Food and Beverage Innovation Manager - Europe & New Markets

At Costa Coffee, we are what we craft. We’re reimagining coffee experiences in over 50 countries and counting, as a key part of the Coca-Cola System. Whether you get your coffee in a store, from a machine, at home, or on the go – we’ve got you covered.

As Food & Beverage Innovation Manager, you will be focusing on Europe and New Markets. You will be a key support partners & a subject matter expert you would work as an active consultant to the franchisee’s team & regularly support them, guide, coach & influence them to offer a COSTA ownable & brand standard F&B range. Work closely with global F&B & marketing team to ensure that we always have a great mix of global icons & new trending regional products that fuels growth through a robust rolling calendar.

You’ll own the identification of F&B trends for our target consumers in these markets, using your knowledge and expertise to turn data and research insights into fully developed products that can create a solid range pantry products ready for future launches. Keeps a close eye on competition across branded chains & individual’s cafés to build know how on what’s trending & fill any gaps in the range. If you are a someone who enjoy working in the franchisee system, can think out of box, innovate and a foodie at heart with experience of owning the food and beverage development then we’d love to hear from you!

For new market entries, you’ll craft tailored F&B strategies by identifying local food trends, assessing competitors, and establishing a product range that fits consumer needs and store formats. You’ll oversee the entire development process, ensuring all products meet quality and compliance standards, from initial concept through to launch. Passionate about innovation, you’ll be the driving force behind a creative and impactful F&B program across the franchise.

Our teams make a difference. Whether that’s working on new tech for the perfect pour, helping our teams grow, creating award-winning campaigns, crunching the numbers, or developing the latest exciting menu item; together, we stir up success.

We may be a global brand, but we haven’t forgotten our roots. That’s where the Costa Foundation and our fantastic community agenda come in. Whatever your role, you can help us change lives in coffee growing communities, and help your local community too.

We also want to help you grow in your career through amazing experiences, our apprenticeship scheme, and development programmes. At Costa, you can go beyond the day-to-day.

And as a Food & Beverage Innovation Manager, there’s never been a better time to join.

So, why Costa?

We didn’t become a global coffee brand by sitting back. When you work here, you join a community that values passion, progression and integrity, with some pretty brilliant perks to sweeten the deal:

• Own a piece of Costa’s success by becoming a share owner in Coca-Cola with our Share Investment Plan (SIP)
• A smart pension that saves you money on tax and national insurance, and matches your contributions up to 10%
• The Costa Financial Support Fund, supporting team members who find themselves in unexpected financial pressure
• 50% discount in all Costa-owned stores, and 25% off in other participating stores
• Private medical cover thanks to our Private Healthcare scheme
• And that’s not all. Explore even more of our perks here: https://bit.ly/costaperks

We’re passionate about being a great place to work, where you can bring your unique self into our mix. We firmly support diversity, equity and inclusion, and continue to work with our teams to shape the future of our culture and values: Disciplined to Deliver, Passion for Progress, Win with Warmth, Courage to Challenge and Trusted Team Players.

What you’ll do

Being a Food & Beverage Innovation Manager is about so much more than bringing our coffee to the world. It’s your chance to stir up real success - which means you’ll be:

• Build an amazing working relationship with franchisee partners & be their key POC for all F&B related topics.
• Supporting franchisee’s F&B range management through periodically supporting our partners to review their F&B range & performance based on consumer need and commercial performance and make recommendations on ranging strategy.
• Work closely with Global F&B team to deliver a consistent F&B experience & synergies across the region.
• Work as a project manager & conduct periodic interactions with franchisee partners to steward regional NPD, EPD & innovation process.
• Gather regional and market level research, insights and intelligence, taking this insight and turning into strategy.
• Leading supplier ideations and development process to develop food and beverage products.
• Setting F&B strategy and implementation for new market entry - review new market opportunity, understand the local consumer trends and competitor offering, assess the commercial viability of potential products and recommend a proposed range for launch taking into account sizing and pricing, consumer need and channel strategy

Who you are

It’s your unique ingredients we’re interested in:

• Experience of working in the franchisee business managing & building influence on external stakeholders.
• Hand on experience of developing & implementing E2E Innovation process.
• Hands on experience of developing food categories such as bakery, cakes & pastries, syrups, sauces, sandwiches, wraps, snacking etc.
• A good level of understanding of food safety principle, EU food regulations, commercial scale food production processes.
• Food & Beverage champion who keeps a tap on current market trends & translate these to relevant development plans.
• A good level of financial understanding and business acumen. Able to analyse figures and stats effectively and to produce credible written reports and recommendations.
• Excellent communication skills at all levels and able to build sustainable relationships
• The ability to project-manage several projects simultaneously.

Location: The role is hybrid, with one to two days per week at our Loudwater, High Wycombe office.