Florida native Keith Keogh had a twenty-five year career with the Disney Corporation during which time he opened EPCOT Center and continued its development until moving to the Business Strategies and R&D Department for Disney Parks. He then traveled to San Francisco and the California Culinary Academy to take charge of COOK {NASDAQ}, a publicly traded company with accredited post-culinary schools, print, video training, and television media divisions. As president he established the first chain of Food Colleges, revamped the national KQED “Cooking at the Academy” TV series, and produced over thirty “how to” cookbooks in the Cooking at the Academy book series before departing to take charge of research and development at Darden’s Red Lobster Division as Senior Vice President of Culinary & Beverage Excellence.
After working in senior leadership positions with Levy Restaurants and Paul Prudhomme Enterprises, Keogh recently retired from Pinnacle Entertainment where he oversaw the food and beverage operations of their 16 casino and resort enterprises throughout the United States.
Keogh is known throughout the food industry for his leadership of the United Stated Culinary Olympic Team. His teams brought home three All-Around World Championship Titles and five top two finishes. Personally, he holds two individual professional national championship tiles in wild game and seafood.
He is the past president of The American Culinary Federation and World Association of Chefs Societies, authored New Currents in American Cuisine, was granted an Honorary Doctorate by Johnson and Wales University for contribution to American Cuisine and was honored with a star on San Francisco’s Chef’s Stars Walk of Fame in 2002
Keogh has returned to Orlando, Florida where he and his wife, Vicki, live nearby their two daughters and five grand children.
Keith Keogh
EVP Strategic Business Planning
Keith will play an enormous role with our synergy team as he will bring his extensive foodservice knowledge in operations and logistics to help a Synergy retail manufacturer client align their go-to-market strategy within the retail foodservice market segment.
Keith’s depth of experience as his profile presents, will add the culinary expertise needed to also align the depth of product development and cuisine assortment to the alignment process.
As Synergy’s go-to-market mission continues to be “connecting the unconnected” dots in the horizontal alignment needed as this retail foodservice marketplace continues to evolve Keith will play a major role in the comprehensive alignment process required for both retail and foodservice manufacturers to align with not only their operator partners but also today’s consumer.
- Foodservice facilities operations planning and
execution
- Site planning chain restaurants
- Back of the operations capabilities sway’s
- Product R&D
- Strategic business development
- Strategic menu development
- Strategic communication planning and execution
- Back of the house equipment and operations
planning
