Commercial and Marketing Lead (Freelance) in Hackney

About School of Food

Set up in March 2020, Hackney School of Food (HSoF) is a food education hub on the grounds of Mandeville Primary School in Clapton, East London. Our mission is to improve the health and wellbeing of children, families, and our community by developing practical skills and confidence in food growing and cooking, from seed to spoon. In 2023, we became a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC), and have since grown our team, strengthened our governance and expanded our facilities with the addition of a new Garden Room, increasing capacity for workshops, dining and events. We are now well-positioned to grow and diversify our income streams, which enables us to subsidise our schools and community programmes.

Role Overview

This brand-new role offers an exciting opportunity to develop and deliver Hackney School of Food’s commercial and marketing strategy, with a focus on growing key income streams including corporate engagement, paid workshops and events, and venue hire. You will shape how HSoF positions itself externally and how we grow our trading income to subsidise our food education community offer. While this is currently a freelance role, it is not a transactional position; you’ll collaborate closely with our team, supported by and reporting to our Managing Director. This is a role for someone who can think commercially and creatively and then roll up sleeves to put strategy into action. You’ll believe in our mission and feel passionately about helping Hackney School of Food grow and thrive. Starting as a six-month contract, there is potential for the role to become longer term as the organisation grows.

Key Responsibilities

• Commercial Strategy & Income Generation: Work with the Managing Director to develop and deliver a clear, mission-aligned commercial and marketing strategy.
• Grow earned income streams including corporate engagement, paid workshops and events, and venue hire, helping to sustain and expand schools and community programmes.
• Help shape and refine commercial offers, including pricing and packages, ensuring they are appropriate, achievable and aligned with our values and capacity.
• Contribute to commercial planning by sharing insight on what works and areas of impact.

• Relationships and bookings: Confidently present and explain our commercial offers to key audiences in a way that reflects who we are and why our work matters.
• Proactively identify and chase opportunities for new corporate partners that align with our work.
• Guide enquiries through to bookings, encouraging repeat engagement and longer-term relationships.
• Work closely with the wider team to ensure commercial offers are deliverable, well-priced and aligned with organisational capacity.

• Marketing & visibility: Drive work to grow awareness of Hackney School of Food, create compelling externally facing marketing content targeted to the right audiences, across various channels.
• Help capture and share stories, feedback and learning from our commercial activity, support consistent messaging that connects our commercial work to our social impact.
• Conceive, promote and deliver events to market our space, both online and offline.
• Monitor and report on the impact of our external comms, sharing insights with our team to help refine offers, processes and focus over time.

Your experience

• Essential: Genuine passion for Hackney School of Food’s mission and values.
• Experience in income generation, commercial activity and/or promoting events.
• Proven experience in delivering a successful marketing strategy to support income generation.
• An existing network of relationships, or the confidence and credibility to build them, across organisations, businesses or sectors aligned with food, education or social impact.

• Desirable: Experience of working in a start-up, social enterprise or in a food or education context.
• Familiarity with Hackney and East London’s community, cultural or business landscape.
• Confident managing content and organisational activity on social and digital media platforms.
• Understanding of how evaluation or feedback can support learning and improvement.

Outputs & Success Measures (First 6 Months – Indicative)

We recognise that Hackney School of Food is at a growth stage and that commercial income is shaped by many factors, including capacity, seasonality and market conditions. These outputs are intended as guiding success measures rather than rigid targets.

• By the end of the initial six-month contract, the Commercial & Marketing Lead will have produced and agreed a clear Commercial & Marketing Delivery Plan for Hackney School of Food, setting priorities for growing our commercial income in a way that aligns with our mission.
• Refined our core commercial offers and packages (e.g. corporate away days, team volunteering, venue hire, paid public workshops), ensuring they are appealing and realistic to deliver.
• Built a healthy pipeline by identifying and actively pursuing 10–15 well-aligned commercial leads, with a focus on quality of fit as well as volume.
• Supported a meaningful increase in commercial enquiries, alongside capturing learning about what kinds of outreach, messaging and partnerships resonate most.
• Created a suite of core marketing assets for commercial activity (e.g. simple decks).
• Delivered at least two targeted promotional pushes (for example around corporate away days), testing approaches and learning what works best.
• Increased the visibility of our commercial offers across agreed channels (e.g. website, LinkedIn, email and partners), with light-touch reporting on reach.
• Supported Hackney School of Food to transition towards a higher volume of commercial bookings, strengthening operational processes and ways of working so growth is sustainable and doesn’t place undue pressure on delivery teams.
• Produced a short end-of-contract reflection summarising what’s worked well, what’s been challenging, and recommendations for the next phase of growth and investment.

Practicalities

• Day rate: Subject to experience.
• Location: We’re a place-based organisation and our team works on site in Hackney. We are open to exploring more flexible working given the freelance nature of this role but require at least 1 day per week in the office during the first three months.

How to apply: please send a CV and a concise cover letter telling us:

• Why this role and Hackney School of Food appeal to you.
• How your experience could support our commercial income generation.
• Your availability and preferred freelance working pattern.

Send applications with Commercial & Marketing Lead in subject line to us via email. You’ll find our email on our website (Charity Jobs restricts us from including it in this job ad).

Deadline: Wednesday 11 March at 9am.

Hackney School of Food is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and welcomes applications from people of all backgrounds.