NPD Lead Development Chef / Technologist

BBF Limited; Hull and East Yorkshire; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 60,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension

Life Assurance/Death in Service

Company Shop access

25 days holiday

GP access

Bereavement service

Learning & Development

Online training platform

BBF Star Awards

Onsite parking

Onsite canteen

Onsite Cake Shop

Job summary

BBF Limited in Hull is seeking an experienced NPD Lead Development Chef / Technologist to drive bakery product innovation. You will shape portfolio direction by turning trends and customer briefs into market-leading recipes and samples for major retailers and foodservice customers.

You will work in a lively NPD team, translating insights into concepts, ensuring timely delivery, and collaborating across cross‑functional teams while maintaining brand standards and quality at every stage.

Qualifications

• Experience in food NPD or development chef role, ideally bakery.
• Ability to move concepts through development stages to final product.
• Food science/culinary qualification desirable.
• Proficient with PLM processes and office tools.
• Strong communication and project management skills.

Responsibilities

• Proactively develop creative, innovative recipes across chilled, frozen and ambient bakery categories.
• Translate market trends and consumer insights into new concepts meeting customer needs.
• Create commercially viable products aligning with manufacturing capabilities.
• Deliver NPD projects across the group to meet critical path timings.
• Communicate effectively with customers and cross‑functional teams.
• Be hands-on, preparing samples in the test bakery to high standards.
• Manage projects from start to finish, independent and on time.
• Develop for specific customer areas (e.g., Morrisons, Asda, foodservice).
• Understand and apply customer brand standards for accounts.

Skills

NPD / New Product Development

Recipe Development

Bakery experience

Project Management

Communication Skills

PC Literacy (Excel/PowerPoint/Word)

Education

Food science/technology or culinary qualification

Tools

Excel

PowerPoint

Word

PLM software

Job description

NPD Lead Development Chef / Technologist

BBF Limited

Hull, Humberside

Love turning ideas into reality and creating delicious products that consumers enjoy every day?

We're looking for a talented and creative Lead Development Chef / Technologist to help shape the future of our bakery portfolio. With a passion for bakery or a flair for patisserie, you'll transform trends, consumer insights and customer briefs into exciting, market-leading products.

Working in lively NPD team, you'll combine creativity, technical expertise and commercial awareness to bring innovative bakery products to life for some of the UK's leading retail and foodservice customers.

Responsibilities:

• Proactively develop creative, innovative and best-in-class recipes across chilled, frozen and ambient categories.
• Translate market trends, consumer insights and emerging flavours into new recipe concepts that meet customer needs.
• Create commercially viable products that deliver outstanding taste and quality and align with manufacturing capabilities.
• Deliver NPD projects across the group in line with agreed critical path timings.
• Ensure timely communication and effective collaboration with customers and cross-functional teams throughout the development process.
• Proactively look for gaps, innovation, quality improvements across the business
• Be hands on and prepare samples in the test bakery to a desired standard
• Proven ability to complete all relevant NPD tasks required within our PLM process, independently to the desired standard.
• Drawing on their experience of the NPD process the individual will be able manage a project from start to finish without relying on prompts from others
• Organise themselves to predict tasks and plan working within the critical path timings
• Developing for a specific customer area e.g. Innovation, Morrisons, Asda, foodservice
• Recognising and understanding the required brand standards for the account
• Working alongside the cross functional teams to deliver the projects in full and on time.
• Attending customers submission when required
• Understand the customers current range.

Experience and qualifications

• Relevant experience in food NPD, recipe development or a development chef/technologist role, ideally within bakery.
• Experience taking concepts through agreed development stages to a finalised product.
• A food science, food technology or culinary qualification is desirable, or equivalent practical experience.
• PC Literacy, excel, PowerPoint, word
• Project Management
• Relationship Management
• Communication/Presentation Skills

Who are BBF Limited?

BBF Limited are one of the UK’s leading ambient cake and chilled dessert manufacturers of retailer own label, licensed and branded cakes, supplying recognisable major retailers across the UK and European market.

Our team of experts develop and manufacture a wide range of high-quality ambient cake products across several different categories including celebration cakes, mini rolls, mince pies, fruit pies and a wide range of chilled desserts including cheesecake, crumbles and sponge cakes. These include mince pies, celebration cakes, slab cakes, cupcakes and many more!

We are passionate about our products and aim to put the customer at the heart of everything we do.

With recent investment and acquisitions taking us to nearly 1,400 direct employees, this is an exciting time to join BBF Limited! We are continually looking to grow, but we can only do that with exceptional talent across all levels and disciplines of the business. That is where you come into it!

On top of making some delicious cakes and desserts, we do a lot of fun stuff too! Whether that be Christmas fun days, pancake-flipping competitions, Red Nose Day events or odd-sock days, you’ll be coming to work smiling.

What benefits do we offer?

Financial

• Pension
• 4x Life Assurance/Death in Service Benefit
• Access to ‘Company Shop’ – a discounted re-distributor of surplus food and household products

Health & Wellbeing

• 25 days holiday (plus statutory holidays)
• 24/7 Access to a GP
• 24/7 Bereavement Service

Personal & Professional Development

• Dedicated in-house Learning & Development/Training team
• Online training platform with access to 100+ training courses

A few other bits

• Quarterly and Yearly BBF Star Awards – recognising those who have gone above and beyond!
• Free on-site parking
• Onsite canteen
• Onsite Cake Shop (majorly discounted)

Recruitment Agencies

All our recruitment is managed centrally via the internal recruitment team. We operate a recruitment PSL when we require assistance, and we aren't adding to this at present. Any agency assistance will be instructed accordingly and therefore any CVs sent to any BBF Limited employee will be treated as a gift and won't be liable for a fee. Please don't speculatively contact us about this vacancy or any other vacancy.