Food Development Assistant

We are looking for a Food Development Assistant to join our team at loungers HQ. Reporting to the Head of Food and working closely with the Executive Development Chef and Food Development Manager on our Lounge and Brightside brands, you will be splitting your time between our Head Office in central Bristol and our Development Kitchen in Portishead. Our team is ambitious and passionate about delivering consistently excellent food to our guests. Your role is to support the Food Development Team throughout the menu development cycle from initial dish research and development right the way through to the training of our site teams. You'll be making sure all the crucial behind the scenes information is kept accurate and up-to-date, as well as helping with kitchen maintenance, basic food preparation and cookery. This role is for you if you love great food, are detail focussed, highly organized and enjoy working on project with timeframes. You'll be a self-starter who can learn to anticipate needs and can communicate with detail and clarity. Getting into the detail

• Research food trends, both broadly and for specific ideas and scanning for inspiration in line with brand direction and brief.
• Place food orders with suppliers for development sessions, cook offs and training.
• Manage deliveries and ensure ingredients are stored appropriately, with a particular focus on control sample storage and recording.
• Support the Executive Development Chef in ensuring the development kitchen remains clean and organised.
• Spend time in the kitchen with the Executive Development Chef, collecting information from them and suppliers as they develop, including costs, ingredient specs, recipe ingredient breakdowns, yields and methods.
• Support the Executive Development Chef with basic prep and cookery throughout development and during cook offs and training sessions.
• Actively scrutinise methods and recipes to ensure they align with the operational capacity of our kitchens.
• Communicate with suppliers to obtain samples, pricing and product specifications.
• Use our internal system (Starchef) to set up recipes and ingredients accurately in conjunction with supply chain and systems.
• Spend time in operations through weekly visits to our restaurants to gain understanding of how a kitchen operates as well as its limitations and get insight and ideas from our teams.
• Conduct step-by-step photography of recipes and batches from start to finish, ensuring recipe card photos and methods are clear for chefs and aligned to systems.
• Support the Food Development Manager in the creation of our suite of kitchen training content.
• Support in the proof reading of all menus, cookbooks and training materials prior to printing to ensure accurate information shared with customers and teams.
• Collaborate with the Food Development Manager to create in house videography for training content such as Dish of the Week.
• Collate customer and guest feedback for analysis by Food Development Manager and Head of Food.
• Work off a timeline agreed with wider departments to support interdependencies., Founder-led business - we might have 230 sites, but we still maintain an entrepreneurial spirit through everything we do
• 50% off food at all Lounges, Cosy Clubs and Brightsides
• 10% bonus
• Subsidised travel.
• Pension contribution
• 24/7 mental health support
• Amazing events including LoungeFest - our annual company festival - Christmas parties and more
• We want to work with nice people so if you want to work hard, have fun and be part of the Loungers ride, we'd love to have you.
  
  Loves food and is happy to share/discuss ideas openly.
• Positive and able to stay solution focused on the face of changing priorities.
• Driven by learning, always looking to improve skills and knowledge to find solutions.
• Self-starter, always looking for ways to improve and exceed expectations.
• Happy to get hands on and spend time in kitchens - both development and our restaurants.
• Not afraid to muck in and get hands dirty
• Star Chef (Fourth) - training can be provided
• Excel, Word & PowerPoint
• Demonstrated knowledge of online spreadsheet systems such as Smartsheets and Google Sheets
• Video editing (bonus)
  
  Loungers is a substantial and growing operator in the UK hospitality sector, operating over 230 sites in England and Wales across three distinct but complementary brands, Lounges, Cosy Club, and Brightside. Founded in 2002 by three friends who wanted to create a neighbourhood caf-bar that they would want to go to, the Group is now the only growing all-day operator of scale in the UK and has consistently outperformed the wider UK hospitality sector over the past three years. Despite being the fastest growing caf/restaurant group in the Country, Loungers has retained its entrepreneurial spirit and quirky 'Loungey' local community atmosphere., At Lounges, we have a clear objective that runs through everything we do. We call this 'the Cause': our Lounge is a home-from-home, offering delicious food and drinks, all day, on your doorstep.
We exist to bring people together and our unique atmosphere changes hour by hour with each wave of new customers. We are proud of our Lounge and its community, and our aim is simple - every customer leaves happy. We pride ourselves on having the best hospitality team around. We're the kind of place where a job naturally turns into a career, and as we're growing so rapidly, there are plenty of opportunities. It really is down to you how far you go! We ensure you get solid training, so you never feel out of your depth, and offer plenty of incentives, bonuses and recognition for everyone! Loungers is a substantial and growing operator in the UK hospitality sector, operating over 230 sites in England and Wales across three distinct but complementary brands, Lounges, Cosy Club, and Brightside. Founded in 2002 by three friends who wanted to create a neighbourhood caf-bar that they would want to go to, the Group is now the only growing all-day operator of scale in the UK and has consistently outperformed the wider UK hospitality sector over the past three years. Despite being the fastest growing café/restaurant group in the country, Loungers has retained its entrepreneurial spirit and quirky and Loungey local community atmosphere.