Henderson Brown
Business Development Manager – Emerging Drinks Brands
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Business Development Manager – Emerging Drinks Brands
A rare chance to help build emerging drinks brands from the ground up, opening new customers, partnerships, events and routes to market.
This is a home/field-based role with UK customer travel. Customers are spread nationally, so there is flexibility on location, although a South West base may be helpful due to occasional HQ visibility and wider business activity in the region.
Permanent
£45,000–£55,000 + 10% bonus + £5,000 car allowance + benefits
The Opportunity
We’re supporting a well-established UK drinks business with the appointment of a Business Development Manager to help accelerate growth across a portfolio of emerging and incubator brands.
This is not a role where you are simply inheriting a mature account base and maintaining existing relationships. It is much more about getting into the market, spotting opportunities, opening doors and turning early-stage conversations into commercially valuable customer partnerships.
You’ll be working across a mix of new drinks brands, including moderation-led, spirits-led and event-friendly propositions, with the backing of a wider business that understands brand building, activation, distribution and commercial execution.
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The role would suit someone who enjoys autonomy, is energised by new business and can move confidently between customers, events, internal teams and commercial planning.
Key Responsibilities
- Build and convert a strong new business pipeline across customers, outlets, events, festivals and partnerships.
- Identify where the brands are not currently visible and create practical routes to market.
- Lead customer conversations, proposals and commercial negotiations.
- Develop event, festival and experiential opportunities that improve visibility and drive value.
- Work closely with Marketing, Revenue Management, Operations and wider commercial teams to make plans commercially viable and deliverable.
- Keep forecasting, trade spend and customer activity well-managed behind the sale.
What We’re Looking For
You’ll need to be a natural new business developer — someone who enjoys creating momentum, chasing opportunities and building relationships from a standing start.
Food, drink or FMCG experience would be very useful, but we are also open to people from broader consumer brand, event-led, hospitality, on-trade, experiential or challenger brand backgrounds if you can show strong commercial judgement and a genuine track record of opening doors.
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You’ll likely bring:
- Proven sales or business development experience.
- Strong customer relationship-building skills.
- Resilience, energy and confidence in the market.
- Commercial awareness and negotiation ability.
- The discipline to manage forecasting, trade spend and internal follow-through.
- A proactive, open-minded approach to finding new growth opportunities.
Why Join?
This is a good opportunity for someone who wants more ownership, more variety and more influence than a traditional account management role can offer.
You’ll be close to the brands, close to the customers and close to the decisions. You’ll have the chance to help shape where emerging drinks brands show up, how they are activated and how they scale.
It offers the pace and creativity of challenger brand work, but with the support, infrastructure and credibility of a larger established drinks business behind it.
If you’re interested in learning more, we’d be happy to have a confidential conversation.
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