Frank Bothwell was born in Scotland but raised and educated in Yorkshire after which he trained in hotel management.
The experience gained in hotels he says “instilled a passion for excellence in all forms of food service and management.” After hotels he was attracted to contract catering and spent a number of years working his way up from the smallest contracts to some of the most prestigious in the UK.

After spells with both CCG and National Leisure Catering he joined Sutcliffe as an area manager with responsibility for a number of City of London contracts.

Frank then joined Aramark as operations director before moving to take on the role of regional managing director with Sodexho UK. In 2003 he joined Avenance as managing director for Southern England, a business with a turnover in excess of £40m.

Frank’s values include honesty, for example through transparent dealings with clients, being a caring employer, and delivering fully on all promises he makes. Spotting a gap in the market for this style of company, Frank took the decision to launch Thomas Franks.

Frank is passionate about spending quality time with his family. He lives in rural Oxfordshire, with his wife and three children.

I love being a designer, I love thinking freely about ideas and most of all I love that my guidance is only ethical and practical issues.

My design background has been heavily influenced by products, studying this at Leeds University has helped me understand the importance of design in our everyday lives. Primarily how the perceived value of design is the significance of function over form. But more powerfully how emotion affects what we like and dislike and psychologically ways and means of influencing these emotions.

I have carried forward my taught experience and now apply the same basic principles into a graphic design discipline. However working for Thomas Franks as head of creativity means there are numerous diverse design based tasks that fill my day. It has thrown a completely different light on design embedding product design knowledge into graphics with success measured on increasing participation and driving sales.

But to try and sum this up of what my role in the company is, a definition of graphic design by the American design writer Jessica Helfand highlights all aspects of what I look at during my design tasks. “Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, colour and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and pun and symbols and allusions of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye.”

I am operations manager at Thomas Franks and operate ten locations including schools, manufacturing plants and head offices.

Prior to Thomas Franks I was operations manager with Aramark, covering 17 contracts nationwide. Prior to that in operations with Wilson Vale Catering.

I have been in the catering industry all of my life and am a fully trained chef. I spent the early part of my career in hotels and restaurants. I then spent five years as executive head chef for a very busy event caterer, involving functions for the Royal Family, politicians and other VIPs, as well as high profile corporate and private events.

I have been in contract catering for ten years and started as a chef manager, progressing to catering manager, general manager and now into operations. Based on many years’ experience, I share Thomas Franks’ passion for good food, excellent service, innovation and creativity.

My wife has recently qualified as a Private Client Solicitor and I have two children, Alex, 18 and George, 16. I am skipper of a local rugby team and spend all other free time with my family.