Nick Smith

My name is Nick Smith. I work as Food Business Consultant for Hethel Innovation.

In my role, I work with concept, start up and established Food or Drink SME’s.

The support I deliver covers many areas. To give an idea, these range from writing and reviewing business strategies, conducting competitor analysis, diving into market insights, reviewing routes to market and establishing new ones and developing new services within the business.

As well as working with businesses directly, I also work with numerous professional stakeholders, for example schools at the UEA and researchers at Quadram Food Institute. By engaging with these other parties, it allows me to offer diverse specialist support to businesses.

Having worked in food and beverage for over 25 years, in a broad spectrum of environments, I take great pleasure sharing my knowledge and experience to help businesses. Every business experiences different challenges and supporting these businesses to overcome their challenges and deliver solutions continues to motivate me in my role.

I enjoy my role as I support different food or drink businesses, meeting many owners and their teams. Working through challenges is very rewarding when you can see the positive impact jointly created by working with the business.

Meeting new contacts and growing my network is also very interesting and provides further opportunities to support businesses. At the same time uniting businesses in the East of England is also great as we continue to showcase the amazing produce and people who work in the food and drink industry.

Finally, watching businesses working together, creating collaborations and growing our community is great to see.

If you could be on any TV Show, what would it be and why?

Any cookery show where they tour Europe cooking the countries local dishes.

You’re stranded on a deserted island and can only bring one meal with you to eat indefinitely, what would it be and why?

A roast dinner…plenty of different flavours which are great together, and equally delicious on their own. Mash potato would be included alongside roast potatoes – and I would need a potato ricer also…

What would your coworkers be surprised to learn about you?

My great Grandad won a gold medal in the 1904 Olympic Games at St. Louis.

What 3 things in your bag can’t you live without?

Paper, pen, potato ricer