Find your place in the field of good food

Our goal is to connect good people with good food. We advertise sustainable food jobs and training opportunities to help jobseekers and employers find each other.

Roots to Work is a project of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.

Job description

Looking for a Product Development Chef!

Are you passionate about authentic and wholesome food? Are you looking to play a part in changing the food industry? Join us if you’re looking for a creative and strategic role designing food products and influencing a food start-ups strategy early on. We are on a mission to help families eat delicious, healthy, nutritious and sustainable food - setting an example across the industry.

Highlights:

• Innovative start-up with a creative, visionary team of foodies, 
• Work directly with founder to shape the strategy, with £0.5m funding  by Innovate UK
• Freelance contract – flexible work arrangements (part-time or full-time available)
• Varied food experience (multiple cuisine types, hand-making everything, farm to fork)
• Location: Somerset (near Frome BA11). Open to Bristol/London based with some travel

The Company

Join Little Origins, an innovative start-up at the forefront of changing food systems. We are a children and family food company that wants to set an industry-wide example on how to create nutritious, safe and sustainable food from farm to fork. We are passionate about all aspects of food: impeccable flavour, knowing our farmers and the land where our food has grown, making all of our food from scratch (e.g. home-making our plant based milk) and having a close relationship with the families who love our food.

We are a Direct 2 Consumer food subscription brand that delivers meals directly to people’s homes - allowing families to eat a delicious shared meal, whilst giving you back more time. The first 1000 days of a child’s life is key in influencing their lifelong health and eating habits. We want to support people to eat authentic meals free of ultra-processed food, made from organic ingredients and designed with the expertise of nutritionists and high-end chefs relieving parents of some of the meal-prep stress.

Join an entrepreneurial and fast-paced team at the beginning of our journey. We have won a £0.5m grant through Innovate UK to research and test products with customers before launching - giving us the opportunity to experiment and test new products and formats. We are working with some of the leading food scientists and retailers in the country, including Campden BRI, the National Centre for Food Manufacturing and industry leaders with opportunities to partner with renowned chefs.

As part of this phase, we will be:

• Testing 40-50 food recipes and formats directly with customers and receiving feedback
• Creatively exploring food that both children (6m - 3 years) and adults love - meals, finger foods, superfood snacks, broth, etc) with some constraints (eg. no salt, no added sugar)
• Placing nutrition at its heart - making food as fresh as possible (e.g. grinding our own flour) and working with regenerative agriculture and organic farmers.
• Making use of our nutrition research under the grant and applying it to our cooking methods  

The Job

• 3-5 days a week (product design & strategy and experimenting in the kitchen)
• Designing and experimenting with 40-50 recipes ready for customer testing
• Discussing meals based on nutrition, different cultural traditions, “slow food” and children eating habits
• Producing test batches of 10-20 portions of food for customer trials and feedback
• Managing Kitchen Food Safety SOP’s, opening and closing kitchen
• Example tasks:
  • (1) strategy example: shortlist 40-50 recipes with Founder, drawing on food trends, leading chefs and the nutritional and format constraints of children’s diets.
  • (2) product example: inspired by chefs & cuisines (e.g. Portuguese Bacalhau croquette), make a high-end nutritious fish croquette (no salt, no fishy taste), that kids can hold and is crunchy but easily chewed, that adults will enjoy as well. Take inspiration from other cultures  

The Candidate

Essential

• Qualified chef – restaurant or manufacturing experience with a passion for food and inherent interest in the food industry: from food’s taste and flavour and the immense diversity of cooking styles, to how food is grown and its cultural importance
• Can work independently with an a curious mindset, happy to work in an unstructured and changing environment with a small founding team
• A chef who is excited to creatively design recipes, experimenting with food formats to improve flavour, texture, visuals and draw on wide variety of resources for inspiration
• Strong interest in nutrition and in tweaking recipes to increase nutritional content and wellbeing, in particular plant-based and vegan food
• Ability and Interest and to cook from many different cultural heritages (Mediterranean, Asian, etc) and draw from different practices (e.g. fermentation, broth making)
• Has experience with children (through family) or cooking for children
• Ability to manage food safety requirements of all practices pertaining to food preparation and production (Minimum Level 3 Food Safety)
• Ability to work over email and basic tasks with Microsoft Word, Excel
• Full Driving Licence  

Desirable

• Passionate about influencing people’s relationship with food by returning to authentic and clean cooking, eliminating the use of ultra-processed foods where possible
• Has the ability to translate innovative food trends into interesting products
• Experience or interest in product development, understanding how food production can be scaled to larger volumes, including of making food for freezing/defrosting
• Ability or interest in planning meals, forecasting ingredient quantities and profitability
• Future growth opportunity to support recruitment and staff management  

The Benefits

• Competitive day-rate salary as a freelancer with flexible work schedule (full or part time)
• Opportunity to work with leading food innovators across the UK
• Opportunity to become a sustainability expert, from agriculture, to production and packaging
• Opportunity for strategic leadership and future growth of a team
• Versatile work experience

Application information

Fill in this application and send your CV - we look forward to finding out more about you, your expertise and what makes you tick.

Fill in this form by copying and pasting this URL or clicking here

https://forms.gle/STW7pMLkZhNjyEvo7

Please mention Roots to Work when applying for these jobs