Graduate Product Executive - apetito

Overview

About the role

This exciting role offers a great opportunity for an ambitious and talented individual looking to kick-start or accelerate their career in business. The nature of the role will allow you to build broad commercial skills and experience including project management, sales and marketing, data analysis, customer research, and product development.

Reporting to the Category Manager, you will work within the Wilshire Farm Foods product team to deliver our product strategy. By delighting customers with a continuously improving range of delicious food at great prices, we’ll attract and retain more loyal customers and grow our business. As a key member of the product team, you will have a critical part to play in achieving this.

You’ll work with your colleagues to improve overall product quality, and drive seasonal innovation with new products and categories. You’ll provide key-decision-makers with the latest market intelligence, product data, and customer insights, supporting strategic business decisions at board level. You’ll also work closely with our customer facing teams, ensuring they are kept well-informed and highly engaged with all the latest product news and information.

This role will provide a recent graduate with:

• Variety and Challenge. The Product team forms an integral part of the wider WFF Commercial team including marketing, ecommerce, and trading functions. You will also work closely with customer facing operations teams, product development, purchasing and distribution. This will allow you to build broad commercial experience and professional development.
• Opportunity and Exposure. In a high-profile area of the business, you’ll have the opportunity to make a significant personal impact on our success. It won’t be easy, but we have a strong track-record of developing recent graduates into future leaders of the business. This role could provide you with the perfect springboard for future career progression.
• Responsibility and Reward. Once you’re up to speed following our in-depth induction programme, you’ll be given real responsibility to own projects and develop your skills. You’ll be well rewarded too, with a competitive salary, benefits and training, not to mention the satisfaction of making a real difference to your colleagues and customers.

About apetito

apetito is the UK’s leading food supplier to the health and social care sectors serving more than 600 care homes, 500 hospitals, as well as 200 education settings. Our meals are expertly crafted by our dieticians and chefs, and then frozen to lock in the goodness. For over 30 years our sister company Wiltshire Farm Foods has been cooking and delivering over 300 different delicious frozen meals to our customer's homes.

 As a family-owned business established in 1958, we take great pride in being a company that makes a real difference and is dedicated to creating outstanding meals to be proud of. We develop a range of products designed to enhance health and well-being for all our customers.

We are driven by a passion for service, dedicated to feeding some of the UK’s most vulnerable people and offering delicious and nutritious meals to our customers. We proudly support British food and farming, focusing on using the best ethical and sustainable produce. This is in alignment with our goal to reach Net Zero by 2040.

Our two-year graduate programme provides opportunities from day one to support your continuous development and give you the strongest start in your career. Every year, we recruit talented graduates to join our apetito team in a variety of different roles across the business. The aim of our unique programme is to train and develop graduates into future leadership roles. We offer an immersive and experiential induction programme as well as training and support for your career development, and there are many opportunities outside of your role to get involved in too.

About Wiltshire Farm Foods

Wiltshire Farm Foods is the UK's largest ready meal supplier. We feel privileged to serve our wonderful customers - and proud to earn their custom, their trust and even their friendship. Across the country, our friendly local teams deliver delicious, nutritious, frozen meals directly to the door (or even the freezer) of our customers. We firmly believe in good old-fashioned service, and we're proud to be more than just a standard delivery service. Our local teams try and bring a little 'sunshine' with every interaction they have with our customers, and our job is to replicate that within our marketing, communicating the fantastic service we offer in order to retain and acquire new customers. Wiltshire Farm Foods has experienced significant growth in the 30 years since it was founded, and we have ambitious targets to hit to build on this success. We operate in a unique market, with an ageing population providing huge opportunity for growth.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities

• Support the Product management team by providing regular market intelligence, including competitor price benchmarks and gap analysis.
• Support the pursuit of continuous quality improvement by working closely with colleagues around the business including customer relations, to ensure quality trends and opportunities are identified and actioned quickly and effectively.
• Support the category managers by delivering customer research projects. Provide actionable insights to inform category development. Utilise first-hand methods that are fast and effective. Bring the voice of the customer to the fore. Provide real insights that spark ideas and generate debate.
• Support with product launches. Ensure customer facing teams are engaged and motivated by delivering impactful product presentations and written communication.
• In partnership with Finance and Data & Analytics teams, provide detailed analysis of category performance to help support range review and promotion decisions.
• Provide excellent communication of product availability to front-line teams to help deliver outstanding customer service.
• Manage ad-hoc category / trading projects as required, often in response to the changing needs of the business.
• Build strong relationships with key stakeholders throughout the business. Become and be seen as a ‘go-to resource’ for all things WFF product / category.

Qualifications/Personal Qualities

Skills / Experience

Essential

• You will have graduated or be studying towards a degree in marketing or business discipline, with an expectation that you will receive a 22 or above graduating on or before August 2024
• Full clean driving licence
• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to build strong and effective working relationships
• Strong numerical skills- including excel proficiency
• Problem solving skills
• High level of attention to detail, and very comfortable with numbers.

Desirable

• Some relevant work experience via placement year or work experience
• Interest / passion for food.

Personal Qualities

• Self-starter with a can-do attitude and positive outlook
• Demonstrate energy, enthusiasm and passion
• Intellectual curiosity
• Collaborative approach to teamwork
• Able to work autonomously.