maeve has advised manufacturers, operators, commodity boards and agencies, and she is most often invited to speak not about what’s trending but about what’s coming and what it means for a given audience. She has earned the Ogilvy Award for Research & Communication Innovation, serves on the Bayer and HZPC Culinary Councils, co-hosts Menu Matters’ podcast, The Mess Hall, and has been quoted as a food-industry expert by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR and the BBC.

Speaker