Overview
The R&D Pastry Lead is a key role within Plain Vanilla's Central Kitchen, responsible for driving pastry innovation, developing new products, and ensuring the highest standards of recipe documentation and quality. This position combines hands-on pastry expertise with structured research, testing, and training, ensuring that new products are successfully integrated into production and consistently delivered across all outlets.
Key Responsibilities
1. Research & Development
- Lead the ideation, development, and testing of new pastry products in line with brand identity, customer trends, and campaign calendars.
- Conduct trials, evaluate results, and refine recipes for scalability and operational feasibility.
- Benchmark recipes against seasonal campaigns and competitor offerings to ensure market relevance.
2. Recipe Documentation & Playbook
- Create, update, and maintain a comprehensive recipe SOP library, including step-by-step methods, photos, and plating guidelines.
- Ensure version control and standardisation across all recipe documents.
- Develop and maintain a Pastry Development Playbook to serve as a training and reference guide for the team.
3. Training & Capability Development
- Train CK and store-level teams on new product execution and pastry standards.
- Create visual guides and training modules to ensure knowledge transfer and consistency.
- Mentor pastry team members to strengthen innovation capability and technical knowledge.
4. Production Integration & Quality Control
- Oversee production runs for new products, ensuring recipes can be executed at scale without compromising quality.
- Conduct quality control (QC) checks during production runs to ensure consistency, taste, presentation, and shelf-life stability.
- Collaborate with Production Managers and FOH leadership to ensure seamless rollout and feedback loops for new products.
5. Continuous Improvement & Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Brand, Culinary, and Operations teams to align R&D output with business strategy and customer experience goals.
- Review and refine existing pastry recipes to improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and product quality.
- Monitor customer and team feedback to inform future innovation cycles.
Requirements
- Diploma or higher in Pastry & Baking Arts or equivalent professional training is advantageous.
- Prior hands-on pastry experience required. Prior experience in an R&D or product development role is advantageous.
- Strong technical knowledge of pastry techniques, ingredients, and production scaling.
- Excellent documentation, training, and communication skills.
- Highly organised, detail-oriented, and able to balance creativity with operational feasibility.
