Development Chef – Booker Group
Location: Northampton, Northamptonshire, NN3 9UDShift Hours: 38 hrs per week (Mon – Fri)Salary: Competitive
We are recruiting a Development Chef to join our team at Booker.
In this new role, you’ll support our Own Brand food innovation programme, helping turn market insights into viable menu solutions that respond to customer needs, culinary trends and Bookers Own Brand priorities.
You’ll act as a culinary ambassador for Booker Own Brand, leading our point of view on food, drink and hospitality trends and helping shape future innovation priorities.
Working with the Product development team across a broad range of categories, you’ll drive quality &innovation whilst bringing a deep understanding of the food service customer base.
This is a highly collaborative role where success comes from building strong relationships with the own brand team as well as a wider range of stakeholders
If you’re passionate about food, have a self-starter attitude & thrive on working on a wide number of projects simultaneously, we’d love to hear from you.
- Using excellent culinary expertise and customer / market insight to inspire, problem solve and elevate our product development.
- Drive the creation of compelling and insight- led menu solutions
- Showcase & support own brand proposition development by leading internal and external stakeholder engagement ex: events, lunches and meetings, finding new opportunities to engage stakeholders
- Build strong relationships across the product team, the supplier base and their chefs, marketing & coms, sales team, and customers, to inspire & advocate our own brand offer
- Drive quality and excellence: Champion quality, food safety and customer standards throughout the development and benchmarking processes.
- Autonomously manage multiple priorities: Balance several projects simultaneously while delivering to deadlines in a changing and fast-moving environment.
- Pro-actively seek opportunities to elevate the customer & colleague exposure and understanding of our brands. Your passion for product shows up at all occasions.
- Work closely with cross functional teams including Own Brand, Buying, Marketing and sales teams to ensure successful product roll outs
- Contribute to Bookers culinary visibility and credibility through media campaigns, acting as the Ambassador for own Brand excellence
- Proven experience as a Development Chef within food manufacturing, with a strong understanding of hospitality and foodservice problematics.
- Outstanding culinary skills and a genuine passion for food and drink innovation.
- Strong knowledge of UK foodservice, hospitality and consumer food trends.
- Commercial awareness and the ability to balance creativity, quality and cost.
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, with the confidence to engage stakeholders at all levels.
- A collaborative approach and the ability to build effective working relationships across functions.
- Strong organisation skills and the ability to prioritise competing demands while maintaining attention to detail.
- Proactive and inquisitive attitude to create opportunities for yourself
- Resilience, adaptability and a positive, solutions focused mindset.
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