NPD Chef

Job Description: Chef New Product Development (NPD)

Role Overview
As our NPD Chef, you will be the creative force behind our next blockbuster beverages and bakery items. You won't just create delicious recipes; you will design the operational blueprints (SOPs) that allow thousands of store team members to replicate your creations flawlessly. This role is a perfect blend of culinary creativity, operational strategy, and cross-functional project management.

Key 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.
• Indian Cuisine & Base Preparation Expertise: Strong command over Indian curries, gravies, base preparations, and regional cuisines, with hands-on experience in developing standardized gravies, masalas, marinades, and other pre-prep formats while balancing authenticity, speed, operational efficiency, and shelf-life requirements.
• 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 caf©s 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.

Profile Requirements

• 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.