Details:
- Salary: £32,000 - 40,000 - Annum
- Job Type: Permanent
- Job Status: Full-Time
- Salary Per: Annum
- Location: Berkshire
- Date: 5 days ago
Description:
Zest is recruiting a Development Chef to join an NPD team, combining culinary expertise with commercial awareness to create and improve products that delight customers and support the business's growth. You'll take recipes from first concept right through to launch and beyond.
THE OPPORTUNITY
You'll create and develop recipes for new and existing products, working to agreed timescales and keeping documentation accurate throughout every NPD stage-gate. You'll also continuously review what's already on the range, looking for ways to improve quality and value, and you'll stay close to production handing developed products over to the Process Technologist, supporting factory trials and monitoring those first production runs to make sure launches land well.
Food safety and compliance run through everything you do, with development products regularly reviewed against HACCP plans and food safety requirements. You'll be a regular voice in NPD meetings and project reviews, bringing market trends, consumer insights and industry innovation into the conversation, and thinking commercially about ingredient functionality, process efficiency and viability at every stage. Sustainability matters here too you'll play your part in the business's CSR commitments, from sustainable sourcing to reducing food waste and environmental impact.
WHAT YOU'LL BRING
- A genuine passion for food, with a knack for generating new ideas and spotting opportunities to improve products and processes
- Bakery experience or relevant training
- A results-focused approach taking ownership of projects, prioritising well and delivering high-quality outcomes to timescale
- Strong collaboration skills, building good relationships across functions and contributing to team success
- A quality and food safety mindset, with high standards of compliance, accuracy and attention to detail
- Commercial awareness, balancing creativity with customer requirements and business objectives
- A continuous improvement mindset, staying on top of industry trends and genuinely engaged with sustainability and CSR
Please note: Sponsorship is not available for this role, all candidates must have UK Right to work.
If you would like to find out more and arrange a confidential conversation please reach out to Danielle Bailey on (phone number removed) or (url removed)
As you know over here at Zest we like to do things properly and always want to keep you, the candidate in the loop. Applying to this 'one of a kind' role you give Zest permission to hold your information. If you want to know more about how Zest look after your personal information please visit our privacy policy on the website (url removed)