Does the thought of joining a young, dynamic, impactful and independent UK charity working to influence food policy get you excited? An opportunity has come up to be part of our vital Business and Investor Engagement work.

Contract Type: Fixed term: From August to May 2025
Working pattern: Full-time 37.5 hours (willing to consider part time, minimum of three days per week)
Place of work: Hybrid model, at least two days weekly in our Brixton office in London
Salary: £38,000 to £43,500 pro
 

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Job purpose

We are looking for a collaborative and engaging lead to work in our Business and Investor Engagement (B&IE) team to grow and build relationships with the UK food sector.

This role will oversee the charity’s engagement with the business community, with a particular focus on the Out of Home and manufacturing sectors.

This involves having strategic oversight of and managing relationships with businesses across the UK food system and positioning ourselves as insight-led critical friends.

The B&IE team engages major food businesses on actions they can take to shift the UK towards more healthy and sustainable diets in order to tackle food system issues such as climate change, nature loss, diet related disease and dietary inequalities.

We provide insight and analysis underpinned by our Plating Up Progress benchmark to support and hold businesses to account in increasing sales of healthier and more sustainable foods and in shifting towards more responsible business practices.

The business engagement lead will work closely with the Senior Business and Investor engagement manager to build and develop relationships with the Out of Home and manufacturing sectors, oversee the Food Foundation’s role in an exciting new partnership with a major broadcaster in support of more plant rich diets, oversee the delivery of our flagship report – The State of the Nation’s Food Industry (SOFI) - and collaborate with civil society partners also working in this space.

Previous line management experience is desirable but not essential.

This role would be well suited to a registered nutritionist or sustainable food systems expert with experience of working in or with industry and looking to make the move into the charity sector.

Main responsibilities

Business Engagement

• Hold the strategic relationship with the Out of Home (casual dining, quick service and catering) and manufacturing sectors. This part of the role is about being clear about the whole journey we are taking them on as well as thinking about how we collaborate with other civil society organisations to achieve our objectives.
• Develop our senior level relationships with businesses. This includes working closely with the Executive Director and Senior Business and Investor Engagement manager on a process and activities for cultivating a small group of leadership businesses willing take a more proactive role in positively influencing national food policy.
• Ensure that our focus on business transparency and disclosure on standardised health and environmental metrics is a core part of our engagement with both industry and policymakers.
• Work closely with our Head of Campaigns in liaising with businesses and organisations as part of a major new campaign in partnership with a UK broadcaster in support of plant rich diets that will run 2024-2025.

Collaboration

• Work with other NGOs to collaborate on civil society action targeting food businesses and contribute to existing collaborations that the Food Foundation are members of.
• Work closely with our Head of Policy and Advocacy in order to ensure that our policy influencing aligns with our business influencing.
• Be the lead contact for relevant academic research collaborations where the Food Foundation is involved. Coordinate with the academic partners, input our views where relevant, and ensure any transferable learnings from the projects are shared with the wider Food Foundation team.
• Link with the local policy team to advise on approaches to working with food businesses in our local areas of interest, e.g. Birmingham and Kent.

Strategy and insight

• Support in coordinating the research, writing, and comms and engagement strategy for the annual SOFI report.
• Contribute to research and writing for the Business and Investor Engagement’s Team’s series of investor and business briefings on food system issues.

Project management and monitoring 

• Maintain good relationships with funders according to their requirements, and provide input to proposals and funding bids where relevant.
• Support the business and investor team’s portfolio of programmes and projects, including on sustainable diets, corporate reporting, Plating Up Progress, and the SOFI report.
• Work closely with the Senior Business and Investor engagement manager to develop and implement project plans and deliverables; including roundtables, events and briefings.
• Ownership of our internal database and CRM system for tracking business progress against our key business asks for Plating Up Progress businesses, and in tracking the asks we are making of businesses to ensure we are taking a co-ordinated and coherent approach.
• Lead cross organisational teams in delivery of wider Food Foundation change objectives aimed at food businesses?

This job description is intended as an outline indicator of general areas of activity only. The Food Foundation is a small charity and as such all staff are expected to vary their duties as necessary to meet the needs of the organisation.

Technical skills

• You have an excellent grasp of the business stakeholder audience; you know what makes them tick and can provide insight as to how to best engage them.
• You are able to build and maintain positive relations with businesses and NGO’s
• You are curious about wider market and regulatory conditions and demonstrate a good understanding of how these conditions affect business behaviour and impact the shift to healthy and sustainable diets.
• You have knowledge of corporate social responsibility trends, reporting and transparency in support of reaching our Net Zero targets and healthier, more sustainable diets.
• You can write briefings and reports to suit varying audiences (technical and non-technical).

Personal skills

• You have experience of people management (desirable)**
• You are a friendly professional with the ability to communicate and influence at all levels across the organisation and externally.
• You work collaboratively as part of a team to solve problems with professionalism and an impact focused approach.
• Strong presentation skills and confidence in speaking to external audiences.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral. 
• Ability to problem solve and manage risk.
• Ability to work independently and manage own time effectively.
• Open to giving and receiving challenging viewpoints.
• You are adaptable to work to requests and projects that may vary from day to day changing to meet organisational objectives.
• You are able to identify key or underlying issues in complex situations, making recommendations as required.
• Willingness to travel for meetings and networking events.
• A confident networker who enjoys building connections and relationships with new people.
• You have a commitment to building equitable, diverse and inclusive policy.
   

** The current post holder manages one person, a project officer. For potential applicants who do not have line management experience, we can rearrange responsibilities in the team and offer this maternity cover role as a non-managerial position. This would be at a different scale and salary range, between £37,000 to £41,050.

HOW TO APPLY

Deadline to apply: 9am, Monday 22nd April 2024

READ OUR RECRUITMENT PACK

The Recruitment Process

Please apply to office@foodfoundation.org.uk (with 'Business Engagement Lead' as the subject) with a cover letter and up to date CV. Please use your cover letter to:

• Explain why you want the role.
• Indicate your current work status and (if applicable) the period of notice you are required to give your current employer.
• Describe how you meet the skills section of the person profile.
• Describe your own lived experience, understanding or allyship of the issues surrounding equality, inclusion and diversity.
• Include where you saw the role advertised. 

Job requirements: A DBS check is obtained through The Food Foundation plus two references.