Booker Wholesale has appointed Neville Irani as managing director for foodservice and SME, in a role that will see him sit on the executive team and report into group chief executive Andrew Yaxley.
Irani will begin the job in the spring and joins from Brakes where he was in the position of director of independent foodservice. At Booker, he will now be responsible for leading and growing the business’ foodservice and catering arm in the UK.
Read more: Booker retail sales fall
Yaxley said: “I’m delighted that Nev will be joining the Booker team, bringing with him extensive leadership experience across multiple sectors, including food service, retail and customer service. We are well positioned to support our customers across the hospitality space, and under Nev’s guidance we’ll continue to deliver for our customers, exploring new opportunities and working closely with them to ensure they can get everything they need from us a wholesaler.”
Responding about the performance of a recent trading update, Tesco (Booker’’s owner) chief executive Ken Murphy said: “The underlying performance of our core catering and retail businesses were really strong. We also obviously saw the ending of a large national account, which impacted retail sales, but in real terms, I’m really pleased with Booker’s performance.”
