Aged just 12, Louise Bennett flew (chaperoned in those days) to stay with friends of friends in France and so her love of all things French, including of course their food, blossomed. She went on to visit many parts of France and was lucky enough to blend her love of travel with her first job after graduating from university with a degree in Food Studies. She got her first professional break when quickly offered a Technologist post at a UK food business specialising in organic baby food. Here she fine-tuned her skills working with partners in the UK and Europe and soon became responsible for the company’s dry cereal products in Spain. This was a fabulous opportunity and was soon assigned a dedicated Spanish tutor to get her up to speed in leading meetings abroad.

Louise became adept at auditing food manufacturers as well as raw material suppliers to check both quality and legal organic standards. From here she moved to the Southwest of England to become Assistant Quality Manager at a leading meat and pastry products company based in Cornwall. Perhaps not surprisingly, Cornish pasties are no longer top of her favourite foods, but working with national supermarkets proved challenging – a task she relished. The third sector that Louie has experience working in is the ice cream sector developing ice cream products for a range of well-known brands and supermarkets. Whilst working to a brief was the primary focus, Louise was able to use her creative gene in developing some memorable flavour combinations.

Since leaving the food industry, Louise has run her own business delivering Food Safety qualifications and cookery sessions with all ages and worked in many children’s centres encouraging parents to cook with their children. Louise is passionate about everybody having the education and knowledge to be able to cook. This led her to study for a teaching qualification and gained her PGSCE and since then has been teaching teenagers in Plymouth.

Aside from her professional life, Louise’s happy place is in her garden attempting to learn names of flowers, on a paddle-boarding exploring the local area or curled up in a chair crocheting. Louise has recently had a trip to America with her daughter and has re-ignited her love of travelling and has great plans to cross off more exciting countries in the world. She has already crossed off eating tagines in Morocco, oscypek in Poland, sardines in Portugal and speculoos in Belgium to name a few.

The most important part of Louise’s life and most proudest achievement is being Mum to her teenage daughter and watching her develop into a confident and beautiful human being.