About Lomond Leisure Group
Meet the people behind LLG project.
Chris Thynne, Director
Chris is a passionate campaigner for genuine hospitality believing that at its heart should be the simplicity of “hot food and cold beer served with a smile and kind word”.
Chris was born in Edinburgh in 1970. He is a tenacious and driven Director whose hospitality experience spans over 3 decades. His career started in 1989 with the Anglo-American My Kinda Town group managing various restaurants in the UK and Ireland.
Chris joined The Restaurant Group PLC in 2004, ultimately becoming Director of Operations. Over a 16 year period he played a significant role in the inception, development and rollout of sector disrupting brands Coast to Coast and Firejacks
Chris’ trusted, authentic leadership style and passion for people has seen him consistently develop highly successful teams across dozens of restaurant openings, delivering high levels of customer confidence and multi £million revenues.
He is a passionate campaigner for genuine hospitality believing that at its heart should be the simplicity of “hot food and cold beer served with a smile and kind word”.
Derek Mallon, Director
Derek is an ambitious, innovative director with over 30 years’ experience of the restaurant and leisure industry.
He started his career in 1989 with the My Kinda Town Group working across the UK with some of the great names in the UK hospitality sector. In 2001 he joined The Restaurant Group and progressed his career to the position of Deputy Managing Director over a 14-year period. His ambitious drive led to the creation of the Coast to Coast brand which scooped the award of ‘Best Breakthrough Brand’ at the 2015 Peach awards. Derek has since gone on to create the Van Winkle concept along with the award nominated Mharsanta restaurant in Glasgow plus several other exciting venues across Scotland.
An authentic, committed leader who leads by example and understands the value of effective training and pride in performance. Derek has a reputation for unprecedented revenue delivery, astute commercial acumen and in-depth industry knowledge.
As a champion of change management and business transformation, he has led large scale restructures and introduced brand wide employee engagement programs to improve performance and promote optimum customer service, product delivery and brand reputation.
His extensive personal experience in the start-up category has given him the full range of skills to understand all sizes of business.
Derek was appointed Scotland Food and Drink’s Food Tourism Ambassador for Glasgow in October 2021
Read the official press release from Food Tourism Ambassadors 2021
In August 2022, Derek was invited to join Glasgow Tourism & Events Group (GTEG) to represent the voice of tourism and events in Glasgow.
Sophie Mallon, Chief Marketing Officer
Sophie is a degree educated, enthusiastic and proactive individual with over 20 years experience of Marketing, Charity Events, Travel and Tourism, Communications and Public Relations having worked for Direct Holidays, The GMG Radio Group, the Charity DEBRA and being part of her own business with Mharsanta and Van Winkle for the past four and a half years.
Sophie strives to look at ways of differentiating the business to work with different markets, spending time heavily investing in their involvement with Visit Scotland, People Make Glasgow and working with the overseas travel trade.
With a flexible and adaptable approach to work, Sophie works well using her own initiative and relishes the challenge to achieve results. With excellent organisational skills she can multitask and manage her time effectively and efficiently to meet deadlines, working well under pressure. She always has a positive and proactive approach to tasks and events that she is working on.
Sophie is always looking to better her education and recently completed the Sustainable, Entrepreneurial and Innovative Tourism Business Management (2021) and the Destination Development and Leadership Management, both at Napier University (March 2022).
Sophie is involved in charity and volunteering projects for a number of local causes as well as industry membership organisations.