Olaf Scholz was born in Osnabrück in 1958 and grew up in Hamburg. His grandparents were railway officials, his parents merchants in the textile industry. His school education was supplemented by law studies as part of the university's one-stage legal training programme in Hamburg.

Since 1985, Olaf Scholz has been a partner in the Hamburg law firm "Zimmermann, Scholz und Partner". In 1975, he joined the SPD and has since held a variety of leadership positions within the party and public offices. He was first mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018. Since March 2018, Olaf Scholz has been the Federal Minister of Finance. He lives in Postdam together with his wife, the politician Britta Ernst.

Professor Dr Michael Braungart is a professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is also the founder of EPEA International Environmental Research in Hamburg, the pioneer of Cradle to Cradle, co-founder and scientific director of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) in Charlottesville, Virginia (USA) as well as founder and scientific director of the Hamburg Environmental Institute (HUI). Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart has been pioneering the Cradle to Cradle design concept for decades. He has worked with many organisations and companies in different industries and developed tools for designing eco-effective products, business models, and intelligent material pooling. For his work, Michael Braungart was awarded, among others, the Golden Flower of Rheydt, Germany's longest standing environmental protection awared, in 2019.

Georg Weber has been CEO of MKN Maschinenfabrik Kurt Neubauer GmbH & Co. KG since 2011. The Wolfenbüttel-based German company develops premium professional cooking technology and kitchen appliances for business kitchens along the entire thermal process.

Prior to his current position, the business graduate and Master of Business Marketing held worldwide responsibility for sales and marketing and has been an active management board member since 2005.

Jochen Pinsker has tracked European foodservice and consumer behaviour trends for more than 20 years. He now sets the course for The NPD Group’s foodservice industry tracking in Europe and the Middle East, while also supporting clients and partners as NPD’s foodservice industry advisor. Jochen came to NPD as an account manager servicing NPD’s first clients in Germany, and his regional and functional responsibility has grown over the years. As director of the company’s Europe Foodservice practice, and now as senior vice president, he has been integral to the rise of the practice from two European countries in 1998 to nine countries today.

Jochen consults with some of the largest operator and manufacturer clients across Europe, and he is frequently a featured speaker at various global food industry events and corporate conferences. A trusted source for reliable industry information, Jochen has been widely quoted in leading industry publications, such as foodservice europe and Nation’s Restaurant News.

Prior to joining The NPD Group, Jochen’s career included managing sports organizations in Germany. He transitioned to the foodservice industry in 1996 as head of events and catering at a large, multi-functional arena in Germany.

Peter Mütsch has been leading the business of Franke Coffee Systems GmbH for Germany and Austria for a solid six years. The company, based in the immediate vicinity of Würzburg, is a leading global provider of solutions for professional out-of-home coffee preparation and fully automatic coffee machines.

Peter Mütsch joined the company in 2002 and was the Vice President of its international Sales and Marketing business for about nine years before stepping into his current Managing Director role. Prior to that, he was overlooking the Franke’s sales activities globally.

Mirko Silz was born in Leipzig in 1972. After completing his education in Wholesale and International Trade, his path led him to system gastronomy in 1991. His first stop was McDonalds, where he held various management positions in Leipzig, Dortmund and Bonn until 2005. In 2006 he became CEO of Vapiano SE and led the company's development until 2011. From 2014 to 2017, he and his wife ran two restaurants of their own as franchise partners of the L'Osteria brand. During this time he also acted as CEO of Coa GmbH.

Since 2016, he has been excclusively focusing on L'Osteria. As CEO, he leverages his 29 years of experience in system gastronomy to steadily drive forward the rollout of the brand across Europe - without losing sight of the needs of his employees and guests. In his private life, Mirko Silz is happily married and lives with his family in Munich.

Dipl.-Ing Frank Wagner FCSI has been a partner at KDREI Planungsgesellschaft mbH+Co.KG in Berlin since 1998. Together with Peter Neumann and Helge Pahlke, he has steadily expanded the company. In the meantime, the competence in communal catering has been broadened to include many projects in the field of hotels and retail gastronomy in many parts of the world.

Frank Wagner has been actively involved in FCSI Germany Austria e.V. since 2005. He has been president of the association since 2013.