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

1. Diploma or higher in Pastry & Baking Arts or equivalent professional training is advantageous.
2. Prior hands-on pastry experience required. Prior experience in an R&D or product development role is advantageous.
3. Strong technical knowledge of pastry techniques, ingredients, and production scaling.
4. Excellent documentation, training, and communication skills.
5. Highly organised, detail-oriented, and able to balance creativity with operational feasibility.