New Product Development - Undergraduate Placement Opportunity

Role Responsibility

Key Accountabilities:

• Supporting the NFD and EFD team in first class concept development through to trials, launch and post-launch stages.
• Test and validate our dishes to ensure our food safety and quality are met
• Support scale up trials and raw material assessments in the production kitchen.
• Prepare and organise product samples for internal presentations, external testing, photoshoots and other product submissions
• Lead support for all general NFD/EFD team activities including change management
• Support the kitchen team when the Kitchen Assistant is on annual leave.

Responsibilities:

Frist Class Concept Development:

• Support the preparation of internal food tastings. Take notes and actions, ensure attendance and share outputs with necessary teams.
• Prepare product benchmarks and conduct tastings to assess all relevant food concepts to ensure we are always developing best in class food.
• Conduct raw material assessments against the specification at concept and trial stages to ensure we are selecting the best quality ingredients.
• Own the documentation of food tastings through shelf-life assessments from fresh / frozen and champion the quality standards our consumers will expect at each stage of the product life.
• Drive the generation of cooking instructions for new dishes in accordance with our food safety and quality criteria.
• Complete online research for benchmarking exercises, creating relevant tools to show the results.

The Customer

• Support customer meetings to prepare food and take notes where required.

New and Existing Food Development

• Attend the weekly NFD and Process meetings.
• Lead all support activities to the Process Technologists in planning, preparing and conducting scale up trials in the production kitchen.
• Drive the successful completion of all product testing and sample submissions at trial stage.
• Support the NFD & EFD team with sample preparation and organisation in the production kitchen and development kitchen.
• Ensure product sample submissions are completed on time with the required documentation for testing, customer submissions and photoshoots etc.
• Support with the completion of trial paperwork, QAS, Keycards and Handover documentation
• Assist the NFD/EFD team in raising and processing change forms for any changes to recipes or ingredients.

​​​​​​​Product Quality

• Own quality improvement projects where given and drive the planning, investigation and execution of improvement initiatives in collaboration with the Process Technologists, Technical and Operations teams.
• Attend taste panel & positive release meetings to drive Bigham’s quality culture
• Support the NFD/EFD team in completing 4, 8 & 12 week post launch review documentation.
• Support the maintenance and training of our QAS product standards to ensure these are always up to date and well understood by the site teams.
• Lead the management of Keycards keeping the Keycard Register and filing of Keycards up to date, print Keycards where required and ensuring all issued Keycards are signed off by key stakeholders.

The Ideal Candidate

Qualifications:

• Currently enrolled in a relevant degree program, graduating 2026/27
• Passion for food and new product development.
• Strong organisational and communication skills.
• Proficiency in MS Office applications.
• demonstrable experience of working in a collaborative team environment.

This one-year placement opportunity at Charlie Bigham's will provide you with valuable experience and a deeper understanding of the NPD/NFD process. If you are enthusiastic, detail-oriented, and eager to learn, we encourage you to apply and be a part of our dynamic NFD team.

The starting date will be from June or July 2025

Join us in shaping the future of food development and creating culinary innovations that delight our customers!