The role of new talent and perspectives in shaping the food and drink industry
Posted on 13 August 2026
Jessica Gray speaking to students at the IFST Student Launchpad February 2025. Credit: Robin Leaper, IFST
This article is part of the Food Innovation Centre’s 10-year anniversary blog series written by the food innovation technologists.
Food and drink is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, employing nearly half a million people, and contributing around . It is a vital sector which promotes innovation in science and technology, strengthens food security and sustainability, and provides work for thousands of people across multiple disciplines and geographical regions. Despite this, the UK food and drink industry is experiencing significant with labour shortages, skills gaps and an ageing workforce. This challenge must be relieved to support the growing population and ensure sustainable food production into the future. In this article, FIC Technologist Jess Gray suggests that one way of addressing the workforce challenge is to prioritise attracting and retaining younger talent across a range of roles – from engineering to AI, and material science to food and nutritional sciences.
The food and drink sector largely operates behind the scenes, which makes it difficult for young people to understand the opportunities available, and paths towards those roles. However, with more content around food, diet and health becoming widely available on social media, many young people are becoming aware of the role of food and nutrition on health, and are keen to understand the ‘why’ behind the information they’re consuming. This is something we were particularly made aware of when we recently, many of whom had developed an interest in food science and nutrition through food- or nutrition-related social media content. Having grown up with technology, and increasingly using social media as an information source, young people may be more ‘social media literate’, providing them with an important role in distilling complex scientific knowledge into lay terms (). Young people may be better equipped to utilise social media to identify upcoming trends for NPD, and drive innovation using new technologies, such as AI and machine learning.
With (18-24 year olds) not in education, employment or training (IGD, 2026), there is a huge opportunity for the Food and Drink Industry to recruit this next generation and secure the future of its workforce. But if are not aware of the jobs available in the food and drink industry, how does that happen? With the removal of the Food and Nutrition A-Level in 2018, and the GSCE options potentially being , it is vital that food and drink businesses, universities and research institutes engage with young people to highlight the breadth of roles available to them in the food and drink industry. Multiple food and drink businesses already have established outreach activities and teams, or run work experience programmes, but if not, there are multiple free resources available to use.
The platform enables you to become a STEM Ambassador and facilitate outreach sessions in your local area. If you need ideas, the following organisations have ready-to-use resources for such outreach sessions:
There are tens of thousands of students across the UK studying STEM subjects - what if 25% of these students knew about the variety of roles and pathways into food and drink-related careers? How would that change the future of the food and beverage workforce?
This blog was written by Jesscia Gray.
Jessica Gray is a Food Innovation Technologist at the Food Innovation Centre at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. She works with two other technologists, academics and technicians to deliver a range of food and drink industry projects.
