Food Sourcing Manager

Job Title: Food Sourcing Manager
Hours: 40 hours per week

City Harvest: City Harvest collects nutritious surplus food from manufacturers, suppliers and retailers and delivers, for free, to 350+ London charities, feeding those facing food poverty. City Harvest rescues food, people and planet by preventing food waste, providing life-changing support to communities in every London borough, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from waste. 

Purpose of role: To ensure City Harvest have a constant pipeline of food available for distribution to charity partners. Building and maintaining working relationships with food partners whilst keeping with the values of delivering the right food to the right charities in the right quantities.

Key Deliverables

To deliver year on year growth of the right food into City Harvest

• Strategically identify and contact new potential sources of food.
• Build key relationships with Donors to ensure longevity and commitment to donating to City Harvest.
• Understanding seasonality of donations, smoothing peaks and troughs through the year.

Identification of key areas within the food industry to secure potential sources of food

• Using industry knowledge of the UK food supply chains to highlight where potential unlocking of food may occur.
• Having the confidence and skill set to develop new external campaigns and initiatives to drive engagement from the food industry.
• Hold high level meetings with industry heads, giving the best account of City Harvest’s mission and vision.
• Driving forward our flagship campaign, Harvest for Hunger, reaching out to Farms, Growers and Packers to unlock food further up the supply chain.
• Own and drive forward the Primary Production, Events and Wholesale side of the sourcing efforts

Account management

• An understanding of the intricacies of managing numerous Food Donor accounts, working with each to maximise donations.
• Ensuring the Food Donors have everything they need in return, such as (not exhaustive) creation of Impact reports, holding corporate volunteer days, and annual face to face meetings.
• Being the voice of the Food Donor in internal discussions. Juggling what’s right for the Food Donor and what’s right for City Harvest.

Staff Development

• Continuously developing your direct report into a manager of the future, sharing and imparting knowledge whilst leading the way to success.
• Ensuring you ringfence time for your own development, working with your line manager to ensure you have the tools you need to do the job and progress at City Harvest.