Senior Culinary Development Chef

You will be working for an innovative and highly respected business which supplies products to major UK retailers and large foodservice groups. Importing products from all over the globe plus British suppliers, they design and develop delicious products, keeping up to date with ever changing market trends.

About the Senior Culinary Innovation Chef job

Reporting to the Head of Commercial, and working closely with the NPD Process team, Customers and Suppliers, you will take concepts from inception through to launch, while also enhancing and elevating the company’s existing product portfolio to ensure it remains relevant, innovative, and market-leading.

Key tasks

• Mentor kitchen and culinary support staff; help build innovation processes and best practices.
• Present concepts and tastings to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Lead the end-to-end development of new products and recipes, from concept generation and kitchen prototyping through to factory pilot trials and full-scale manufacturing.
• Customer product presentations.
• Collaborate closely with ingredient suppliers and factory process teams to understand scalability of recipes while maintaining product feasibility.
• Keep abreast of emerging culinary, flavour, and ingredient trends across retail, foodservice, and other developing market sectors.

About You

• 5+ years of professional culinary experience, including experience in food manufacturing, product development - retail and foodservice exposure is a must.
• Culinary degree or equivalent professional training preferred.
• Strong understanding of how recipes scale from small batch to industrial production.
• Understanding of functional ingredients.
• Working knowledge of food safety, shelf-life, and regulatory considerations, usual customer requirements (HFSS, FSA recommendations). HACCP knowledge beneficial.
• Strong communication skills; able to translate technical / culinary detail for non-culinary stakeholders.
• Project management skills — able to juggle multiple concepts at different development stages.
• Passion for food trends, ingredients, and pushing category boundaries.
• Able to travel for days at a time, and sometimes at short notice.
• Full driving licence.

More details

The Senior Culinary Innovation Chef job is based in Hertfordshire and is paying £60,000 to £70,000 plus car / car allowance according to your experience.

The package includes fully funded expenses, pension, performance bonus, car allowance or company car, 25 days holiday + bank holidays and birthday’s off!

The working hours are Monday to Friday, office hours but with flexibility.

Alternate job titles
Development Chef | NPD Chef | New Product Development Chef | Business Chef | Innovation Chef | Menu Development Chef | Food Manufacturing NPD Jobs

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