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

In 2025, Tamar Grow Local is busy with numerous projects across the Tamar Valley and nationally and are in need of an extra pair of hands to help with our Grow Share Cook project and with Tamar Valley Food Hubs.

Grow Share Cook

Grow, Share Cook is a project providing free vegetables and cookery workshops to individuals and families experiencing food insecurity in Plymouth for up to 12 months. The project is funded by Plymouth City Council and Plymouth Community Homes and reviewed annually, therefore continuation of this role is dependant on funding. Volunteers are involved in the growing, packing and cooking sessions wherever possible. Our aim is to help improve health and wellbeing through fresh food, home cooking and healthy eating.

Tamar Valley Food Hubs

Tamar Valley Food Hubs is a not-for-profit online farmer’s market connecting small-scale food and drink producers to local customers. We deliver the best of seasonal Tamar Valley produce to homes, workplaces and collection points across the Valley each week whilst paying growers and producers a fair price for everything they sell with us.

The Role

This will be a varied, practical and busy role across two Tamar Grow Local projects – Grow Share Cook and Tamar Valley Food Hubs.

We anticipate that in the first instance this will be a 23-30 hour per week (negotiable) role but may vary during busier times throughout the year. Normal working days will be Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday but there may be a need to work on other days of the week, evenings or weekends in order to attend cook sessions. We will pay £26,032 pro rata for a 37.5 hour week.

We need a coordinator for Grow Share Cook who is passionate about people and as efficient and orderly as it is possible to be. This part of the role will involve liaising with participants, Tamar Grow Local, the cookery workshop leader, collection point managers and other stakeholders to arrange for vegetable deliveries and coordinate the cookery sessions.

This will include:

• Setting up subscriptions for new recruits on the Open Food network software, pausing subscriptions when required and setting up order cycles for each veg bag delivery run.
• Contacting each participant regularly by text, email or telephone to remind them of veg bag delivery time and collection point.
• Follow up on any non-collected veg bags and refer back to the referee or PCH as appropriate
• Recruiting new participants
• Developing and analysing survey forms
• Update spreadsheets regularly
• Distribute, collect and evaluate regular feedback forms
• Engage and maintain the Grow Share Cook Facebook group
• Keep scrupulous records of collections and updates
• Organise and facilitate cooking sessions, including organising venues, liaising with the chef, booking transport, liaising with volunteers and other staff to co-ordinate ingredients, recipes etc.
• Collecting and evaluating feedback from participants about the cook sessions
• Develop good relationships with our partners and funders.
• Gathering and interpreting feedback for reporting and evaluation purposes.
• Maintain and collate statistics for funders
• Contributing to the quarterly report to funders
• Maintaining records to GDPR requirements.
• Signposting to support services in Plymouth
• Ensuring communication materials, posters, flyers and marketing information is kept up to date.
• Undertaking the end of year evaluation report

You’ll also be assisting in the administration and delivery of Tamar Valley Food Hubs which means:

• Developing relationships with our partners and customers.
• Packing boxes with fresh and dried foods as well as packing chilled and frozen items
• Carefully packing van with deliveries ensuring orders and produce are kept in prime condition whilst out for delivery
• Maintaining excellent standards of hygiene and food safety throughout
• Cash handling
• Meeting customers at collection points and delivering to homes
• Developing relationships with customers including receiving customer feedback and reporting back
• Liaising with the TGL management team to enhance and improve our operations where necessary
• Managing the health and safety of yourself and those you are supervising

The Person

In an ideal world you’ll be passionate about local, fresh and seasonal produce.  You’ll be enthused by a project that combines good economic sense with humanitarian benefits and you will relish applying systematic order but be able to cope with uncertainty

The absolutely key attributes you will possess are:

• A passion for local, seasonal food.
• A keen eye for accuracy and detail.
• A desire to support the TGL team to succeed in the various linked projects
• Have a full and clean UK driving licence
• Have had no claims within the past 3 years
• Be able to manage your own time carefully
• Have a clean and tidy appearance and a cheery confident disposition
• An ability to build relationships with customers, funders and suppliers
• A willingness to “muck in” with other TGL priorities should the need arise
• Able to drive and have use of your own vehicle for occasional business use

Role requirements

• An organised and systematic approach to your work but with the capacity to be flexible
• Experience of working with spreadsheets and managing administrative tasks.
• Confidence in communicating in person, on the phone, by email, Facebook and on whatsapp
• Be able to get in and out of van regularly to do deliveries and lift out boxes
• Be able to use a sat-nav
• Be able to get yourself to and from Kelly Bray to collect the van (paid work starts at Kelly Bray hub)
• Be flexible on start and finish times.
• Be able to keep an eye on fuel levels and re-fuel van using company fuel card when required
• Support the team in maintaining cleanliness and tidiness of premises and completion of records.

Hours may be flexible and ad hoc to provide cover where required.

Application information

Please forward a CV and covering letter to sararock@tamargrowlocal.org and tell us why you think you’d be our perfect fit.

Please mention Roots to Work when applying for these jobs