My food & drink job: Catherine Child, assistant product development manager, Pilgrim’s Europe

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Catherine Child Pilgrim’s Europe

Name: Catherine Child

Age: 24

Job title: Assistant product development manager

Company & location: Pilgrim’s Europe

Education: Food Science and Nutrition at University of Nottingham with a year’s work experience in industry.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? A radio presenter or events planner. I have always liked organising things and always been the one in my friendship groups planning events/holidays and making sure everyone is on time!

“A placement year at uni helps you get an initial look into the world of food and decide which area you might enjoy”

Why did you decide to go for a career in food & drink? I always used to cook and bake with my mum when I was growing up. When I was in school, I really enjoyed biology as well as food technology, so when I found out my local college offered food science and nutrition as an A-level, I liked that it was a mix of the two subjects I enjoyed the most in school.

My parents were both in the science industry, so I got my interest from them. I enjoyed it so decided to study it at university as well, I feel that this naturally lent itself to exploring the career options available within food and drink and completing a placement year really cemented that for me.

Explain your job to us in a sentence (or two): I manage the full end-to-end development of frozen ready meals, from shaping the initial brief and planning recipes with NPD chefs through to trials, artwork, packaging, first production, and final launch – working closely with cross-functional teams to ensure we deliver high-quality products on time.

PM 7731 RICHMOND Fresh pork, chicken & MF sausage INSTAGRAM stg

What does a typical day look like for you? Panelling to some degree – internally with the chefs or externally with customers for: submissions/trials sign-off/first production sign-off/benchmarking. I spend time on calls with teams for the different customers aligning on projects and critical paths. Completing submission documents and other admin for customer meetings.

Tell us how you went about applying for your job: I started as the NPD co-ordinator, and then was promoted to assistant project manager. I hope to be promoted again to project manager! For my NPD co-ordinator Interviews it was two stages – the first was a general chat about my life and experience, and why I would fit into the role.

The second was a presentation where I had to explore the category and give my thoughts on the frozen ready meal sector in a variety of ways (sensory, category, tiering, etc). It was a pretty open brief so I could tailor it to my own ways of working and best showcase my skills.

What’s the best part about working for a food & drink company? The variation of my job day to day. No two days are ever the same, it’s fast-paced and there are always new exciting projects to work on. The people in the industry are passionate just like me and open to share their ideas and experience so it’s great to learn about people’s different stories/careers.

As Pilgrims Europe works across many food sectors, you have the opportunity to learn about lots of different food manufacturing methods/development just from chatting to people.

And what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in food & drink? I don’t think people truly appreciate or understand all the work that goes in behind the scenes to produce the products that they buy on the shelves. It is not a simple task of cooking products – there are so many layers that go into it from ingredients and processing to sourcing and trialling. There’s so many different people involved to make sure what the consumer buys is top quality, safe and tasty.

What advice would you give to other young people looking to get into the food & drink industry? The opportunity to complete a placement year at uni is very rewarding – it helps you get an initial look into the world of food and decide which area you might enjoy after university. Even if you work in a certain team you will become aware of all the different parts of a food company and it will help steer you in your food journey.

What’s your ultimate career dream? I hope to be a full project manager soon and then continue to see where my career takes me and grow both personally and professionally. As long as I continue to wake up every day excited about work, then that is enough for me.