Tesco impulse director David Beardmore is leaving the supermarket after more than 15 years to take up the role of chief commercial officer at SSP UK, The Grocer has learnt.
The Tesco veteran will play a key role in SSP’s food strategy across airports, railway stations and motorway service areas in the UK and Ireland.
SSP runs brands such as Millie’s Cookies and Upper Crust, as well as franchise agreements for the likes of Starbucks, Burger King and M&S Simply Food.
A former Unilever customer director, Beardmore is best known as the man who led Tesco’s war on sugar in the soft drinks category from 2014, courting controversy at the time for branding suppliers’ reformulation efforts until then “weak”.
He also took the highly unusual move of joining forces with campaign group Action on Sugar to help back the programme.
War on sugar
He was at the centre of the so-called Ribenagate saga in September 2015, when Tesco pulled added-sugar versions of kids’ lunchbox drinks, including Ribena and Capri-Sun, from shelves, causing a huge storm on social media and lost sales in the subcategory.
However, in 2017 he was awarded Business Initiative of the year at the Grocer Gold Awards for changing consumer behaviour and removing two billion calories from the soft drinks category in the UK.
He was also awarded the IGD Health and Wellness Award for changing the soft drinks landscape in 2017.
In 2016, Beardmore moved to Thailand to head up its own label operations, but he returned to the UK in 2020, becoming grocery director and then head of impulse.
At SSP he will join forces again with its CEO Kari Daniels, who spent more than 20 years at Tesco, moving to the travel food giant in 2023.
Beardmore has also been a key figure in the negotiations over the launch of the UK’s first deposit return scheme, sitting on the industry-run Deposit Management Organisation (DMO). It is understood he is due to carry on in the role.
A source told The Grocer: “David will always be known as the man who led the war on sugar at Tesco. Anyone sceptical about what the soft drinks industry has done only needs to look at his track record of encouraging reformulation to see it is much more than just words.”
Commenting on David’s departure, Tesco UK food managing director, Gordon Gafa said: “I want to take this opportunity to thank David for his significant contribution over the past 15 years – both here in the UK and in his previous commercial role in Asia.”
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