Business Development Manager

Business Development Manager – Food service & Contract Catering

London-based | Field role | UK travel as required

Especial
is looking for an exceptional
Business Development Manager
to join our team. This is a role for someone who excels in winning business, enjoys building new relationships and is motivated by ambitious sales targets.

For over 25 years, Especial has worked behind the scenes of the best-in-class food service and hospitality industry giants,creating and supplying distinctive food presentation and OS&E solutions for some of the world’s best-known brands, operators and destinations.

We work across contract catering, corporate hospitality, retail, hotels, restaurants, private travel, stadia and major events. Our work ranges from high-volume food service environments to high-end premium hospitality, complex mobilisations, bespoke product development and international projects. Especial’s approach spans the full process from understanding a client’s operational and creative requirements through planning, sourcing and product development to project delivery and ongoing support.

Our approach is consultative. We listen, understand the operational challenge and the creative ambition, and then develop the right solution. That might mean curating products from our global supply network, developing something completely bespoke, mobilising an OS&E project or supporting a client relationship over many years.

Now we are looking for someone who can turn that capability into significant new business.

This is a new-business-focused role for someone who is commercially ambitious, has strong industry connections and is motivated by winning. Your focus will be on developing new business and expanding our presence within existing and target organisations. You will identify opportunities at every level—from an individual site requirement to national account opportunities, mobilisations and major projects—and work with the wider Especial team to turn those opportunities into commercially successful, long-term relationships.

Much of our client base and new business opportunity is in London and the Southeast, so we are looking for someone London-based who enjoys being out in the market: meeting clients, opening doors, understanding projects and developing opportunities.

This is an autonomous, field-based role. There is no expectation to report to an office every day, but you will need to travel to our Cirencester base and to client locations and project sites around the UK when required.

You will already have an established and diverse network within UK contract catering and food service and understand how to navigate large, complex organisations—from site-level operations and chefs through to procurement, mobilisation teams and senior decision-makers, as well as offer bespoke, personalised service to luxe and premium establishments.

You may currently work for an equipment, tableware, light catering equipment, OS&E or specialist food service supplier. Alternatively, you may have developed your career within the contract catering sector and have the commercial relationships, knowledge and instinct to move successfully into a specialist supplier environment.

Experience of working with or selling into major contract caterers such as Compass Group, Brakes and other national operators—would be highly valuable.

You will understand that winning significant business in this sector is rarely about sending a catalogue or responding to a price request. It is about finding the opportunity, understanding who influences the decision, building relationships, asking the right questions and staying close to an opportunity until it becomes business.

• Commercially hungry and genuinely motivated by winning new business.
• Comfortable working to clear sales targets and being accountable for results.
• Confident opening doors and creating opportunities from a cold start.
• Able to grow a small opportunity into a significant commercial relationship.
• Persistent and resilient, with the patience to manage complex sales cycles.
• Credible with chefs, operators, procurement teams, mobilisation…