In this series, British Baker speaks to people from across the baking industry to find out about their career path, what their current job involves, and where they get their inspiration from.
Name: George Tatlow
Age: 29
Job title: Head of new product development – foodservice
Company and location: The Compleat Food Group, Crewe
Tell me about your career to date.
I became a chef straight out of school and balanced that with college studies. I knew I wanted to be a chef, but my parents encouraged me to go through higher education. After I finished college, I left home to work in fine dining restaurants with Michelin stars. I worked around 80 hours a week or so learning my craft.
A few years later, I decided to move back home as I knew that I wasn’t going to be the next Gordon Ramsay! I started working locally in a little restaurant in the Peak District, still fine dining with really nice food and rosettes but it wasn’t the creme de la creme. This was a massive change of pace and made me question what I wanted to do next.
It was through conversations with a family friend who worked here [Wrights Crewe] as an engineer who put food manufacturing into consideration. Through those conversations I ended up being offered a job by the chairman Peter Wright who said, ‘come in and see what you can do’. And that’s how it started – just the right place at the right time. I felt like I knew the business before I joined because of that family connection and also because I grew up locally eating Wrights products.
When I came in there was a team of six and for various reasons, people left or moved on to pastures new and that created an opportunity for me. That allowed me to take on responsibility and cross over into product management. I was 18 months into my head of development for Wrights and then the acquisition happened.
What does a typical work day involve for you?
There are some things that happen daily. I like to get in nice and early and go through my inbox and set out targets for the day. I then have a daily briefing with the team where we discuss new briefs, go through outstanding actions for our projects and troubleshoot any issues we need to resolve. I then have a site leadership meeting with the respective function heads where I can escalate things as required.
After that it varies a lot. It could be anything from project meetings, budget reviews, resource mapping, product tastings, innovation sessions, or customer presentations.
What is your NPD process?
It’s a stage and gate process covering concept to launch which is quite typical in manufacturing. It all starts with an idea – that might come from a customer who has something specific in mind or it could be an open brief.
Before we start the product ideation, we review market trends, carry out gap analysis, conduct product benchmarking and review any category information from our insight team. This can also include food safaris which allow us to look at the independents and identify any emerging trends.
We then compile this data into a product brief with the key project dates and product volumes and put through a cross-functional sign off process.
Once approved, the brief goes to the culinary team. They create the recipes and consider the manufacturing process and put the product through a feasibility process with the operational and technical teams.
We’re always touching base with other functions, ensuring the process is collaborative. Once a product is approved internally, we’ll present to the customer. Following customer approval, a concept to factory handover process happens and the process team put the product through rigorous product trials collecting data and validation.
What’s next on your agenda?
One of our current projects is reviewing our cream cake range. I love our cream cake range but it’s very traditional and we would like to add some contemporary flavours and formats to bring in a different demographic to the category. We’ve tested this through our retail stores with our doughnuts of the month that we rotate on a seasonal basis so, in the summer it’ll be strawberries & cream, for Christmas it’ll be a festive flavour like chocolate orange which has been successful for us.
Tell us about some of the challenges you have overcome recently.
Agility and working at pace are hugely important in development, especially in foodservice. We have recently had requests from our customers to accelerate a launch which has been hugely challenging ensuring we complete our due diligence whilst delivering great products. We’ve been to the wire a few times but managed to get them over the line which has been really rewarding.
What’s a product you really wanted to launch but couldn’t? And why?
We were looking at adding to our Wrights branded range and had a great concept that we were really excited about, however during the initial production trials we couldn’t achieve the right aesthetic and we weren’t 100% satisfied. Rather than launch it, we decided to pivot and replace it with an alternative, that was also fantastic. Whilst I was disappointed that particular product didn’t get to market, we never compromise on quality.
What advice would you give to up-and-coming talent in the baking industry?
See every day as an opportunity to learn and don’t be afraid to fail! Failing is important for growth and remember that for every successful product launched there have been concepts that have failed as part of the process. Don’t be afraid to challenge the status-quo, as accepting the ‘norm’ is a killer for great product innovation.
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