Acorn Awards 2026: Annabel Rohm, Gleneagles

Position Restaurant manager, Gleneagles, Auchterarder

Age 28

Nominator Gabrielle Le Roux, skills development manager, Gleneagles

Annabel Rohm is driving commercial growth and team performance at Gleneagles’ brasserie the Birnam, bringing structure, energy and direction to one of the hotel’s busiest sites.

Rohm joined the Scottish luxury hotel in May 2023 as assistant manager at the Dormy clubhouse and was promoted to restaurant manager of Italian-American modern restaurant the Birnam in May 2025.

She now leads a team of 30 serving 70,000 guests a year and manages a multimillion-pound turnover that is set to grow further. Part of that is down to events, for which she has maximised revenue opportunities by introducing targeted bookings that delivered an uplift in sales and offset quieter trading periods. 

She has looked for ways to maximise space in the hotel, working closely with the sales and events team to make use of daytime areas. To add to this, retraining programmes and a targeted incentive scheme have increased spend per cover and driven profits £100,000 ahead of budget. 

She has also turned her attention to procurement, reducing costs by £25,000 but also maintaining the high standards Gleneagles is known for.

Rohm is behind the introduction of a development framework for careers that has seen a 30% increase in internal promotions, something she echoes outside the hotel, where she works with schools and early careers programmes to take part in mock interviews and promote hospitality as a long-term career.

Her educational focus extends to working with the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts’ Annual Awards of Excellence and its Young Chef Young Waiter competition, and her talents have also been recognised in the Gold Service Scholarship, for which she was a finalist.