Name: Charlie Phillips
Age: 23
Job title: Consumer champion
Company & location: Snaffling Pig, Yattendon, Berkshire
Education: Oxford Cherwell Valley College, Catering and Hospitality
Why did you decide to go for a career in food? Since a young age foods have always been an inspiration and a way to experiment. My mum’s a chef so I’ve been surrounded by people in the food industry all my life. It was inevitable I would end up here too.
Explain your job to us in a sentence (or two): I’m Snaffling Pig’s consumer champion, so I help our customers with any queries they have. I also help with social media which, as a social brand, is really important for the business. We have more followers on social than our competitors combined so managing our social media channels and customer engagement is a big part of the role.
“I came across the role on a job site and before I knew it I was on the phone with the ‘head of happiness’”
What does a typical day look like for you? It can vary from day to day. That’s half the excitement. Usually it will be a case of answering emails from our customers and helping where I can. I’ll also check in on social media and make sure we have all of our posts planned out for the foreseeable future. I work closely with our PR team too, sending out journalist and influencer requests for samples. We’ve just wrapped our Christmas campaign so there were a lot of advent calendars going out!
Tell us about how you went about applying for your job. I went through a lot of different jobs on job sites until I came across this. Snaffling Pig is a cheeky brand and the way it was written just made me laugh. Before I knew it I was on the phone with the ‘head of happiness’. I was asked back for the second part of the interview on the same day. The hardest question was ‘where do you see yourself in five years?’ It’s always a tricky one. But the answer was simple – I want to be somewhere where I’ve been able to develop and learn from the people around me. Nick Coleman, the CEO and founder, is brilliant at that.
What’s the best part about working for a food company? Would the free snacks be the wrong answer? On a serious note, the innovative nature of the job as we’re transforming a whole category. We all work in one small office so ideas always get bounced around, and the smallest idea can snowball. Working with people that are in a similar mindset to you really does help.
And what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in food & drink? That it’s easy. And ideas will just come together at the snap of some fingers. We’ve trialled loads of different flavours, had ideas that we thought were great and they didn’t go as well as expected. It’s all trial and error.
What advice would you give to other young people looking to get into the food & drink industry? Be passionate and flexible. If you’ve got those two qualities you will be able to enjoy your time within the industry.
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