Associate Innovation Chef

JOB POSITION: Associate Innovation Chef
FUNCTION: Foods R&D

LOCATION: Bangalore

ABOUT UNILEVER:

Be part of the world’s most successful, purpose-led business. Work with brands that are well-loved around the world, that improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We promote innovation, big and small, to make our business win and grow; and we believe in business as a force for good. Unleash your curiosity, challenge ideas and disrupt processes; use your energy to make this happen. Our brilliant business leaders and colleagues provide mentorship and inspiration, so you can be at your best. Every day, nine out of ten Indian households use our products to feel good, look good and get more out of life – giving us a unique opportunity to build a brighter future. 

Every individual here can bring their purpose to life through their work. Join us and you’ll be surrounded by inspiring leaders and supportive peers. Among them, you’ll channel your purpose, bring fresh ideas to the table, and simply be you. As you work to make a real impact on the business and the world, we’ll work to help you become a better you.

PURPOSE & CONTEXT:

Work on innovation/renovation/activation projects as per the brief agreed with the business. 

PURPOSE OF THE JOB: 

• Drive global culinary trend scouting to ignite concept design in Nutrition.

• Consumer Centricity: Incorporate consumer insights into developing scratch recipes or recipe solutions. Create stimuli for dish observation within consumer exploration activities. Design and create technical stimuli for quantitative and qualitative consumer tests.

• Ignite & strengthen through culinary knowledge & technology, for future innovation. Develop new concepts.

• Product Development (individual responsibility):

• Develop prototypes of new products at lab-scale or pilot-scale complying to regulatory and other internal requirements.

• Co-ordinate/manage (culinary) quality within RAP (recipe approval process) and functional aspects of the product.

• Design and apply culinary ideas and insights into global product design and development, including ‘golden benchmark/culinary prototype/ scratch recipe’.

• Product improvement & Value Engineering projects: Identify potential areas of flexing current specification/formulation, competition bench marking to drive potential savings, superiority, better for you & planet.

• Responsible for on time delivery & project execution.

• Responsible for risk management & claims support. Ensure compliance to Unilever standard, legal, regulatory compliances.

• Shelf-life stability: conduct stability studies to establish intermediate & finished product shelf-life.

• Specification management: Responsible for adopting Unilever Raw material specifications & creation of new finished product specification to ensure delivery of quality and technical action standards. Adopt digital R&D ways of working.

• Product Application: To develop appropriate applications, cooking instructions and recipes for product usage.

• Lead technical tastings ensuring standardized behavior.

• Demonstrations: To create product demonstration ideas and to showcase the demos at various forums.

• Training: To conduct basic cooking appreciation sessions for R&D & Non-R&D personnel. Design and apply global culinary tools and trainings.

• Ownership of Innovation kitchen: taking full responsibility of upkeep and maintenance of innovation kitchen.

• Benchmarking: To benchmark our products internally to competition products as needed.

• Co-create and ensure the quality of activation/communication materials in all media/consumer channels which relate to trends, cooking functionality and application. Create and demo food hacks.

• Co-create activation and communication material for claims and demos. Culinary advisory on selling story.

• Maintain effective links with Chefs in other regions and countries.

• Be a passionate ambassador of the Culinary Art and NO food waste towards our consumers and our employees.

Required Professional skills

• Breakthrough Thinking

• Seizing the Future (Awareness of market trends and ability to ideate in response)

• External Orientation

• Team Commitment

• Training & presentations

• Passion for Growth

• Knowledge of regional, Indian and world cuisines. (Culinary expertise)

• Knowledge of different cooking techniques and understanding about ingredients and their roles. (Recipe creation)

• Ability to cook different recipes using different techniques

• Information seeking, mining and processing

• Recipe development and presentation

• Ability to translate ideas into prototypes / products.

• Documentation and information management.

• Consumer insight understanding

General Skills

• Good team player

• Excellent networking skills with chef community

• Competency in English communication

 Required experience

• Education: 3 year Diploma in Hotel Management or Degree in Culinary Technology

• Work experience: 4-5 yrs

• Industry Preference: Hotel chain in India / abroad with experience of working in multi-cuisine restaurant(s) and Indian food industry/Start-up Ecosystem. Candidates specializing in Oriental Cuisine (Chinese/Korean/Thai/Japanese) will be preferred.

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion 

Unilever embraces diversity and encourages applicants from all walks of life! This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity.