My food & drink job: Leah Smith, marketing manager, Sunny & Luna

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leah headshot

Name: Leah Smith

Age: 29

Job title: Marketing manager

Company & location: Sunny & Luna, London

Education: Marketing & Brand Management at Nottingham Business School

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? When I was a kid, I was always performing. My dad even made me a stage (my mum’s aerobic exercise step covered with a sparkly bedspread) and a microphone (cardboard inner tube from a loo roll covered in tin foil) which only encouraged me.

I think I always assumed I would perform for a living, but it turned out marketing was a better fit so now I just perform for my nephews instead – they’re two, they love everything.

Why did you decide to go for a career in food & drink? This is so random, but huge shout out to Will Englander from The Root Co, who I met three-and-a-half years ago at his ginger beer stall in Camden Passage. I asked him a hundred questions about his company and told him I’d love to work for a food startup. He told me to go to Planet Organic, find a load of brands I liked and email them to see if they were looking for an extra pair of hands.

“When there are only two of you on the team it pays to be a jack of all trades”

Explain your job to us in a sentence (or two): Well, my job title is marketing manager, but in reality I have a chronic case of ‘can’t stay out of it’ so I also do account management, operations (occasionally, when things get stressful), a bit of sales, and basically anything else our founder Giulia doesn’t do!

What does a typical day look like for you? This is probably not the exciting answer you were hoping for, but mostly it’s sitting opposite Giulia on our laptops, with some kind of humous and crisps between us, talking about new vegetable gnocchi flavours, refining our health mission, or figuring out ways to reach more customers.

My favourite days are when I get to make pasta content with one of our brand friends or force Giulia to do a photoshoot with her holding an array of vegetables.

Gnocchis sunny luna Vegetables health

Tell us how you went about applying for your job: In very startup fashion, it was not a very typical hiring process. I found an advert for a part-time marketing internship with a woman who was launching a pasta company. I had a 25-minute conversation, we chatted about food we liked to make, and she told me about her dreams for the company. I was completely sold, and over the course of my two-month internship I did my very best to make myself indispensable. I guess it worked – I’m here three years later!

What’s the best part about working for a food & drink company? I want to say it’s the free food, but actually it’s the people. Everyone who works in food and drink loves the industry, especially amongst challenger brands. We chat, we scheme, we do collabs, we share contacts, and we are so excited to see each other’s wins.

It’s a real privilege to be working in an industry I love, for a female-founded company with a mission to make convenience food like pasta a healthier option for shoppers – this is something I am truly passionate about. And I love pasta, so that’s a bonus!

And what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in food & drink? That you can’t do it! When I tell people I work for a pasta company they’ve often never heard of someone working in food. It’s a huge industry with such an array of career opportunities, and no one ever tells you it’s an option.

What advice would you give to other young people looking to get into the food & drink industry? As a lot of grads do, I started out in recruitment and found myself there for three years, feeling so burnt out and confused about what I really wanted to do. So I quit, went back to uni and started again, even though people told me not to. I am so grateful to my 23-year-old self for doing that.

Don’t be afraid to take risks, to go for that random internship, to email a load of brands with a cool portfolio. So often founders don’t have time to really think about hiring, so make it easy for them. Make up in energy what you’re missing in experience.

What’s your ultimate career dream? I swear I haven’t been bribed by Giulia to say this, but I honestly feel like I am already in it. Sunny & Luna is such an exciting company, we’re building our presence in the fresh pasta aisle, going up against huge established brands and growing awareness every day. It’s so exciting to build a brand from day one – seeing our vegetable pasta on shelf in Sainsbury’s for the first time was a highlight of my career. It can be stressful but in the best, most rewarding way.