Catering Consultant

apetito; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 30,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading food supplier in the healthcare sector is seeking a Catering Consultant to support customers in the UK. The role involves managing relationships, identifying new business opportunities, and providing excellent service. Candidates should have B2B sales experience and a strong ability to build trust and rapport with customers. This home-based position will require travel across hospitals in the Midlands and East of England, with a focus on providing tailored solutions to meet healthcare needs.

Benefits

Competitive salary

Company car

25 days holiday per year

Generous annual bonus scheme

Pension scheme

Life assurance scheme

Retail discounts

Qualifications

• Proven experience of achieving and exceeding sales targets.
• Experience of managing accounts and complex customers.
• Clean or virtually clean driving license.

Responsibilities

• Identify new business opportunities within the territory.
• Develop incremental business in existing accounts to retain business.
• Provide first-class service and handle customer feedback effectively.

Skills

B2B sales experience

Agile communication and presentation skills

Organisational skills

Empathy and understanding

Education

GCSE's/A Levels

Job description

Overview

The Catering Consultant will ensure our customers in the healthcare sector are supported and getting the most from the service apetito provide. Enabling long-term profitable partnerships.

Our team has developed and grown significantly, and we have a great mix of training and operations, catering consultants, marketing and national account managers.

The Healthcare team is led by a dynamic senior leadership team (SLT).

There is a high degree of autonomy within the team, with a mix of independent working, smaller group working in your territory and coming together as a whole team for mobilisations.

This role would suit someone with Account Manager experience with a proven sales record in the catering industry. You'll show passion for building the healthcare business, offering our product, system, service proposition through a consultative selling approach and building on sound relationships. You will be responsible for managing existing business, as well as growing new business. Our aim is to always exceed our customers’ expectations so patience, understanding and proactivity are essential in this role.

The healthcare team are experts in the field, with a wealth of experience and knowledge of our industry providing us with a thorough and empathetic understanding of our customers and enabling us to fully support their strategy and vision. We supply catering product, systems and services to healthcare organisations both directly and through contract caterers.

This role is home-based covering operational Hospitals across the Midlands and East of England (alsoto our Head Office in Wiltshire) so will involve early starts, late finishes and overnight stays.

The geographical area covered by this role includes: Midlands, Oxfordshire and North of the M25 to East Anglia.

Who we are

Our aspiration and complete commitment is to continue to grow the Healthcare business each year and remain the market leaders in the Healthcare sector; something we are immensely proud of.

apetito is the UK’s leading food supplier to the health and social care sectors serving more than 700 care homes, 650 hospitals, as well as 200 education settings.

Our meals are expertly crafted by our dietitiansand chefs, and then frozen to lock in the goodness.

For over 25 years our sister company Wiltshire Farm Foods has been cooking and delivering over 300 different delicious frozen meals to our customer's homes.

Responsibilities

The Healthcare Team are ambitious and have great plans for growth. This will be achieved by:

• Identifying new business opportunities, within the territory, that fit the existing healthcare strategy and converting qualified prospects.
• Developing incremental business in existing accounts as appropriate whilst at the same time ensuring that existing business is retained.
• Providing first class continuing service, handling feedback /complaints effectively and efficiently to ensure a high level of business retention.
• In addition the catering consultant will be expected to support the national account team which manages our business with Contract Caterers within the NHS. This will involve providing regular support at the sites run by our key contract caterer customers within your area

Other Areas of Activity:

• Monitoring monthly sales and service reports to ensure you are fully aware of activity on your area
• To network within the industry to gain information regarding potential prospects as well as key developments within the industry
• To attend the regular face to face team meetings and to share ideas. Effectively utilising market intelligence to develop best practice, whilst constructively sharing solutions /benchmarks within the team
• Assist colleagues with new business implementations and mobilisations within the healthcare arena
• Effectively promote the brand via active involvement in local / national trade events

Qualifications/Personal Qualities

Essential:

• B2B sales experience
• Proven experience of achieving and exceeding sales targets – a focus on target achievement
• Experience of managing accounts and complex customers
• Agile communication and presentation skills - able to engage and build trust at all levels of the business, from board room to kitchen
• Demonstrate great team working (internally and externally)
• Demonstrate organisational skills and proactivity
• Proactive approach to time management and prioritisation to manage a complex workload effectively
• GCSE's/A Levels to support a high standard of business communication skills and basic numerical analysis
• Clean or virtually clean driving license

Desirable:

• NHS sales experience
• Relationships with NHS Catering Managers
• Cook Chill/ Cook Freeze experience
• Understanding of nutrition and catering systems in the NHS

Personal Qualities:

• Empathy and understanding of our culture of ‘making a real difference’
• Motivated to build strong long-term business, not just getting a quick result
• Self-motivated and resilient
• Pragmatic operator
• A team player: works with others to achieve optimum results in their own role and for the business as a whole
• Personable; Perceived as a low pressure operator with integrity
• Diplomatic, but assertive and demonstratesgravitas

Due to the geography of this role and the nature of working with customers, flexibility with working hours will be needed.

Travel to customers across the region and to national events, including overnight stays, will be a regular requirement - typically 1 night per week.

A company car is provided to facilitate this and a clean (or virtually clean) driving licence is essential.

As this role involves working with elderly and vulnerable customers, it is exempt from The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and requires a StandardDBS Disclosure.

Company Benefits

• Competitive salary – accredited Living Wage employer
• Company car
• 25 days holiday per year, plus bank holidays
• Option to purchase up to 5 additional days holiday per year
• Generous annual bonus scheme
• Pension scheme - employer matched contributions up to 5%
• Life assurance scheme worth 2x annual salary
• Free turkey or voucher at Christmas
• apetito perks scheme including salary sacrifice options and retail discounts

Our Values

As a family-owned business, we take great pride in being a company that makes a real difference and is dedicated to creating outstanding meals to be proud of.

We develop a range of products designed to enhance health and well-being for all our customers.

We are driven by a passion for service and dedicated to feeding some of the UK’s most vulnerable people.

We proudly support British food and farming, focusing on using the best ethical and sustainable produce in alignment with our goal to reach Net Zero by 2040.

Our ethical standards are recognised by the ETI and we are an accredited Living Wage employer.Learn more about apetito’s commitment to a more sustainable future.

We embrace inclusion, empowering individuals from diverse backgrounds.

Our commitment to making a real difference extends to customers, communities, and staff and we're on a mission to build an inclusive workplace where everyone reaches their full potential.