MYA Consulting LTD

24/12/2025

The MYA Awards 2025 🏆

Yesterday we celebrated another fantastic year at MYA, with the team at the core of our success! 2025 has been a year of huge change and immense progress, and this is down to all of our exemplar people!

Special recognition to:

Max Curd - winner of the 2025 CEO's Award: Given to the individual who has made a significant contribution to the company and its direction during the year

Benjamin Donaldson - winner of the 2025 Mark Crowson Award: for ‘Grasping the Nettle’ and helping the company to navigate an adverse position through excellent problem solving and application

Martha Titcombe - winner ot the 2025 Exceptional Creativity Award: Given to an individual who has demonstrated exceptional creativity that has tangibly changed the direction of the company

Anthony Erhirhi - winner of the 2025 Outstanding Contribution Award: Voted by colleagues for the individual who has made the greatest impact to the company over 2025

Huge congratulations to you all - you represent MYA impeccably.

Wishing everyone a safe, healthy and happy festive period.

📍 The Royal Horseguards Hotel

20/12/2025

Wishing all of our clients, colleagues, friends and families a safe and happy festive period. Here's a look at a digital version of MYA's 2025 Christmas Card - Happy Holidays to you all, see you in 2026! 🎄

[ 🔈 Sound on!]

18/12/2025

Supporting Hastings Foodbank

Today MYA team members Max Curd and Anthony Erhirhi visited Hastings Foodbank, where we made a £500 donation to support the work they do, quietly, relentlessly, and far too often out of the spotlight.

It shouldn’t be “eye-opening” that people are relying on food banks in the UK in 2025, but it is. Demand is rising, and what Hastings Foodbank provides is more than emergency food parcels. It’s a practical safety net delivered with dignity, compassion, and respect.

A big thank you to Sarah for the warm welcome, the tour, and the blunt reality check about what’s needed and why.
If you’d like to help, the “Bank the Food” app shows what’s most needed in real-time. You can also donate via their website:
https://hastings.foodbank.org.uk

Small actions don’t solve big problems, but they do feed people. And right now, that matters.

17/12/2025

Last night, one of our MYA directors attended the menorah lighting ceremony in Hastings.

It was one of those quietly heartening local moments that doesn’t need a grand speech to justify itself: prayers, music, free doughnuts and latkes (both of which we can now confirm are entirely valid ways to build community), and a bit of dancing that managed to be joyful without turning into a spectacle. Most importantly, it all passed peacefully, with warmth and good humour in the air.

Part of the tradition is simple and quietly powerful: you light one more candle each night, and the darkness gets less of a vote.

At MYA we spend a lot of time thinking about hospitality as more than food and logistics. It’s also the act of making space for people, helping them feel safe, welcome, and seen. We’re a team made up of people of different faiths and backgrounds, and we value the communities and traditions that shape the places we work in.

Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating, and to all our friends, clients and neighbours of every faith (and none), we wish you a peaceful festive season.

09/12/2025

In a cultural sector where every visitor touchpoint matters, the way food, experience and commercial strategy work together has never been more critical. Jeroen Schuijt, MYA’s Director of International Management Consultancy, advises cultural institutions worldwide on visitor experience and commercial performance. In the piece that follows, he offers a personal view on the changing landscape of the cultural sector and what it takes to build stronger, more sustainable models.

I found myself on the Millennium Bridge today, looking towards Tate Modern, a place that shaped my career and my approach to leading commercial operations in the cultural sector. It reminded me how much can be achieved when purpose and performance work hand in hand.

During my years heading Tate Catering, we embedded sustainability long before it became a sector expectation, and opened the new Tate Modern with a food and beverage strategy built around audience insight, distinctiveness and operational discipline. That experience showed me something vital: cultural venues thrive when their commercial strategy is as bold as their artistic vision.

Today, UK cultural institutions are under more pressure than ever: rising costs, changing visitor patterns, recruitment challenges and the need to diversify revenue without diluting identity. The margin for error is small, but the opportunities for smarter, more resilient models are huge.

Through MYA, I now work with national museums in Wales and cultural venues across the Middle East, and increasingly with partners around the globe, helping teams align visitor experience, food and beverage, and commercial strategy. We’re always looking to build new relationships with cultural institutions and organisations that want to think differently about their commercial offer.

As I’ve moved into consultancy, I’m excited by the chance to support cultural venues as they navigate this moment of change. If your organisation is reworking its visitor journey, sharpening its food and beverage offer or searching for a clearer commercial spine, I can help, drawing on experience as both an operator and a consultant, and a history of turning complex operations into efficient, profitable models.

If this challenges you or sparks a conversation, get in touch. https://www.mya-consulting.co.uk/

27/11/2025

Today at MYA, we’re marking Founders’ Day and remembering Margaret Young (1938–2023).

Margaret believed that good food in education and society should be a basic human right, not a luxury. From her first role as Catering Manager for Norland Nannies in Hungerford, she was a pioneer in educational food; her ideas were formed by her own childhood experience growing up on the edge of the Second World War. Together with her daughter Carla, she built MYA into a consultancy working across the globe on some of the world’s most iconic projects, still driven by her conviction that hospitality can and should serve a better, fairer society.

In Margaret’s name, the team today has donated to our local food bank, recognising both the example she set and the reality that too many people still struggle to meet this most basic need.

Outside work, Margaret was anything but conventional: a committed motorcyclist, a competition glider pilot and a skilled yachtswoman. The image here shows her on her fastback Norton Commando, commuting to Norland on two wheels rather than taking the expected path. Adventurous, determined, entrepreneurial to the end.

Today, we salute Margaret, her legacy, and the values that continue to shape MYA

25/11/2025

At MYA, we’ve been watching the sustainability conversation in the commercial food and beverage equipment sector evolve; often from a distance, observing positive signs but also clear gaps. The industry is discussing carbon reduction, environmental responsibility, and the future of equipment design more than ever before.

So, it’s time we moved from conversation to action.

As consultants working across supply chains, operators, and manufacturers, we see both the ambition and the barriers firsthand. And one thing is quite clear: our approach needs to broaden if we’re to drive genuine progress.

Click the link to read the full article

At MYA, we’ve been watching the sustainability conversation in the commercial food and beverage equipment sector evolve; often from a distance, observing positive signs but also clear gaps. The industry is discussing carbon reduction, environmental responsibility, and the future of equipment desig...

18/11/2025

Backing Local Talent: MYA Supports Scott Griffiths’ Journey to the NFTS

MYA are proud to support Scott Griffiths as he begins Cinematography at the National Film and Television School. Scott has worked with our Non-Exec Director, Richard, for several years, proving himself an exceptional cinematographer: precise, calm under pressure, and gifted with light, framing and story. He is a working-class talent breaking into a tough profession, and he has earned every step.

This is a rare opportunity and it needs real sponsorship to make it possible. Part of our commitment is practical: Scott will continue collaborating with MYA to create short films that showcase our work and the town we call home, building his craft while giving back.

Recent piece: the La Bella Vista video, promoting Hastings hospitality businesses and the people who make them sparkle.
https://scottgriffithsdp.com/commercials/la-bella-vista

We are delighted to see his place at NFTS confirmed and excited for what comes next. If you can help support Scott’s journey, or want to partner on Hastings hospitality storytelling, get in touch with MYA - https://www.mya-consulting.co.uk/

14/11/2025

Hastings deserves better. We’re doing our bit.

In the week Hastings was declared the 7th most deprived area in the UK, our Board has been reflecting on the social value we create in the town where most of our team live and work.

We moved MYA to Hastings in 2017 because the creative energy here is unique. Our mission is simple: win work globally, build top-level creative jobs locally, and keep talent in the town we love. It still is. Since then, we’ve trebled our workforce and delivered world-class projects from strategy to design, with Hastings as our base.

With a flatlining economy and another difficult budget looming, business has to lean in. The welfare state can’t fix this alone; economic regeneration must. That means well-paid jobs, skills, and the transport links that provide opportunity. What we’re doing next.

Hiring and training locally

Building careers, not just roles — apprenticeships, placements and real progression

Buying from local suppliers wherever practical, so value circulates here

If you’re a Hastings maker, supplier, graduate or returner and want to be part of this, get in touch. Let’s turn creative energy into steady, well-paid work — and a stronger town.

10/11/2025

Chefs at War: Feeding the fight

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day.

Throughout the Second World War, British Army cooks kept regiments moving, thinking, and, critically, believing. From field kitchens in bomb-pitted orchards to hot meals pushed forward after last light, their work was logistics, medicine and morale in one. Army Catering Corps chefs turned crates of “compo” into calories and comfort: bully beef, beans, jam and tea, plus the odd square of chocolate when spirits flagged. Freshly cooked rations in camp; preserved 24-hour packs at the sharp end; heat from improvised stoves and know-how from a thousand rough kitchens.

Army Catering Corps personnel also receive gallantry awards (Military Medal, British Empire Medal, Mentions in Despatches), and the Corps’ sacrifice is recorded in the Army Catering Corps Book of Remembrance.

Food wasn’t a side story. It was strategy you could eat: heat, salt, fat and a mug of tea that said, carry on. Tomorrow we remember them all.

30/10/2025

Being in the room changes the work.

Being together speeds everything up: thinking, pace, trust. Yesterday we aligned on growth, built new skills, and hosted the Foodservice Equipment Association (FEA) in Hastings for a clear look at what’s next in foodservice and kitchen design.

Highlights:

• Growth with discipline: sharper pipeline, clear roles, better tools.
• Skills uplift: evidencing competency throughout the design process.
• Policy horizon: a workable view of the next 12–24 months.

Why it matters:

• Embodied carbon: tighter tracking and reporting baked into specs.
• Grease management: greater scrutiny due to impacts on UK water infrastructure.
• Demonstrable competency: stronger records to meet Building Regulations.
• EU-made equipment vs UK rules: avoid delays by aligning standards.
• Cost and phasing: timing, retraining and near-term budgets.

Good news:

FEA are coordinating with sector bodies to push for clarity and sensible phasing. Thanks to Luke and Rob for a sharp, practical session.

Want the headlines for your estate or new build?

Book a 30-minute scoping call for a two-page, site-specific briefing. Message us at info@mya-consulting.co.uk

06/10/2025

Welcome Joe Tucker – BIM Project Lead

We’re delighted to welcome Joe Tucker to the MYA team. With experience across digital design, coordination, and BIM management on complex hospitality and infrastructure projects, Joe brings precision, perspective, and strong analytical capability.

Joe joins with a clear goal: to revitalise and streamline our BIM and Revit delivery, setting consistent standards that lift collaboration across disciplines. His data-led approach will strengthen the bridge between design intent and technical ex*****on, so every MYA project lands smarter and faster.

This builds on a decade of investment in MYA’s technology stack. Over the past ten years, we’ve steadily expanded our digital tooling, processes, and training. Joe’s arrival accelerates that journey, turning robust foundations into a sharper competitive edge for our clients.

“I want to help make MYA’s drawings and models the best in the industry: consistent, connected, and collaborative,” says Joe.

We’re excited to see his impact across live projects and the next chapter of digital design at MYA.