Some career highlights
Finsbury Food Group
Finsbury is one of the UK’s largest bakery groups, producing many of the UK’s most loved and trusted bakery products for UK multiples.
David leads the Hamilton based Development team, consisting of account managers, technologists and process technologists.
You’d think the biggest learning from Finsbury was about cake, but it isn’t. It’s about people. How to coach and help individuals navigate the management of a portfolio of hundreds of NPD launches every year.
David sits on cross functional leadership teams, translating strategy into action, overseeing the portfolio of celebration cake project ‘traffic management’.
Ooni Pizza Ovens
Ooni is the world’s leading Pizza Oven brand. David joined Ooni during the Covid pandemic when the company was experiencing huge growth to lead the development of a Grocery offering.
Over the course of almost three years, David grew the range from one Doughball product in the UK, to a wider range of products available in both the UK and US.
Central to the strategy was the development of a range of Ooni branded dough mixes, available in the UK, US, Germany and France, making it simple for Pizza novices to make good quality pizza dough, consistently.
Levercliff Category Consultants
Levercliff are a well respected and long established category management consultancy based in Wales.
David joined the company as a marketing consultant, and laterally was a director of the company.
A core part of David’s role was tender writing and client management. He also led Levercliff’s development of the Scotland Food & Drink Academy.
Throughout David’s time at Levercliff, he worked directly with a wide variety of Scottish Food and Drink brands providing strategy, category management and leadership support services.
Baxters Food Group
David has always enjoyed working on challenging brands, or ‘underdogs’. At Baxters Food Group, David predominantly managed the Fray Bentos brand. A long established, cult-like, love-it or hate-it brand with a long history.
Under David’s leadership, the brand launched it’s first Vegan pie, gaining huge media coverage, and helping to create a positive narrative around the brand. He also led the rebrand of the child-favourite meatball product, using subtle on pack semiotics to appeal to both children and adults.
David also managed the Jack Daniels BBQ sauce product, made under license from Jack Daniel’s. Licensing is a key strength of David’s, and a real area of interest for the future.
David has worked for a portfolio of Food & Drink companies, each with their own story.
Ask David Craig 