Sarah Whiddett, Head of Insight & Customer Experience – Bidfood

Currently spanning two roles at Bidfood, one the UK’s leading foodservice providers, Sarah is Head of Insight & Customer Marketing. These roles allow her to combine her two passions – customer voice and driving change, to make a positive, measurable impact both within and outside of her organisation.

With nearly 15 years’ experience specialising in insight and customer experience, both agency and client side, Sarah draws on a varied background of sectors, channels, and audiences. During her first maternity leave she completed her CIM diploma with merit, and swiftly took up the maternity cover of the marketing team where her focus has been on driving improvements in planning, activation and measurement of campaigns. This role was then made permanent at the end of the year.

Two of her proudest projects during her five years at Bidfood include the definition of the ‘Bidfood Service Excellence Mountain’ – a framework based on customer research from which, nearly three years later, the business is still investing in and working to in their mission to deliver service excellence to their customers. The second is the launch and continued development of Bidfood’s annual Food and Drink Trends campaign, which started as a simple presentation to internal buyers to influence Bidfood’s innovation pipeline, and is now Bidfood’s largest external marketing campaign, consisting of a variety of digital outputs including podcasts and blogs, media launches with industry influencers and various external speaking opportunities.

Outside of Bidfood, Sarah is an active player within both the insights and foodservice industry. Previous Chair of networking and best practice organisation AURA, Sarah has also been a mentor via the ASPIRE foundation, and heavily supportive of organisations such as Women in Wholesale (WiW) and the Federation of Wholesale Distributors (FWD), regularly presenting and sharing her expertise at their events.

Multi award-winning for both her individual achievements, and team projects, Sarah is described as a ‘rising star’ within the industry.