Pete is SquareMeal’s Restaurants and Venues Editor, keeping SquareMeal on the pulse of the UK’s diverse and fast-evolving restaurant scene.
Pete’s experience
Pete grew up as a magazine fanatic, and spent more teenage hours than he often admits flipping through issues of FourFourTwo, Sidewalk and Official Nintendo Magazine. That was the beginning of his passion for journalism, but he didn’t fully realise it until he graduated and fell into job at T3 Magazine - at the time one of the biggest consumer tech mags in the UK. As a staff writer he worked across print and digital platforms, covering a wide brief, from men’s lifestyle and fitness to video games and mobile phone reviews.
T3 was a good proving ground, and from there he spent a brief time as an editorial consultant at Text 100 (now Archetype), advising the likes of Vodafone and Red Bull on editorial strategy. But hitting his late twenties, Pete felt the pull of another of his life’s passions - food. Still harboring a dream of a career in food, he ditched his journalistic career to attend Leith’s School of Food and Wine, completing a diploma there. He threw himself into work experience all over the industry, working as a runner on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, working as a home economist, and staging at restaurants like Trinity and The Dairy.
A career in the kitchen beckoned, but Pete made a last minute decision to head back into journalism, taking a job as a senior writer, then features editor at Great British Chefs, where he played a key role in shaping a wide range of content from interviews and features, to recipe development and editing. He was part of the small team that built the brand’s in-house recipe development platform, as well as launching Great British Chefs’ first two cookbooks.
He continued as a recipe editor and researcher at BBC Food, working with the corporation for a year before joining SquareMeal to spearhead the brand’s restaurant and venue content. Leading the way on key campaigns like the SquareMeal Top 100 Restaurant Awards, and the SquareMeal AYALA Female Chef of the Year Award, Pete works alongside SquareMeal’s editorial team to make sure the brand is always at the cutting edge of the UK’s exciting food scene.