Food and drink’s talent gap: Act now
30 April 2026Get involved with Feeding Britain’s Future: practical ways to build the talent pipeline, inspire young people, and strengthen the food workforce.
The food and drink workforce challenge
The UK food system is facing a structural workforce challenge that will not correct itself. Lengthening vacancy times, persistent skills gaps and an ageing workforce are no longer isolated operational issues, together, they are becoming a material risk to growth, service levels and long-term resilience across the food and drink sector.
Despite food and drink being one of the UK’s largest employers, too few young people see the sector as a place to build skills, purpose and a long-term career. At the same time, businesses across the supply chain are struggling to access the people and capabilities they need to operate, let alone transform. This disconnect sits at the heart of the industry’s “quiet crisis”.
That is why IGD is urging industry to commit to supporting Feeding Britain’s Future - not only as a purposeful initiative, but as an urgent, practical response to a growing commercial challenge.
Why the workforce challenge is urgent
Workforce pressures in food and drink are no longer cyclical or short-term. They reflect deeper, long‑running trends: demographic change, rising long‑term sickness, changing cultural expectations of work, and an education‑to‑employment pipeline that too often fails to connect young people with viable career pathways in the sector.
The risk is not abstract. Without a stronger talent pipeline, businesses face rising recruitment costs, reduced productivity, limited succession options and increasing pressure on frontline operations, ultimately affecting availability and customer service. Strengthening the future workforce is not only a social imperative, but a commercial one.
From awareness to workforce action
Many businesses already recognise the scale of the issue. What is less clear is what meaningful action looks like, and how individual efforts can add up to systemwide impact.
This is where Feeding Britain’s Future plays a different role. Rather than asking companies to create new schemes from scratch, it focuses on scaling what is proven to work by connecting businesses, schools and young people in simple, practical ways. The emphasis is on early engagement: building awareness of food careers, developing core employability skills and providing modern, accessible forms of work experience that reflect how young people learn and explore work today.
Crucially, this is not about short‑term recruitment. It is about widening the future talent pool and giving young people clearer signals that food and drink offers progression, purpose and opportunity across a wide range of roles, from operations and engineering to digital, data and sustainability.
What businesses can do now for the workforce
For senior leaders, the question is no longer whether to engage, but how. Action does not need to be complex or resource‑heavy. Practical steps include opening up people and sites to engage with young people, supporting scalable work‑experience models, and working locally to strengthen pathways from education into employment.
Industry commitment matters because scale matters. Fragmented, individual initiatives cannot solve a system‑wide challenge. Collective action, coordinated through Feeding Britain’s Future, offers a way for businesses to invest in the future workforce in a way that is credible, visible and impactful.
As industry leaders have already recognised, many young people struggle to access the experience and exposure they need to build confidence and progress, while businesses struggle to fill essential roles. Bridging that gap is increasingly central to the sector’s long‑term health.
Engagement with young people can also create meaning and purpose for existing employees – a chance for personal development that gets them away from the “day job” and into new challenges.
Turning support into workforce impact
Feeding Britain’s Future provides a clear framework for businesses that want to move from concern to contribution. By working together, the sector can help more young people build skills, improve work‑readiness and see food and drink as a destination industry, not a fallback option.
For a sector that underpins daily life in the UK, investing in the next generation is not optional. It is part of building a food system that can grow, adapt and deliver in the years ahead.
How you can become part of the movement, in year one and beyond
Commit to delivering work experience. Provide flexible experiences of work to young people in your communities, in collaboration with food businesses across the supply chain.
Volunteer for school workshops. Commit to volunteer time from five or more employees for IGD’s schools’ programme, helping us reach 50,000 students per year.
Take part in our campaigns. Mobilise the brilliant people in your business to create content celebrating their roles in food and drink. Email the name of your organisation’s communications lead to feedingbritain’[email protected]
Ask five or more organisations across your value chain to commit. Encourage partners, suppliers and customers to commit to Feeding Britain’s Future. Draft email and LinkedIn post templates are available for you to share with your contacts.
Use IGD’s free learning courses. Offer future‑focused skills, inspire new joiners and build career visibility. Enrol all new starters in the new starter course. Identify relevant learner groups in your business to embed the courses into your internal learning pathways, helping us train 6,000 learners this year. Contact [email protected] for more information on our courses.
Pledge support to Feeding Britain’s Future 2026. Email feedingbritain'[email protected] by 25 May 2026 to formally join the movement and share your high‑res logo (PNG or JPEG, minimum 200KB, ideally resized to 256×256 pixels). This secures your Chief Executive and Senior People Leader a place at our launch event on 4 June.