Giles Brook is a renowned serial start up CEO, entrepreneur & investor and has been a leading factor behind the success of flag ship challenger brands such as innocent, BEAR, Vita Coco, Bio & Me and Pip & Nut.

Giles was CEO of Vita Coco EMEA for 12 years launching which he launched in Europe over a decade ago and built to £60m in retail sales across the EMEA region. The leading coconut water brand tells one of the biggest global success stories in non-alcoholic drinks over the last decade and floated on the NASDAQ in 2021. Giles has also stepped down as an advisor to the founders and main board.

At the same time as launching coconut water in Europe, Giles was founding partner in Urban Fresh Foods Limited, whose brand, BEAR became the UK’s No.1 fruit snacking brand & No.1 kids lunchbox item. Urban Fresh Foods Limited has appeared twice in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 list. The brand was acquired by Lotus Bakeries in 2015.

Prior to running his own businesses, Giles was Commercial Director & General Manager for UK & Ireland at innocent Drinks Ltd where he spent 4 years helping take the business from £17m to £120m during that time.

Today, Giles is heavily involved in several start-up purpose led businesses across health and wellness, sustainability and technology such as Pip & Nut (Nut Butters), Dalstons (Healthy Soda), Mindful Chef (Recipe Boxes, partially acquired by Nestle), Sir Kensington (condiment brand sold to Unilever in 2018) Edgard & Cooper (Pet), Freja Foods (Collagen/ Bone Broth), Love Cocoa & H!P (Chocolate), Presto (Direct to Consumer Coffee), Neat (sustainable household cleaning), Cheeky Panda (Bamboo sustainable household cleaning), Bio & Me (Gut Health) , Surreal (Cereals), Urban Legend (Healthy Doughnuts), Moody (women’s health app), OBU (female founder investment platform) as examples and already 80% of his portfolio have achieved B Corp certification as businesses who balance profit with purpose and aspire to be a force for good in business and over 60% the businesses are female founded.

Giles’ unrivalled experience in the food and drink industry was recognised by winning the first ever ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award at The Grocer Gold Awards. He was the highest-ranked individual on the list outside of global and multi-national CEOs in the last edition of The Grocer’s ‘Food & Drink Power List’ & No.6 in the recent 2020 Innovation Power List from The Grocer. He is currently on the short list for ‘Investor of the Year’ at Great British Entrepreneur Awards.

Giles is dedicated to helping start-up businesses and regularly takes time out of the office to guide and mentor entrepreneurs and business students whilst life outside work is all about family and triathlon where he races worldwide in Ironman events as well as represents GBR.