NPD Chef (Bakery & Beverage)

Role & responsibilities

1. Menu Innovation & Culinary Creativity

• Beverage Crafting: Ideate, develop, and perfect highly creative recipes for both Hot and Cold beverages, aligning with Chaayos' brand identity and evolving consumer tastes.
• Bakery & Food Pairing: Develop complementary bakery items, desserts, and quick-bites that pair perfectly with our beverage portfolio.
• Trend Spotting: Travel to various food hubs, explore market trends, and conduct competitive benchmarking to bring fresh, trendy concepts back to the Chaayos kitchen.

2. Process Design, SOPs & Scalability

• Standard Operating Procedures: Draft comprehensive, foolproof SOPs for caf staff to ensure seamless preparation and consistent taste across all locations.
• Bulk Kitchen Handovers: Bridge the gap between artisanal creation and mass production. Successfully hand over finalized recipes and raw material specs to the base/central kitchen for bulk manufacturing.
• Process Improvement: Stay open to experimenting with new equipment, kitchen tech, and preparation workflows to optimize caf operations and reduce service time.

3. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) & Training

• On-Site UAT: Run live User Acceptance Testing (UAT) inside designated pilot cafs to observe operational feasibility and gather real-time customer feedback.
• Store Team Training: Author UAT-specific training modules and personally train caf teams on new SOPs during the testing phase.

4. Cross-Functional Coordination & Launch Support

• Supply Chain (SCM) Alignment: Work closely with the SCM team to source new ingredients, ensure vendor reliability, evaluate food costs, and manage initial product inventory.
• Launch Readiness: Coordinate with the Training, Operations, and Quality Assurance teams to ensure the entire ecosystem is ready for a nationwide roll-out.
• Marketing Collaboration: Act as the culinary face of new products; assist the marketing team during food styling, video shoots, and photo shoots to highlight the products visual appeal.

5. Financial Administration

• NPD Budgeting: Track, manage, and optimize all expenses related to the NPD lab, ingredient sourcing, trials, travel, and pilot testing.

Preferred candidate profile

• Experience: 1 to 3 years of experience in culinary R&D / NPD, ideally within a high-volume QSR chain, cafe network, or FMCG beverage company.
• Education: Degree or Diploma in Culinary Arts, Hotel Management, Food Technology, or a related field.
• Beverage Mastery: Exceptional knowledge of flavor profiling, mixology, and brewing techniques across both hot and cold beverage formats.
• Operational Mindset: Strong understanding of central kitchen operations, food scaling science, and how to write clear, scannable SOPs.
• Execution & Communication: Excellent cross-functional coordination skills. You must be comfortable pitching ideas to leadership and instructing on-ground staff alike.
• Flexibility: Open to regular domestic travel for trend-mapping and regional caf audits.