Name: Jack Shepheard
Age: 26
Job title: Operations and quality manager
Company & location: Moma Foods, London
Education: Economics at Lancaster University
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? This changed every week, if I’m honest. I would say the only constant was an interest in food. In school my best subjects were always the more analytical ones. I loved the idea of being able to experiment and have the freedom to try new things. I had the idea of being an artist at one point plus then being a fancy restaurant chef with the tall hats (inspired by my favourite Disney movie, Ratatouille).
Why did you decide to go for a career in food & drink? My mum trained as a chef and my grandma used to always teach me and my sister to bake over the summer holidays, so I’ve always had a passion for food and drink. As soon as I started exploring different career options and talking with others within fmcg, I got to see the passion and excitement that so many budding founders carry, and how that transcends to the teams they lead. It helps as well to work on physical products that you enjoy the taste of.
“We worked on a huge rebrand last year and I felt like a giddy teenager going into stores and seeing it filter through”
Explain your job to us in a sentence (or two): I manage the end-to-end supply chain for Moma’s oat drink range, including raw material contracts, co-packer relationships, demand and supply planning and end customer operational relationship management. I also look after recipe development and quality control, which involves managing our PHD resource and exploring what the future of plant-based beverages will be.
What does a typical day look like for you? It can be extremely varied. The core part of my role is maintaining stock availability, so it always starts with reviewing this. After that it can vary from checking through audit documentation, meeting with suppliers and discussing future innovation. I also work closely with the sales team to communicate what makes our products so great, and even sometimes working alongside the innovation team creating a new recipe from scratch.
Tell us how you went about applying for your job: I believe I ended up with four stages.
There was an initial scoping call to find out more about me and for me to ask questions of the company, then a more focused competency-based interview where I presented on a few sales-related tasks (given I joined the company initially in a sales and operations role). This was followed up with a call with the operations director to discuss how a cross-functional role might look and work.
The final part was a meeting with our managing director and founder to discuss the role in more detail and my ambitions.
What’s the best part about working for a food & drink company? You have a physical product you can touch and see how people feel about it. I’m responsible for overseeing the quality of the oat drink that some major coffee chains are using,
I love the responsibility. Seeing a project you’ve worked on come to life is so gratifying.
At Moma, we worked on a huge rebrand last year and I felt like a giddy teenager going into stores and seeing it filter through. Beyond just our own products, you get to be close to knowing what others are doing as well, part of staying at the top of quality is knowing what others are doing well and trying to understand how we can use that insight to drive our product quality forward.
And what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in food & drink? Not unique to food & drink, but I remember coming out of university and not knowing enough about the reality of the world of work.
Everyone thinks an operations manager is a very fixed role when my role can involve experimenting in a lab coat using my GCSE chemistry skills! For food & drink, I think a common misconception is that there isn’t space for ‘more brands’, but all category leaders can and should be challenged.
The purpose of smaller, challenger, brands is to embrace the mountain of the task and find unconventional approaches to overcome them. Food & drink is always much more than just a product, you’ve got to take the customer on a journey to understand why the brand exists and what benefits it brings. There is a lot more to a purchasing decision than meets the eye and it can take a while to get your head around that and comprehend how people make choices.
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What advice would you give to other young people looking to get into the food & drink industry? Get good at networking and public speaking, these two skills will set you up well. I put value on public speaking as beyond just being able to sell yourself, it sets you up well for a sales or marketing role and helps you gain confidence in being uncomfortable. It’s remarkable the amount of public speaking opportunities I’ve created for myself in my role just by being open to it. Customers value the supply chain transparency we can give because we are passionate about what we do.
One of the reasons I love my role is how broad it is. Don’t be scared to jump straight in feet first. I would take advantage of every opportunity you get to learn. If you’re lucky enough to work alongside them, business founders are some of the most inspiring people you will work with. If you get chance to network with others take it, understand what roles are out there and what the progression looks like (it might not be as linear as you first expect).
What’s your ultimate career dream? I’d love to lead a team and develop my people management skills. As my role continues to develop at Moma, my dream is to continue to support all aspects of the business operations efficiently and deliver the best quality products.
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