Business Planning and Strategy Manager

Business Planning and Strategy Manager – Away from Home (12 months maternity cover to start May 25)

At Costa Coffee, we are what we craft. We’re reimagining coffee experiences in over 50 countries and counting, as a key part of the Coca-Cola System. Whether you get your coffee in a store, from a machine, at home, or on the go – we’ve got you covered.

We have an exciting opportunity within our Away from Home Centre of Excellence team as a maternity cover role, driving and supporting our AFH plans across the business. We are seeking someone whose career roots originated in a consultancy environment and who wants to blend their planning and strategy skills with passion for the coffee market.

This role will be a unique combination of developing plans and content to materialise the strategy for our ABP process with a sprinkling of assessing performance and deliverables to drive a successful operating rhythm. The Foam on the top will be driving awareness and engagement around Costa Coffee Professional, both internally and externally in the industry, including at key events.

Our teams make a difference. Whether that’s working on new tech for the perfect pour, helping our teams grow, creating award-winning campaigns, crunching the numbers, or developing the latest exciting menu item; together, we stir up success.

We may be a global brand, but we haven’t forgotten our roots. That’s where the Costa Foundation and our fantastic community agenda come in. Whatever your role, you can help us change lives in coffee growing communities, and help your local community too.

We also want to help you grow in your career through amazing experiences, our apprenticeship scheme, and development programmes. At Costa, you can go beyond the day-to-day.

And as a Business Planning and Strategy Manager, there’s never been a better time to join.

So, why Costa?

We didn’t become a global coffee brand by sitting back. When you work here, you join a community that values passion, progression and integrity, with some pretty brilliant perks to sweeten the deal:

• Own a piece of Costa’s success by becoming a share owner in Coca-Cola with our Share Investment Plan (SIP)
• A smart pension that saves you money on tax and national insurance, and matches your contributions up to 10%
• The Costa Financial Support Fund, supporting team members who find themselves in unexpected financial pressure
• 50% discount in all Costa-owned stores, and 25% off in other participating stores
• Private medical cover thanks to our Private Healthcare scheme
• And that’s not all. Explore even more of our perks here: https://bit.ly/costaperks
• We’re passionate about being a great place to work, where you can bring your unique self into our mix. We firmly support diversity, equity and inclusion, and continue to work with our teams to shape the future of our culture and values: Disciplined to Deliver, Passion for Progress, Win with Warmth, Courage to Challenge and Trusted Team Players.

What you’ll do

Being a Business Planning and Strategy Manager is about so much more than bringing our coffee to the world. It’s your chance to stir up real success - which means you’ll be:

• Be accountable for shaping the AFH CoE strategy to support market teams to grow Away From Home propositions at pace and enable a development platform for disruptive future concepts which create a competitive edge.
• Understand and shape the AFH strategy and mission
• Develop plans to materialise the strategy, including collating content for ABP/LRP
• Assess the Platform’s performance, tracking milestones and project updates
• Drive a successful Platform operating rhythm by managing the various forums
• Drive awareness internally around our AFH solutions and development roadmap
• Promote Costa Coffee Professional externally (in collaboration with the AFH marketing manager), identifying key industry events and coordinating participation to them

Who you are

It’s your unique ingredients we’re interested in:

• Experience gained within Consultancy environment
• Have operated in a strategy, commercial or programme management role
• Business planning, with an ability to prioritise and plan delivery of complex strategic agendas
• Strategic acumen ability to understand insights, competitor / market trends, and set direction
• Proven event planning and execution experience
• Flair for Influencing with the ability to represent and gain buy-in to the strategy and development roadmap with a diverse set of senior stakeholders
• Great written & verbal communication skills
• An abundance of drive and passion, able to operate successfully across matrix management structure to deliver amazing results and engagement
• Proactive and team player – willing to roll sleeves up, comfortable dealing with ambiguity

Location – Hybrid 2 days a week from our Central London office

For any reasonable adjustments and general queries, please get in touch with costa.recruitment@costacoffee.com