Sourcing Lead
Hotel Chocolat Posted on 2022-11-18
| Salary | Not mentioned |
|---|---|
| Location | Hybrid remote in St. Neots |
| Type | Full-time |
Job Description
Hotel Chocolat has built a strong position as the UK’s favourite premium chocolate brand and continues to grow rapidly, with a range extending from luxury giftable chocolates to alcohol, coffee and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the Velvetiser™. We’re multi-category, multi-channel, and multi territory, always with the customer, and our direct connection with them, at the heart. Our mission is to make people happy through chocolate. Customer, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers can all benefit from the success we create together.
We have an exciting opportunity for a Buyer – Ingredients to join our Procurement Team on a permanent basis.
At Hotel Chocolat we pride ourselves on the quality and amazing flavours of our ingredients. From whole Italian hazelnuts to intense fruity raspberry juice and top-quality champagne, our recipes are core to our business, and so we take our ingredients procurement very seriously!
In this fantastic sourcing role you will be responsible for owning the ingredients supply base and spend and take responsibility for leading the co-creation and execution of the category strategy. You will take an important role in optimising our growth and help drive our ethical and sustainability agenda. You will have focus on improving cost and quality within your category, whilst mitigating supply failure risks and driving continuous improvement.
In addition to sourcing our incredible ingredients, there will be opportunities to get involved in other projects relating to product innovation and new product development.
Where possible, here at Hotel Chocolat we have adopted a hybrid working pattern. For this role it means working three days a week on-site at our Fulfilment Centre in St. Neots. The other two days can be spent working from wherever you choose, either on-site, remotely or from home. Well-being and happiness at work are important to us, so we’re open to chat about flexible working.
SHOW US HOW ITS DONE
- Manage the direct ingredients product categories with £3-8m spend across multiple suppliers, to deliver strategies and results that mitigates risk, optimises value, and develops great suppliers selected for sustainable scalable solutions
- Manage competitive bidding process, tendering and contract management via our sourcing platform
- Own development and delivery of value and savings pipeline for the ingredients categories
- Understand the external market environment, gather market intelligence, benchmark against the external world and understand price drivers to influence requirements and specifications internally and externally.
- Analysis, recommendations and implementation of solutions for special projects that enable agility within the Procurement Team to respond to business needs and drive structural improvements
- Deploy our SRM framework to maximise supplier capabilities to drive performance, originality of innovation and ethics
- Work with our development teams, to source and develop new and existing suppliers for both NPD and continuous improvement projects, with an emphasis on evolving our portfolio to be even more environmentally and socially responsible
- Own category regular reporting, to measure performance against budgets and forecasts
- As we grow, our data and systems are growing with us but are not where we want them just yet (but there is a plan!). In the meantime, owning your category data, price queries, and supplier set up will be key. As well as your ability to identify and implementation of (automated) process improvements to drive efficiency
WHO YOU ARE & WHAT YOU HAVE
Essential
- Procurement or Supply Chain experience in food ingredients or similar category with quality as a key requirement
- Strong drive to deliver results and appetite to continuously learn and grow
- Ability to build relationships at all levels
- Excellent communication skills
- Entrepreneurial – able to think differently to drive improvement
Desirable
- Professional procurement qualification
- FMCG industry experience
- Sourcing category experience
- Sourcing strategy development
WORKING AT HOTEL CHOCOLAT
You’ll play a vital role within a constantly evolving company, in a friendly and energetic workplace. Staff perks include an unlimited 50% discount on all our products, as well as 70% off the rate card price for you and your guests when you stay at the Hotel Chocolat – our hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia, set among the cocoa trees of our historic Rabot Estate.
At Hotel Chocolat, we treat each other with respect, equality and grace. Our mantra? Be brave. Be kind.
This People Pledge is underpinned by our values of Originality, Authenticity and Ethics.
We encourage new ideas and fresh thinking and for each of you to bring your ORIGINALITY to work.
We want you to be your AUTHENTIC self – and feel comfortable to share your differences, and what makes you unique.
Our commitment to being an ETHICAL business means we have a deep sense of fairness when it comes to the way we treat one another.
This applies during our recruitment process too. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer who positively celebrates a diverse and inclusive culture. We welcome people from all walks of life to join us, bringing their individuality to help us reach our ambitious growth plans. We believe this is critically important to help us create a place to work where everyone feels like they belong, can be themselves and where all of our differences are celebrated.
Company description:
Luxury British cacao grower and chocolatier Hotel Chocolat was founded to make people happy. Co-founders Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris built the brand on three unwavering pillars – Originality, Authenticity and Ethics – that remain central to the brand’s success. Starting as an early online brand, the first Hotel Chocolat store opened in Hertfordshire in 2004, and its manager is still at the helm. Today, we have more than 150 Hotel Chocolats across the UK, Japan and the United States, with a multi-million strong online customer database. In the grounds of our eco-conscious, organic cacao farm in Saint Lucia we have also created an amazing visitor experience Project Chocolat, together with the award-winning Rabot Hotel and Restaurant. One of the few chocolate makers to actually grow cacao, we connect the world of sustainable agriculture with the hedonism of top-quality chocolate. This knowledge has enabled us to bring an innovative Gentle Farming programme into the world, bringing to our cacao growing communities enough money for a happy life whilst supporting a bio-diverse, climate smart farming technique. The Hotel Chocolat family has a strong set of cultural values best summarised as ‘Be brave. Be kind.’ We’re just getting started. Come and be a part of what’s next.
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