2025 Everyday Hero Award Winners Announced
Caring, Uncomplicated and Positively Obsessive - the trio of values our Roadchef colleagues live by to ensure a great place to visit for Britain’s motorists and a great place to work for all employees.
Each year, we get together to celebrate those values - culminating in an award ceremony to crown the best-in-class for each of our three values. You could say that our C.U.P runneth over with joy at seeing those who live and breathe Roadchef together.
2025 was no different and our teams gathered at Staverton Park Golf Club on 11th March 2025 to celebrate all we’d achieved together over the last twelve months.
Three winners - Dawn Kent, Tom Jones and Luke Brennan - each took home an award, whilst Dawn scooped the main prize - Hero of the Year - for her caring attitude in the face of adversity.
Let’s deep dive into each category.
Overall Hero of the Year and Caring Hero of the Year - Dawn Kent, Norton Canes
Dawn works as part of our Norton Canes team and collected the coveted Hero of the Year award and our Caring Hero of the Year award for her sharp-eye, caring attitude and calmness in a difficult situation.
When faced with a distressed traveller at our M6 (Toll) site, Dawn followed procedure perfectly, and contacted the police to support - potentially avoiding a situation that could have been much worse.
Unbelievably, the quick thinking and caring nature of Dawn ensured that the distressed lady was rescued from a kidnapping by police, just 10 minutes down the road from our Norton Canes services.
We are incredibly grateful for Dawn’s calmness, quick-thinking, unwavering caring attitude and for spotting the situation unfold, whilst acting impeccably in a stressful moment.
Unfortunately, Dawn couldn't attend the event to collect her well-deserved award, so Norton Canes’ Site Director Designate, Joel Ball, collected the trophy on her behalf.
Well done, Dawn!
Uncomplicated Hero of the Year - Tom Jones, Support Office
If you’ve noticed the huge changes made to our Norton Canes Costa Coffee over recent months, you’ll have indirectly noticed Tom’s work - be that from our SOKs, digital screens, till systems or more.
Tom, who works in our Support Office IT team, demonstrated incredible commitment to ensure the project came to a successful conclusion, whilst guaranteeing a simple transition through easily understood communication to everyone involved in the overall project.
We’re really proud to see Tom’s progression throughout various levels of the business, having worked his way from a team member in our Stafford MSA to IT Helpdesk Lead in our Support Office.
Well done Tom.
Positively Obsessive Hero of the Year - Luke Brennan, Norton Canes
Luke Brennan made it two from three for our Norton Canes colleagues, collecting the Positively Obsessive Hero of the Year award.
Luke supported the business with the rollout of the McDonald’s Putting People First Visit, ensuring that McDonald’s policies and Roadchef policies work seamlessly together.
The award celebrates Luke’s non-stop attitude to creating a safe and happy workforce at the Cannock-based motorway service area whilst remaining calm whilst speaking with various partners, colleagues and auditors
Well done Luke for helping to make Roadchef a better and safer place to work for all your colleagues.
Support Office Hero of the Year - Iain Thomson
As the title suggests, our Support Office’s main function is to ‘support’ and Iain Thomson, from our Central Operations team, certainly does that.
With digital at the core of his work, Iain has been instrumental in technological advances across the business to simplify work activities and deliver efficiency improvements in multiple areas.
Well done Iain for driving our business forward and making changes for the future of the business.
