Name: Olivia Colbeck
Age: 23
Job title: Digital, logistics & sustainability manager
Company & location: Boundless, Bristol
Education: MA Modern Languages in Spanish & Italian, University of Exeter
Explain your job to us in a sentence (or two): Day to day, I run our social media and manage online sales (both UK and internationally) as well as monitoring our emails and enquiries. Tuesdays I step into the accounts department, and then on Thursday I’m part logistics – planning POs and managing our manufacturers. On top of that, I co-ordinate our retailer and distributor orders. I’m never really sure how to answer when someone asks what my job is!
What does a typical day look like for you? Literally no day is the same at Boundless, mainly due to how quickly everything’s growing! One day I could be out with our photographer getting new snaps for our social, then I’ll get an email saying we’re flying to Ireland on Friday for some last-minute sampling. That’s the fun of it really, there’s always something going on, which I love.
“Boundless is such a family, and they want any new member of staff to feel part of that”
Tell us about how you went about applying for your job. Our founder’s pretty tough. There were five parts to the interview and the final challenge was a 10km race against the other candidate… kidding. Honestly, it was the best interview I’ve ever had. I really got on with the team from the first time I met them, and we discussed everything from what I thought I could bring to the team to our favourite TV shows. Boundless is such a family, and they want any new member of staff to feel part of that.
What’s the best part about working for a food company? The fact that every day is different, you get to meet loads of other cool brands and see them grow too – plus my friends and family love me for the free snacks!
And what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in food & drink? There is so much to think about before a packet of your product ends up on the shelf. We don’t just spend all day snacking!
What advice would you give to other young people looking to get into the food & drink industry? Getting industry experience with larger companies is great, but if you want to be an integral part of the brand and know you’ll make a difference in what happens, a startup is definitely for you.
What’s your ultimate career dream? Long-term, working in immigration law, but right now I’m very happy where I am!
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