Sarah (Bella) Fancourt

-ecommerce brc module

Leading the Food Process team, I coach and inspire colleagues in managing Gousto's recipe library, handling ingredient substitutions and the creation of recipe cards. I ensure this is achieved whilst maintaining recipe integrity, on-time delivery, and compliance with BRC requirements - always with a keen focus on optimising the customer experience.

• Scaled team of 14 (established Food Process): created vision and strategy and implemented ways of working.
• Managed annual budget of over £600k: monitoring expenditure and forecast planning.
• Initiated and defined outsourcing relationship: helping to manage periods of internal overcapacity and providing cost saving of 45% vs hiring internally.
• Collaborated with cross-functional crack team to implement major propositional change - introducing recipe boxes for individuals and households of 3 and 5. Anticipating 10-15% conversion increase, equivalent to £2-4m in year one.
• Navigated complex organisational transformations (negative growth, redundancy) and guided teams through periods of significant change. Experienced coach and mentor.
• Key contributor within employee engagement initiatives, advocating for positive change and development. Reached 100% team participation in employee engagement surveys, with team eNPS averaging 87 (58 points above benchmark).

Established team KPIs to ensure consistent delivery of high quality, accurate, food safe recipe/cards -

• Demonstrated 20% reduction in recipe errors across ‘22 (YoY) and identifying areas for improvement.
• Improved quality and safety of recipes through cooking validation and independent verification enabling serious CPTTU to remain below 0.85 target.

Huumans is a start-up focusing on workforce wellbeing, based around their trademarked 'Key Wellbeing Indicators'. I create Food & Nutrition content for the platform, in my position as a Subject Matter Expert.

Note: This is a 'passion project', demanding only a modest amount of my time and posing no threat to the integrity of my primary commitment.

Within this position I developed hot eat, bakery, dessert and snack products proactively and in response to customer briefs, working alongside the Technical and Creative team, to provide a complete product ‘solution'.

• Development of a range of ‘free from' bakery items based on customer requirements, enabling the business to participate in a previously unexplored sector.
• Supported the creative and sales teams to secure high volume contracts with major carriers across the UK and US.
• Designed and implemented an internal supplier database facilitating enhanced coordination across the development and procurement teams.
• Built productive relationships with suppliers and sought mutually beneficial outcomes including collaborative innovation and cost efficiency.

In this role I had full responsibility for the product development of all own label dairy, free-from drinks, juice, chilled home baking, cooked meats, eggs, and desserts. I applied the stage-gate process from concept to launch, including contribution to copy, design, packaging and legal approval.

• Won 38 product awards over 2 years as part of a team: highlights include Cookie Dough winning Product of The Year.
• Landed successful first to market/own label market products including Chocolate Squirty Cream and Free From Puff Pastry.
• Established 10 new chilled home baking lines including Filo and Sweet Shortcrust Pastry triggering £2 million in additional sales.
• Implemented government reformulation programs including successful execution of FSA 2017 salt targets and the sugar tax that resulted in a reduction of over 500 tonnes of sugar per year.
• Liberated over 2000 days shelf life across categories ensuring the freshest product to the consumer and improving ability to sell.

Focused on food waste reduction strategies and dietary association.