Development Chef: Culinary at Woolworths

Introduction

• WHAT: As a Development Chef you support the business in creating and developing delicious, inspiring and sustainable customer centric product solutions that are of the highest quality, differentiated, aspirational and on-trend. HOW: With your culinary expertise, curiosity, creative flare and food sector experience, you deliver product excellence in line with our customer centric product strategies.

Job description
Strategic 

• Share, inform and articulate your deep-rooted culinary knowledge and skill set with the PD Team.
• Consistently stay abreast of food and food technology trends and processes by working with industry experts both locally and internationally 
• Ensuring recipes are translatable from a process, commercial and technical stance.
• Drive, maintain and inspire a world-class sustainable product standard and framework 

 Product Excellence 

• Working with Foods Teams and key suppliers to understand and create delicious product both at the forefront of innovation and consistently evolving and challenging current quality standards. 
• Create new recipes and refine taste profiles through experimentation, in a consistent and methodical manner- establishing standards for recipe dishes, flavour profiles and products as identified through trends and insights inputs.
• Strive to better understand and stay abreast of shifts in culinary scientific developments and new advances.
• Work across different teams in the business and suppliers to ensure recipes are at the forefront of innovation, are consistently evolving and challenging quality standards.
• Consistent exposure to factory and food processing environments that supports and informs up to date solutions.
• Modify current and develop new product recipes and ingredient selection while taking note of nutrition, "good for me" attributes and trending ingredients. Where applicable.

Leadership 

• Inspire, inform and influence product and teams through culinary innovation to deliver industry leadership position
• Collaborate within the broader Foods Team to foster a deep appreciation for good food.
• Lead and motivate the Jnr chefs and students to inspire and develop them. 
• Establish, nurture and foster relationships with food leaders and culinary experts and chefs.

Culture 

• Inspire an environment of creativity and exchange of culinary knowledge 
• Well-rounded culinary experience informs and drives ingredient processing considering large scale factory application whilst keeping deliciousness at the forefront.
• Inspiring output for all internal workshops - strategic cuisines, trend workshops and inputs into PD Day. 
• Confidently, clearly and creatively translate culinary knowledge to broaden and deepen the collective food understanding. 
• Help drive and inspire an obsession for quality by delivering world class workshops 

Process 

• Deliver new product / innovation through technology and processes
• Cultivate strong supplier relationships 
• Incubate an environment that is conducive to rich culinary product and processing exchange 
• Collaborating with supplier to support the PD Teams in developing viable and delicious product solutions 
• Translating trends and customer insights into delicious, inspiring and aspirational product 
• Care for and maintain a professional and highly functional working environment

Minimum requirements

• Relevant diploma or degree in culinary arts 
• Minimum 3 years in the hospitality or related industry experience post qualification
• Experience working within product development preferred 
• Exposure to FSR AND QSR industries beneficial
• Experience working across multiple cuisines 
• Thorough understanding of the meaning and application of technically&/ scientifically led product Innovation 
• Chef de partie &/ sous chef level
• Drivers license essential 
• Strong collaboration, communication and presentation skills
• Critical thinker - engages in innovative thinking in unusual situations
• Customer Centric
• Project Management skills
• Confident and Passionate Ambassador
• Innovation Mindset- on trend with food and flavour developments
• Well established sensory evaluation ability
• The ability to distinguish and articulate ingredients, product quality, flavour profiles, and product attributes
• Project Management skills
• Commercial acumen
• Willingness to travel locally and internationally