Laura Shepherd is a Marketing strategist & Leadership Coach with 30+ years of leadership experience building brands and leading teams across global organizations. She brings a unique blend of strategic insight and people development expertise, having led brand transformations and guided leaders through growth, change, and complexity. With a strong foundation in Consumer Packaged Goods, she brings a strategic approach to business growth. She helps companies—whether startups or established brands—gain clarity and alignment by developing tailored business strategies rooted in insights and analysis.

I help food businesses turn ideas into commercially successful products, drawing on over 25 years of experience leading R&D and culinary teams within major organizations and delivering projects for global brands. My experience spans Europe, Asia and North America across foodservice, retail, HMR and travel catering, giving me a broad and commercially grounded perspective on how food performs in different markets and channels. I design scalable, high-impact menu items and food programs for national restaurant chains and grocers, ensuring creativity translates seamlessly into operational reality. Through culinary-led innovation, strategic product development and hands-on execution, I guide clients from concept through to launch — aligning flavour, functionality and financial performance to deliver products that win in market, on shelf and in service.

I work with early-stage food and CPG brands that are preparing to grow, but want clarity before committing more money to production, packaging, or retail expansion. As the co-founder of Whipdd, a flavoured butter brand now sold in 200+ retail stores across Canada, I’ve spent the last few years working through the realities of scaling a CPG business - manufacturing constraints, distributor margins, retail pricing, promotions, and cash-flow trade-offs. Most founders come in with one specific thing that feels stuck: pricing that works in one channel but not another, unit economics that look fine on paper but fall apart at scale, or retailer conversations that keep circling without moving forward. I focus on short, hands-on advisory projects that tackle one of those bottlenecks at a time. The goal is to reach clear, usable decisions quickly — usually within about 30 days — so founders can move forward with confidence instead of second-guessing. Typical outcomes include clearer pricing across channels, stronger numbers behind buyer and broker conversations, and a better understanding of what actually needs fixing now versus what can wait.

Michael is uniquely qualified to assist in helping you connect the dots from your initial product concept to finding the right ingredients and the best fit for a co-manufacturer to place your product on-shelf. Being one of the first food scientists to work for Marks & Spencer (M&S) in the late 70s, he gained detailed insight into the world of Private Label since everything M&S bore the St. Michael brand. In the 80s, Michael was at the forefront of the Canadian Private Label explosion working directly with Dave Nichol at Loblaws, as an outside respondent, as the No Name and President's Choice brands were being developed and rolled out. Employing his experience from M&S along with other industry experience, Michael created a Private Label Division at UFL Foods, now Newly Weds Foods, that catered to the growing demand for Private Label goods. Recognizing that simply emulating a brand was not the path to success, he assisted companies to express their own "personalities" to develop their own renditions of what they wanted their offerings to be. This continued with many start up companies looking to create their own space with their own signature profiles that Michael and his companies could develop for them, at the same time, assisting them to find the right ingredients and co-manufacturers, where necessary. Retired since December 2024 but still keeping current in the industry and available to help you realize your ideal product offerings!

Global Linked Inc is a company that will support from the door in to the door out. From Temp Labour, Packaging (Pouches/Roll stock and more), Racking, Machinery, Pallets, Logistics, Warehouse solutions and more. A one stop shop to save you time and effort. After 30+ yrs running food operations, Global Linked has gathered strong sources to support you. The only 1 of its kind that has a reach to most sectors in the manufacturing/production field. Connected world wide for support.

I bring over 17 years of hands-on experience across retail, manufacturing, and product development to help food brands turn ideas into scalable, retail-ready products. My background spans bakery operations, private label product development and manufacturing R&D from early concept and formulation through scale-up, production, and launch. I’ve worked inside test kitchens, manufacturing plants, and national retail programs, which gives me a practical understanding of what it takes to move a product from bench to shelf without losing quality, integrity, or feasibility. I specialize in R&D and private label development, helping brands and manufacturers navigate formulation, ingredient sourcing, process development, cost optimization, and commercialization challenges. I bridge the gap between creativity and execution - ensuring products are not only innovative, but also manufacturable, compliant, and commercially viable. What drives my work is seeing great products succeed. I’m passionate about supporting teams through complex decisions, simplifying the path to market, and building products that are designed to scale. I’m particularly interested in projects involving early to mid-stage R&D, private label development, product optimization, scale-up support to product launch. While bakery and baked goods are my natural skill set, I am open to other opportunities in conventional and gluten free.