By Karen Peattie
FOOD tech start-up LiberEat, the Aberdeen-based creator of an app designed to make life easier for people with dietary requirements, has appointed Vikki Macleod, a former non-executive director of security video specialist IndigoVision, as its chairman.
Ms Macleod, who has wide experience across the technology, marketing and finance services sectors, was previously on the board of Zonal Retail Data Systems, a market leader in electronic point of sale technology in the hospitality sector.
She has also worked with HSBC, Virgin Money and Tesco Bank.
Last year, Ms Macleod joined Grant Thornton’s Growth 365 team in Scotland, aimed at ambitious CEOs and entrepreneurial leaders of mid-sized businesses.
LiberEat’s founder Barry Leaper, who is targeting growth for the platform outside the UK, said that Ms Macleod’s “extensive experience and understanding of commercial partnerships and insight into customer engagement, especially with technological innovations, will be invaluable to LiberEat as we enter into the next phase of growth”.
The firm recently secured a partnership with Pret A Manger, increasing the number of venues available on the app to over 1,400 across the UK. The app shows exactly what an individual can eat based on their dietary requirements by filtering restaurant menus, recipe ideas and food products.
Getting food from restaurants and cafes is particularly stressful for those with allergies with 33 per cent of people reporting a reaction when they are eating out, Mr Leaper pointed out.
He added that this was the motivating factor for leaving his career in investment banking career to launch the LiberEat business.
Meanwhile, LiberEat is preparing to release a major update of the app incorporating new features, which allow users become “part of its growing community by contributing to its growing recipe inspiration section”.
The app currently offers over 350 recipes.
“With Vikki’s collaboration the company aims to impact the lives of many more people,” said Mr Leaper.
Ms Macleod added: “Barry and the LiberEat team have done a great job in creating a product that solves a problem that many people experience."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here