Meet our leadership team
Meet our leadership team
Chris Burns
Chris joined Company Shop Group in February 2025, with over 20 years’ experience in the retail and FMCG industry. Most recently, Chris spent four and a half years at Jollyes, where he played a pivotal role in the company’s expansion strategy, doubling its retail footprint to over 100 stores nationwide. Chris has held senior positions at several major UK retailers, including Trading Controller at Poundland and Head of FMCG at Wilko, as well as senior buying roles at Asda and Tesco. Chris brings extensive experience in driving business growth and enhancing customer propositions, which will be invaluable as we further develop our offer and expand our impact for people, the planet and our stock partners.
Gary Stott
Gary has spent over 30 years in the social impact field. He began his career helping to tackle homelessness becoming the Chief Executive of a regional homelessness charity. Since then he has worked with government programmes to improve homelessness outcomes for many people and founded social enterprises supporting some of the UK’s most marginalised communities. He also founded an advisory business, supporting public sector bodies, businesses and high net worth individuals on their social impact activity and analysis. Gary joined CSG 11 years ago to bring this experience to the field of food surplus and food insecurity, and through his extensive research and experience, Community Shop was born. He is on the trustee board of a number of charities and chairs regional food insecurity boards as well as advising organisations around the world on the social supermarket model.
Holly Mobley
With over 20 years of retail experience across major brands including Wilko, ASDA and Morrisons, Holly joined Company Shop Group from Poundland, where she held the position of Director of Trading and Quality Assurance for General Merchandise. Having led significant strategic transformation, delivering both sales and profit growth, Holly brings substantial commercial insight and a customer-first approach, which will be central to strengthening Company Shop Group’s commercial offering and increasing the support offered to stock partners across the supply chain.
Chris Hall
Chris joined Company Shop Group in 2023 and has an extensive background in finance having held various roles across the Property, Group Finance, Loss Prevention, and Retail teams at Morrisons and serving as Financial Controller for McColl's. He began his accounting career in the public sector with the Audit Commission, auditing local government and NHS bodies, before moving to KPMG. Later he transitioned into the FMCG industry and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to Company Shop Group.
Gemma Edlin
Gemma joined Company Shop Group in 2013, bringing with her valuable retail experience having started her career at Tesco. As the leader of our retail division, she combines strong commercial acumen with deep operational expertise. Known for her hands‑on leadership style, Gemma consistently builds high‑performing teams dedicated to delivering exceptional customer experiences and outstanding store standards, fulfilling our commitment to protect our partners’ brands throughout the redistribution process.
Lee Wood
Lee brings over 40 years of experience within the food industry, first working for his family frozen food business, where he worked his way up from the shop floor to buying director. Following the sale of the business he undertook a number of consultancy roles within food manufacturing, followed by five years with Grampian Country Food Group. In 2002 Lee joined Company Shop Group, now the UK’s leading redistributor of surplus stock. As Trading Director, he supports the UK’s leading food retailers and manufacturers to find sustainable routes to redistribute their surplus stock.
Martin Upton
Martin has over 30 years of leadership experience across logistics and supply chain management, having held senior roles at Poundland, ASDA, Netto, Maplin, Hobbycraft and Torque Logistics. Martin’s expertise in operational efficiency, large-scale distribution and team leadership will be central in scaling Company Shop Group’s infrastructure as it works to redistribute more surplus stock through the Company Shop and Community Shop store networks.