Angus Brown: supporting food innovation
Angus Brown of The FOODBOWL explains what his role as Business Development Manager entails. He describes his career pathway leading to his current position.
Follow-up activities
View The FOODBOWL story and read the article Facilitating food innovation in New Zealand. List all the areas of expertise you consider a food company may need to help them succeed in developing new product ideas and exporting to overseas markets. Discuss how Angus’s skills and career experiences may have prepared him for his current position at The FOODBOWL.
Transcript
Angus Brown
I am the Business Development Manager for The FOODBOWL and for New Zealand Food Innovation, Auckland. I actually finished up with a finance and accounting degree from Victoria University, but quickly after that decided I wanted to get into the fast-moving consumer goods industry, and a lot of that is comprised of food companies.
While I was at uni, I was helping to distribute and sell a very niche sparkling green tea. After I finished my degree, I went and worked at a very large non-alcoholic drink company on the sales and marketing side and helping to distribute and sell their products into a wide range of outlets. I really liked working for them in the sense that I got an idea of what big corporates were, how they worked and what it was like working for them.
At the same time, I wanted to develop new products and use more New Zealand ingredients and make products that were healthier, and so I found The FOODBOWL. I had my own idea on some drinks that I wanted to make, and so I actually started to use The FOODBOWL myself to develop these products. At the same time, a job was going so I applied and here I am, and I love it.
I’m the first face that new clients would engage with. I ask them questions about their business and about what they’re wanting to do, and then from that, I can help identify whether The FOODBOWL is the right place for them or whether they need to go somewhere else within the network. I look to link companies up with particular capability providers like the universities, ingredient suppliers, packaging suppliers, equipment suppliers and help facilitate their project so that it is ready to go downstairs and start production in The FOODBOWL.
Acknowledgements
Angus Brown, The FOODBOWL
Chris Cullen, Culley’s
Just the Job, Dave Mason Productions. www.careers.govt.nz/resources/tools-and-activities/just-the-job
